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Exclusive leads vs shared lead marketplaces
Marketplaces are cheaper per contact and faster to start. They also put you in a price auction against four other contractors on every single opportunity. Here is the arithmetic, including where they still beat us.
In short
A shared lead marketplace sells the same enquiry to three to five cleaning contractors, which is cheaper per contact but turns each opportunity into a price auction. Exclusive pay-per-lead costs more per contact and delivers to one contractor only, which typically produces a lower cost per contract won and no margin compression on the wins.
- Marketplace cost
- Lower per contact, often prepaid credits
- Marketplace recipients
- Typically 3–5 contractors per enquiry
- Exclusive cost
- Higher per lead, quoted per metro
- Exclusive recipients
- One, never resold
- Metric that decides it
- Cost per contract won, not cost per lead
- Hidden cost of sharing
- Compressed margin on the deals you do win
Side by side
| Shared marketplace | Exclusive pay-per-lead | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per contact | Low | Higher |
| Who else receives it | 3–5 contractors | Nobody |
| Time to first contact | Immediate | Days to weeks while outreach runs |
| Qualification | Usually a form fill | Decision authority, live trigger, size and area verified |
| Building detail supplied | Little | Size, incumbent, contract date, current spend |
| What the first call is about | Your price versus four others | Their problem |
| If the lead is junk | Sometimes a credit, on their terms | Replaced or refunded, on yours |
| Commitment | Prepaid credits | None |
The cost that never appears on the invoice
Everyone understands the first cost of a shared lead: you lose most of them. The second cost is larger and nearly invisible.
When a facility manager is collecting five quotes, every contractor in that set knows it, and the conversation moves to price before it reaches scope. The contract goes to whoever was most optimistic about their labour cost. So you do not just lose four buildings out of five — you win the fifth at a worse rate than you would have negotiated alone.
When a marketplace is genuinely the right call
There are real situations where we would tell you to use one instead of us.
- You have a dead week and idle crews, and any work at any margin beats idle. Marketplaces deliver immediately; outreach-based lead generation does not.
- You are testing whether a new geography has any demand at all, before committing crews to it. A few cheap contacts answer that question fast.
- Your sales process is the actual bottleneck. If nobody is calling leads back within the day, buying more expensive leads makes the problem more expensive rather than fixing it.
- You are very early and cash-constrained, and cost per contract matters less right now than getting any first reference client at all.
What marketplaces are poor at is being the foundation. As a steady source of growth they train your sales team to compete on price, which is a habit that outlasts the leads.
They are cheap per contact and immediate, which makes them reasonable for filling dead weeks or testing a new geography. They are a poor foundation for steady growth, because three to five contractors receive the same enquiry and the conversation becomes a price auction — so you lose most of them and win the rest at a worse rate.
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