Exclusive vs shared roofing leads calculator

The model, stated plainly

A shared lead sold to several contractors is won by one of them, so each buyer's effective close rate is the solo close rate divided by the number of roofers chasing it. That division is the entire mechanism, and it is why a lead at a quarter of the price is not a bargain when five people bought it.

Two figures are fixed inside the tool rather than being inputs: a close rate on a lead only you are working, and a gross profit per job. They are neutral US-market roofing assumptions, not our performance, and they scale the profit columns proportionally -- if your margin per job is half the assumed one, halve every profit figure the tool prints. The winner rarely flips when you do that, because the comparison is driven by the contention divisor, not by the margin.

One place the model is kind to shared leads: it splits the odds evenly among the buyers. Real shared leads do not work that way. Whoever calls first takes far more than their even share, so a fast shop does better than this shows and a slow one does worse. If your first dial is measured in hours, assume you are on the wrong end of that skew -- the speed-to-lead curve is the same argument from the other direction.

What to check before you accept the verdict

An exclusive lead is only exclusive to you at that vendor. Homeowners fill in several forms on several sites, so the practical question is not whether a lead was sold once but how many companies are calling that person this afternoon. Ask what "exclusive" is exclusive to, and for how long.

Then check what you are buying at the far end of the scale. Below a certain price, a lead is not a homeowner with a damaged roof; it is a click on an incentivised quiz. The comparator will happily tell you that a two-dollar lead wins on profit per lead, because the arithmetic has no opinion about whether the phone number is real. That judgement is yours, and the only honest test is a month of tracked outcomes.

The legal question people ask, answered from the documents

A lot of roofing marketing content says federal rules have made shared leads illegal. That is not what happened. Here is the status of the FCC one-to-one consent rule, read off the documents themselves: Vacated, and it never took effect. The Eleventh Circuit vacated the rule on 2025-01-24 (Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC, No. 24-10277); the mandate issued 2025-04-30; the FCC conformed its rules at 90 FR 42137 effective 2025-08-29, reinstating the prior definition of prior express written consent.

Sources: Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC, No. 24-10277 (11th Cir. Jan. 24, 2025), https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202410277.pdf; FCC conforming final rule 90 FR 42137, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/29/2025-16641/

So shared leads remain lawful, and the homeowner who filled in one form is still going to be called by several contractors -- which is precisely why the contention divisor above is the number that decides this comparison. This is a description of published documents and nothing more; it is not legal advice, and your own compliance obligations are a question for your counsel.

Where this fits

• Roofing lead generation -- the channels behind both columns, and what each one really sells.
• Storm damage appointments -- a booked inspection instead of a lead, which is the third option this comparison does not contain.
• Roofing lead ROI calculator -- run whichever column wins against your full monthly spend.