Ask a contractor and a marketing provider what a lead is and you will often get two answers. To the provider, it is a person who submitted a form. To the contractor, it is a person who wants the work done, lives in the area, and picks up the phone. Both are reasonable, and they describe different leads.
Left unwritten, that difference becomes the main source of friction in a lead generation relationship. A short definition agreed before the first campaign prevents most of it.
What a lead definition contains
- Service area. The postcodes, cities or radius you cover. A lead outside it is not qualified, however good the project.
- Project type. The work you take, and the work you do not. A roofing contractor may want replacements and repairs but not gutter cleaning.
- Authority. The person is the owner or can decide, not a tenant asking out of curiosity.
- Reachability. A working phone number, and contact made or attempted according to an agreed standard.
- Timing. A current need, not a project planned for some undefined point in the future.
- Duplicates. How a repeat enquiry from the same person is treated.
Each criterion should be something an agent can check on the first call and record in the CRM. If it cannot be checked, it does not belong in the definition.
The acceptance window
A definition needs a process around it. The acceptance window is the period in which the client can review a delivered lead and flag it as outside the definition. It should be short enough that decisions are made while the lead is fresh, and it should require a reason from an agreed list.
The return policy
The return policy says what happens to a flagged lead: which reasons are valid, what evidence settles a disagreement, and how the lead is replaced. Call recordings and CRM notes from the qualification call are the natural evidence. They show what the customer said about the project and the location at the time.
A return policy protects both sides. The client is not held to leads that never fitted. The provider is not exposed to leads being rejected after the fact for reasons unrelated to the definition, such as a job that was quoted and lost.
Exclusive or shared
State whether a lead is delivered to one business or to several. An exclusive lead and a shared lead are different products, and the contractor's chance of winning the work differs sharply between them. Whichever applies, say so in the agreement.
A lead, an appointment and a job are three things
It helps to name each stage and report them separately. A lead met the definition. An appointment was booked into the calendar. A job was sold. The provider controls the first two. The contractor controls the third. Reporting all three shows where the chain is strong and where it leaks, and it keeps each side accountable for the part it can influence.
Review it
A definition written before launch is a first draft. After a month, compare the leads that became jobs with the ones that did not. Patterns appear quickly: an area that never converts, a project type that wastes visits. Tighten the definition, adjust the campaign, and write the change down.
In practice
A one-page lead definition covers: service area, project types in and out, decision-maker, reachability standard, timing, duplicates, exclusivity, acceptance window, valid return reasons and the evidence used to settle them.