Getting good contractor leads is one of the most important things you can do for your business. While locating leads for home improvement and repair businesses can seem like a daunting task, there are ways to find well-qualified leads that generate a steady stream of business for your company.

Working with the best lead generation websites for contractors can potentially put you in touch with thousands of promising potential customers in your area, all within your service area and in need of the services you offer.

Reach out to the best contractor leads in your area through professional lead generation. Find out what you need to get started, how to recruit customers, and where to look for contractor leads to grow your company.

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The Best Lead Generation Companies For Contractors

What makes a good lead generation company? It’s an easy question with a big answer. The quality of leads sent, the customer service you receive and the ability to contact leads quickly can all make a difference in a contractor’s experience with a lead generation company. Additionally, many contractors have different ideas of success. If a contractor said a particular lead gen company did not work for his business, ask how he measures success. Some contractors expect a 60% close ratio while others are happy with 20%.

Let’s dig a little deeper to help you determine what lead generation company is the best for your business.

Evaluate Lead Generation Companies For Contractors

The first thing to realize is that many factors go into determining which contractors win jobs and which ones don’t. Let’s take a look at a few of the most important ones:

• Quality of work
• Price of work
• Salesmanship and personality
• Follow up process
• References or reviews

Some contractors possess a few of these qualities, some have all, and, like you probably say about your competition, some have none.

Different types of contractors may do well with different types of lead sources. A contractor with great quality of work, many references, and a fair price can probably get a lot of referral work without being a good salesman or needing an aggressive follow-up process.

On the other hand, contractors with great sales skills and a strong follow up process may win a lot of jobs even without quality work, fair prices, or references.

As you can see, different kinds of contractors may rely on different types of lead sources to grow their businesses.

Analyzing Contractor Feedback On Lead Generation services

Now that we see that different contractors have different results with different lead sources, let’s take a close look at some factors that can influence a contractor’s opinion when it comes to using one of the many ways to get leads: home improvement lead generation services. Here are some important factors to consider:

How long did they try the service for?

Many contractors will try a lead generation service, get 3-4 leads with no results, and quit, placing all the blame on the lead gen service. One thing many contractors don’t understand is that lead generation of any type is a numbers game.

For example, you may have a website that gets 100 visitors a day, and maybe only 20 of them actually call or fill out a form (20%). If you check your website stats in the morning and after 5 visits you have no calls, would you say that you are not going to get a single call all day? That would not be statistically accurate. What if you got 5 calls on your first 5 visitors, would you say that you are going to get 100 calls that day? Of course not!

The principles of statistics are simple: the more trials there are, the more accurate the data becomes. That’s why you can’t judge a particular service after just a handful of leads. So when a contractor gives feedback about a lead service, it’s always important to ask how many leads they got from that service and for how long they used the service.

How good is their sales process?

The truth is that many contractors can’t sell. Many don’t understand how to make a good impression on a homeowner. Many are unprofessional. And some of these types of contractors use lead gen services and have bad experiences. When reading feedback of lead-gen companies, you have to take some of it with a grain of salt, as you may not know much about the contractor leaving the feedback.

Are they passing the blame?

Every now and then we get a call from a contractor saying that a given lead was unreachable. Unlike other networks, we have a system in place that tracks calls to every lead so contractors can view the results in their Lead Manager. Often times we will look at the call history for the lead in question and we will see that the homeowner was not called until 4 days after we matched the lead, and it was only called once (or sometimes not at all). No wonder it was unreachable!

The truth is, many contractors do not properly follow up with leads. Calling only one-time a few days after the lead was matched will not lead to success. But many contractors with a poor follow-up process will then pass the blame to the lead generation company and post negative reviews online.

When reading feedback about a lead-gen company, ask the contractor posting feedback more about their sales process and how they follow up with the leads they buy.

Did they have success with other lead generation companies?

If a contractor posts negative feedback about a specific lead generation company, ask them if they had the same experience with other companies. If they had negative experiences with all lead gen companies it could be that this contractor’s business does not work well with lead gen companies, but that may not mean much for your business. If the contractor had issues with just one company then perhaps there is an issue with that specific lead gen company.

Is CraftJack Legitimate?

From a contractor's perspective, the volume and quality of contractor leads are the major advantages of going through a lead generation site. First, the wide reach and high web traffic for a lead generation site ensure a sustainable rate of local leads that can help keep your company busy throughout the year, even when your own recruiting may be slack. Second, the vetting process helps eliminate unqualified leads and ensures only the most interested customers are passed along for booking, which cuts down on unproductive time spent with leads who aren't ready to commit.

By combining the reach of social media and direct marketing with the personal reliability and high turnover rate of word of mouth, CraftJack manages to combine the best of all older methods for finding and recruiting the contractor leads that can help you thrive on your own.

Get started growing your business with CraftJack's leads. Sign up today.

Working On Your Own As A Contractor

Working on your own as a contractor is one of the leading goals of many home improvement professionals. Running your own small business and managing your schedule gives you more flexibility than you could have working for someone else, and the earning potential is practically unlimited. Independence has other benefits as well.

Contractors who work for themselves are free to work when they wish, and they can expand their service area to whichever areas make sense for them. Working on your own also lets you structure your compensation in a way that works for you, whether you want every dollar to come directly to you as pay, or hold some back to grow your business year after year.

CraftJack's is here to partner with you and help your business grow. Sign up today.

Things Every Contractor Needs

Starting out on your own as a contractor takes more than just the will, of course. For every advantage of working for yourself, there's also a risk. In order to succeed, you have to train yourself in the skills a contractor in your field needs, whether that's plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical work, or some combination of them all. It's also helpful to get some on-the-job training from an established contractor before you try your hand at servicing your own contractor leads.

When you're ready to start your own contracting business, you may have to raise some capital and get started. How much money you need and what you spend it on depends on what your specialty is, but most contractors need some general tools. No matter what your specialty is, there are some tools you're likely to need before you get started on your own. Most contractors need measuring tools, cutting tools, and supplies such as nails, screws, fasteners, and glue. Don't forget the emergency supplies, especially a first aid kit, and the communications equipment, which should be at least a smartphone and maybe a 2-way radio. Maps, GPS, and a large cooler are also must-haves if you're out working your service area.

Another Need: Good Contractor Leads

Arguably the most important thing you need to succeed as an independent contractor, though, is solid leads. Every lead is more than a potential one-off job. As a rule, your repeat business increases the longer you're in operation, which makes every successful lead a potential lifelong customer. Good contractor leads are a major source for sustained, stable growth for professionals in every field. 

CraftJack provides real-time, qualified leads for our members. Sign up today.

Succeeding As A Contractor

Getting the leads you need is one of the major challenges you have to overcome as a newly independent contractor. There are several ways to drum up the business that will keep you busy, some better than others. Which methods you choose to find contractor leads depend on several factors, including the size and complexity of your business, the amount of time and money you can put into the search, and the final volume of business you're looking to generate.

The quality of your leads also varies depending on the source you get them from. The best contractor leads are interested parties who'd like to book a job with you right away. Less helpful are the leads who are only somewhat interested, or who are just pricing the market to see whether it's worthwhile to book with a contractor. Finding the best contractor leads for your company requires striking a balance between cost, quality, and volume.

Other Ways To Find Customers

In order to get enough customers to thrive, your business needs to locate promising leads and then make a convincing pitch to them that converts prospects into sales. If your work is high-quality and your business presents itself as a professional organization, making the sale with an interested customer isn't exceptionally difficult. The challenge for most businesses is in locating the best leads for contractors in the first place. 

CraftJack is here to help you find more customers in your area. Sign up today.

Word Of Mouth

Word of mouth is famously one of the best and most productive ways to get new leads for your business. When past customers of yours tell their neighbors and friends about you, the no-cost lead this generates has a high probability of turning into a paying job. People trust their close associates to tell them the truth about their experience with a home contractor, and if the review is positive, you can count on decent turnover among these referrals. Word of mouth also has the advantage of requiring no effort on your part, except for the effort of doing a good job with all your customers, and it works whether you're actively promoting your business or not. Leads generated this way have a very high benefit-to-cost ratio.

The downside of word of mouth is that it can be slow and doesn't typically generate high volumes of new referrals. People only refer their friends to your business when they're in the market for a contractor's services, and for any given homeowner, that's not very common. The low volume this method generates is especially rough for contractors who are just starting out and who haven't yet had a chance to build up a history of satisfied customers who can refer new business.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is in many ways the opposite of word of mouth. Instead of a low-volume approach to high-turnover contractor leads, direct marketing reaches a large number of people, only a small number of whom are probably in the market for your services at the moment. Direct marketing methods are diverse, but the category typically includes mass mailings, radio, TV, and outdoor advertising ad buys, calls from telemarketers, and even door-to-door visits by sales reps. 

Direct advertising can be effective if it's done on a large enough scale, and some of this is probably unavoidable if you want to get your company's name in front of the public. It can be expensive, however, and you shouldn't expect a high rate of follow-through for each contact it generates.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has taken the broad reach of direct marketing and combined it with the one-on-one feeling of word of mouth. If you can cultivate a large enough following on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, you can cheaply stay in touch with a large part of the public. In theory, these people will think of you first when they need a contractor. You can also expand your social media to recruit new hires and build a sense of community that improves your reach and reputation in your service area.

Social media outreach still has its drawbacks. Even though a tweet is practically free, a truly effective social media campaign is likely to cost your company thousands of dollars. You're also in competition with every competitor you have to get attention, not just in your target service area but in all the outlying areas as well.

Looking For Help With Contractor Leads

One of the best ways to get the most out of your leads is to get help from a trusted online referral site like CraftJack. The best lead generation websites for contractors connect vetted professionals with genuinely interested property owners who need to book an appointment in the near future. CraftJack does this by listing professional contractors by area and by specialty, and by connecting thousands of very interested leads with the help they need locally.

The bottom line is when these types of topics about which lead generation sites are best for contractors or the best ways to get leads, will come up in conversation among contractors . Remember, everyone defines success a little differently. People can say what they want and there is no real way to judge their credibility unless you dig a little deeper.

Check out what CraftJack has to offer contractors.