rank and rent business

From the renter's side, since I'm the contractor these deals get pitched to: a "flaky" renter often just can't see what he's paying for. What would keep me in a deal:

- Every call tracked and recorded, so we can both hear what came in.
- A written rule for what counts as a billable lead, plus a dispute window.
- A service area and job types that match what my crew actually does.
- A trial month before any long commitment.

Give a contractor that and he stays, because cancelling means losing calls he can see are real. In my area (Skagit and Snohomish counties, Washington) I'd talk to anyone set up that way.

I think it's much better to show results in terms of potential customers rather than just Google rankings. I mean, what's the point of a business being in first position if it's not getting calls or quote requests from real customers?

The most important thing is to show how many contacts they're getting, how many of them are actually interested, and if possible, how many end up becoming customers, with this last part being the most important.

I'm not really an expert on this, but as a business owner, getting ten contacts who never reply can be much less profitable than getting 10 people who are actually interested in hiring my services.

I usually prefer lead generation. At the end of the day, clients care more about getting actual customers than just seeing their keywords move up. Rankings are nice, but leads are what really matter to most businesses.

MarketSellCap said:

For commission-based leads, use a shared CRM to track which leads turn into paying customers. Agree on what counts as a valid conversion before starting to avoid payment disputes.

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what CRM do you suggestion?

WebProfitLab said:

I'm on the other side of this. I run a general contracting company in Washington state, so I'm the guy who gets pitched. No contractor I know cares where a site ranks. We care whether the phone rings with a real job in our area that fits our work.

What makes me pay: leads sent only to me, not to 3-4 others at once; jobs worth the drive; and calls passed through live, because a day-old lead is mostly dead.

Per-lead or flat monthly both work. Offer a trial period, since most of us have been burned by a marketing company before.

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what do you use to track calls (leads)?

interested

@onedaydayone nothing fancy on our side. Each partner gets its own tracking number, used only on that partner's pages and ads and never on our Google listing, so we know the source before anyone picks up.

Every call gets a lead ID, and the partner gets a weekly report with each lead's status (booked, visited, signed or not) and the payout by lead ID. At small volume a shared sheet works as well as a CRM. What matters more is agreeing in writing what counts as a billable lead before the first call comes in.