- A shared lead is sold to several businesses at once; an exclusive lead goes to exactly one. That's the whole difference, and it decides everything else.
- Shared means a race and a price war over the same contact. Exclusive means a conversation without direct competition.
- Shared leads are cheaper per lead; exclusive leads are often cheaper per deal won. The right metric is the price per deal, not per inquiry.
- We work exclusively with exclusive leads. One business per region and service. Nothing else.
Both are called “leads,” but they're two different products. The difference isn't in the inquiry itself but in how many businesses it's sold to. That sounds like a detail. In reality, it decides your close rate, the price pressure and your nerves.
1. How shared leads work
With a shared lead, a prospect fills out a form, and that one inquiry is sold to four to six businesses at the same time. Everyone pays, everyone gets the same contact. Within minutes the prospect gets several calls and starts comparing quotes right away.
That's why the low price per lead is misleading: you also pay for the competition over the contact, in the form of a lower close rate. Why that eats into margins especially in construction is something we've described using the example of construction firms.
With a shared lead, you buy a contact. With an exclusive one, you buy the calm of being the only one who calls.
2. What makes exclusive different
An exclusive inquiry goes to exactly one business per region and service. No parallel race, no three competing quotes, no price war in the first sentence. You talk to someone who came to you specifically. How we reserve a territory for that is covered in Locking a region exclusively.
It costs more per inquiry. But the price per deal won is often lower, because a much larger share of conversations has a real chance at all. What an exclusive lead costs and what drives the price is covered in What does an exclusive B2B lead cost?.
3. Which lead type fits you?
The honest answer depends on your deal value:
- Low deal value, high volume: If you live off many small jobs and have a well-oiled call center, you can work with shared leads, but you have to handle the price war.
- High deal value, predictable sales: Where one deal brings in several thousand euros, exclusivity plays to its strength. One conversation without competitors is worth more than three with them.
We deliberately chose the exclusive model because our target niches have high deal values. For businesses with many small jobs, we're simply not the right partner, and we say so openly.
Michael has more than 8 years of experience in web and software development and helps businesses build systems that turn inquiries into deals.