A lead is not a booking. Here is the rate to watch.

Shops ask for more leads when the last pile did not turn into appointments. That is a booking problem wearing a marketing hat. Buying another hundred at a higher price does not repair the hour after the form landed.

The three rates, kept apart

Write them on the wall in this order. Do not collapse them.

1. 01Lead. Someone called, filled a form, or messaged. You have their number.
2. 02Booking rate. Of those leads, how many are on the board as an appointment. Allsopp’s April 2025 line was a booking rate of about 70%, and he flagged it as “call it,” meaning he was rounding his own desk, not publishing a study. Do not print 70% as the industry number. Print it as one roofing company’s self-report, then measure yours.
3. 03Close rate. Of the appointments that happened, how many became a sold job. A high booking rate with a bad close rate is a sales problem. A low booking rate is a first-hour problem. They need different fixes.

Cost per lead hides this. A $40 lead you never tried is more expensive than a $120 lead you booked. The host writeup of Allsopp’s September 12, 2026 interview reports Facebook leads moving from about $20 in 2020–2021 to about $120, and quotes the response: get better at booking rate and close rate so the higher lead cost does not eat the job. That is the host’s writeup of the conversation. It is the right order of operations even if your lead price never moved.

The hour, from the 2011 audit, not from a slogan

Of 2,241 companies sent a test web lead, 23% never responded. The average among those who did respond within 30 days was 42 hours. Firms that tried within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify the lead as firms that tried an hour later. Qualify meant a conversation with a decision maker, not a signed job.

So the conversion protocol for a web lead is boring:

1. 01Try inside the hour. Text and call. Allsopp’s 2025 desk did text, voicemail drop, call, and email inside 30 seconds. You do not need four channels on day one. You need one real try before the hour is gone.
2. 02The try books a time. “Someone will call you back in 48 hours” is the line he used as the example of what not to do, in an earlier interview. Book tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon. If neither works, offer the next morning. Do not end the first touch without a time or a clear no.
3. 03If they do not answer the first try, the follow-up cadence already lives on the follow-up system. Do not rebuild it here. Two or three touches, then stop. That page owns the day-2, day-7, day-14 notes.

Getting more leads, which is the wrong first purchase

Before you raise the ad budget or buy a shared lead, count three piles from the last 30 days. This is an audit, not a study. Your numbers will not match a benchmark, because we are not giving you one.

1. 01Missed calls to the published number with no text back. Those were already leads. The scorecard page says whether the text you send is a reply or a blast.
2. 02Form fills and Facebook leads with no try inside an hour. The 2011 audit says almost a quarter of companies never tried at all. If you are in that bucket, another 50 leads repeats the waste.
3. 03Quotes sent with no second text. The follow-up page has the cadence. If that cadence is not running, you do not have a lead shortage. You have a quiet quote.

If all three piles are small and the booking rate is still ugly, then look at lead quality: wrong town, wrong trade, tire-kickers. That is when a media change earns its place. If the piles are large, media is how you buy a longer list of people you will also ignore.

We are not pricing HomeAdvisor, Angi, or LSA on this page. Those rates move by market, and we did not pull a live card for them today. Allsopp has quoted his own LSA and cost-per-sit numbers on other interviews. They are his market, in that month. Do not copy them onto your budget.

The misconception

FAQ

Read what the five-minute rule measured, the follow-up system, the first-text scorecard, what Google says ranks a contractor, and the pricing page.