The Lead Integrity Standard™

How to Identify Real, High-Quality Enquiries in Trade & Home Services (and Avoid Wasting Time on Low-Integrity Leads)

In the trade and home-services industries, lead quality matters more than lead volume.

A business can receive 100 enquiries a month and still lose money if those enquiries are uncontactable, off-scope, outside the service area, or submitted by people with no real intent.

Yet most lead providers never define what a “good lead” actually is.
They focus on quantity, not integrity.

The Lead Integrity Standard™ changes that.

This guide outlines the framework used by top operators, franchisors, and growth-focused trades businesses to evaluate lead quality with clarity and confidence, whether you generate leads in-house or purchase them from a provider.

It’s free, open-source, and built to help the entire industry raise the bar.

Why Lead Quality Matters More Than Lead Volume

Most businesses don’t have a lead problem.
They have a lead integrity problem.

Low-quality enquiries create:

Wasted hours on the phone
Unnecessary admin workload
False pipeline expectations
Upset team members
False blame placed on booking or sales
Burnout from chasing tyre-kickers
Higher quote-to-win ratio
Capacity planning chaos

Even worse:
Low-integrity leads disguise their damage.
They appear as “lead volume” but deliver zero commercial value.

High-integrity leads do the opposite:

✔ Fast to contact
✔ Relevant to the service
✔ Inside your radius
✔ Real buyers with real intent
✔ Predictable job size
✔ Smooth scheduling + quoting

This guide explains exactly how to identify the difference.

The 6 Dimensions of Lead Integrity

The Lead Integrity Standard™ defines high-quality enquiries using six simple dimensions..

These apply across:

HVAC
Electrical
Plumbing
Roofing
Solar
Painting
Carpentry
Landscaping
All home-services verticals

1. Identity Integrity

A lead must come from a real person with validated contact information.

Criteria:

Correct name
Real email address
Valid mobile number
No bots
No spam submissions
Not recycled from third-party lists

Identity integrity protects your team’s time.

2. Service-Scope Alignment

The enquiry must match the service you actually provide.

Criteria:

Matches your trade category (e.g., roofing leads = roofing jobs, not handyman tasks)
Matches your service offering (maintenance, install, repair, new build, etc.)
Job type is within your capability
No irrelevant enquiries (e.g., lawn care for a painter, car repairs for a sparky)

This stops the “nothing we can do for you” calls.

3. Location Accuracy

The lead must be located inside your operational radius or target suburbs.

Criteria:

Within correct suburbs or postcodes
No out-of-area jobs
Location submitted accurately
Ability to confirm the service address

This prevents wasted travel time and protects margins.

4. Contactability Window

A lead should be reachable within a practical timeframe.

Criteria:

Can be contacted within 1–3 hours
Answers phone or can receive SMS
No unreachable numbers
No fake burners
No ghost submissions

This dramatically improves conversion rate and operational planning.

5. Intent Verification

The lead should represent commercial intent, not casual browsing.

Criteria:

Real need or active project
No casual tyre-kickers
No non-serious enquiries
Form responses indicate real purpose
Submission channel matches intent (e.g., emergency vs scheduled quote)

High-intent leads convert 4–8x better than passive ones.

6. Data Freshness

Lead data should be fresh - not hours or days old.

Criteria:

Ideally < 15 minutes old
Max acceptable: under 90 minutes
Not recycled or resold
Timestamped and trackable

Freshness determines whether you win the job.

The Lead Integrity Checklist

Businesses can use this checklist to evaluate ANY lead source:

LEAD INTEGRITY CHECKLIST

A lead is considered “valid” only if it meets all items below:

Real person (validated via email/mobile)
Real mobile number
In your service radius
Matches your exact service
Contactable within 1–3 hours
Submitted recently (fresh)
No duplicates
No bots or spam
Contains job details or intent indicators
Meets minimum job-value thresholds (optional but recommended)

If a lead fails any of these → it is a low-integrity lead.

The Hidden Costs of Low-Integrity Leads

1. Administrative drain

Teams waste hours chasing dead data.

2. Lower morale

Staff lose belief in the pipeline.

3. Operational delays

Capacity planning becomes impossible.

4. Lower profitability

Time is spent on leads with zero chance of conversion.

Pay Per Lead vs In-House Lead Generation: What Produces Higher-Integrity Leads?

Pay Per Lead Pros:

Fast deployment
No ad spend risk
Scales up/down easily
Good for overflow capacity
Fixed cost per enquiry

Pay Per Lead Cons:

Quality varies massively
Some providers resell leads
Not all follow a standard
Freshness is inconsistent
Little visibility into source

In-House Marketing Pros:

Full visibility
Complete control
Stronger brand trust
Higher long-term integrity
Ownership of assets

In-House Marketing Cons:

Requires expertise
Requires ad budget
Can take 4–12 weeks to ramp
Higher risk if executed poorly

How QuoteLeads Applies the Lead Integrity Standard™

QuoteLeads adheres to the Lead Integrity Standard™ on every enquiry we deliver.

We guarantee:

✔ Real people
✔ Real intent
✔ Correct service
✔ Correct location
✔ Fresh enquiries
✔ Contactable within hours
✔ No duplicates
✔ No recycled or shared leads

And we enforce: