Questions to Ask a Lead Generation Company

By Luis Johnson, founder of Lunere Digital. Published October 29, 2026

These are the questions to ask a lead generation company before you give anybody a card number, and the two columns beside each one matter more than the question does. Anyone can ask who owns the ad account. The skill is hearing the difference between an answer and a nice noise shaped like an answer.

I sell against some of these companies, so read this knowing that. I have written it so it works on me too: every question below is one you should put to me on a call, and the dodge column is the dodge I would be tempted to use.

The short version

Ask who owns the ad account and whether you can log into it today. That single answer sorts most of the market.
Ask whether the same homeowner is ever sold again, later, to anybody.
Make every number they quote you carry a source, a date and a definition.
Read the exit terms before the sales terms, because the exit is where the cost hides.
A straight answer is specific and checkable. A dodge is a feeling, a testimonial, or a change of subject.

Why does the dodge column exist?

Because the way these conversations fail is not that somebody lies to you. It is that you ask a sharp question, get a warm vague answer, feel slightly rude pushing again, and move on. Three of those in a row and you have signed something you do not understand.

This is not hypothetical in this trade. The Federal Trade Commission approved a final order against HomeAdvisor in April 2023 over how it marketed leads to home improvement businesses, including claims about how often those leads turned into jobs, and the order required the company to pay up to $7.2 million in redress. HomeAdvisor now trades as Angi Leads. Read the order yourself before you take anybody in this market on trust, mine included.

The sixteen questions

Ask this	A straight answer sounds like	A dodge sounds like
1. Whose ad account do these come from, and can I log into it today?	It is opened in your business name, billed to your card, and I get partner access you can pull in one click. Here is the account ID.	We handle all of that for you. You do not need to worry about the back end.
2. Is this homeowner ever sold to another contractor, now or later?	Never, and the agreement says so in a clause I can point to right now.	Our leads are exclusive. (Then no clause, or a clause that only covers the moment it is handed to you.)
3. What exactly am I charged for: a form fill, a call, a set appointment, or an appointment that happened?	One flat charge per attended appointment, and nothing for a form fill or a call.	It works out to roughly the same thing either way once you average it.
4. Read me your written definition of a qualified lead.	Here it is: owns the home, named one of these symptoms, has a timeframe, makes the decision, inside your ZIPs.	Someone genuinely interested in foundation work in your area.
5. What happens when the homeowner is not home?	Tell us inside a set window and the charge comes off. Here is the window and here is the clause.	We will take a look at it case by case.
6. How do I dispute a charge, who decides, and how long does it take?	You report it in writing, it comes off the next invoice, and I decide nothing you cannot see.	You rate the lead in the dashboard and the system reviews it.
7. Where did the number you just quoted me come from?	That is from this published study, this year, and here is the definition they used. It is not my own result.	That is what we typically see across our clients.
8. Have you worked this trade before, and what did you get wrong?	A specific answer either way, including the thing that did not work.	We have helped hundreds of contractors grow.
9. Who else do you already work with within an hour of me?	A direct yes or no, with the honest shape of it.	Your area is protected. (Ask what defines the area and what happens when it is redrawn.)
10. What is the shortest I can be in this for, and what do I pay to leave?	A plain term, a notice period in days, and the number you owe on the way out.	Nobody ever leaves, so it has never really come up.
11. Does it renew on its own, and how do I stop that?	Yes or no, the date, and the exact thing you have to send and to whom.	Just let your rep know and we will take care of it.
12. Who pays for the ads, and where does that money go?	You do, straight to the platform on your own card, so you can see every dollar of it.	It is all bundled into one monthly number. (Then ask what share of it is ad spend.)
13. Who owns the phone number, the pages and the tracking when we are done?	You do, and here is how each piece transfers.	Those assets stay on our platform, but you keep the customers.
14. What do you need from my side for this to work?	Answer in minutes, attend the appointment, tell me what closed, and fund the spend at this level.	Nothing really. We do all of it.
15. What kind of shop should not buy this?	A real description of who it fails for, said without flinching.	It works for everybody who follows the system.
16. If this does not produce, what happens?	A named number, a date it starts from, a cap, a claim window, and the conditions it holds under.	We stand behind our work. (A guarantee without its conditions is not one.)

Ask it, then listen for which column the answer lands in.

Ask these two in the first five minutes

Question one and question two are worth asking in the first five minutes, because the rest of the call changes depending on the answers.

The ad account question works because a homeowner can only be resold by somebody who holds him as inventory. When the ads run in an account that belongs to the vendor, every form fill is theirs and selling it more than once is what makes their model pay. In an account that belongs to you, pointed at your ZIPs, there is no pool for him to fall into.

The resale question works because the word exclusive is carrying a lot of weight in this market. Exclusive when it is handed to you, exclusive for 30 days, and never sold again are three different products wearing one name. Ask which one, then ask to see it written down.

Can they change the credit policy on you?

Any vendor can tell you that bad leads get credited. What matters is who decides and whether the rules can change while you are a customer.

Google is the clearest published example of how that moves. Its own Local Services help page, says lead credits are now applied automatically, that leads judged invalid or low quality are not charged from the outset, and that Google no longer supports credits for leads marked as job type not serviced or geography not serviced. Those two categories are exactly the ones a foundation shop would want credited, and the policy that covered them is gone.

So the follow-up to question six is simple: can you change this policy without my agreement, and where would I read about it if you did.

Is it rude to ask all sixteen?

No, and the reaction is information. Somebody selling you something he understands will enjoy the questions. Somebody who gets impatient has told you what the rest of the relationship looks like.

What if I already signed and now I have the answers?

Go to the exit terms first, get the notice period and the date in front of you, and then decide. The cost of staying another quarter by accident is usually bigger than the cost of leaving properly.

How do I ask these of you?

Out loud on the call, in this order. What I charge for and how is written down, and the guarantee is printed with every condition on it, so you can check both before we speak.

Bring this list to the call and work down it. I would rather fail question nine honestly than pass it the other way.

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Sources

The FTC approved a final consent order against HomeAdvisor in April 2023 over deceptive marketing of its home improvement leads, requiring up to $7.2 million in redress. Federal Trade Commission.
Local Services Ads lead credits are applied automatically, low quality leads are not charged from the outset, and Google no longer supports credits for job type not serviced or geo not serviced leads. Google Local Services Help.