What makes a home-service lead qualified? Write the rules before you buy

Home services: heating and cooling. Sector guide written for heating and cooling contractors. Some sources are specific to British Columbia, Canada. It describes that sector, not where Ring Side Leads works.

“Qualified” is the most stretched word in lead generation. A vendor can call a lead qualified because a form was filled in, because a phone number had ten digits, or because the person once clicked an ad about furnaces. A contractor usually means something narrower: a real homeowner, in my area, asking for work I do, who I can actually reach, and who hasn’t already been sold to three of my competitors.

The gap between those two meanings is where most lead disputes start. The fix isn’t a better vendor. It’s a written definition, agreed before the first dollar is spent, that both sides can check a request against.

This article sets out a rubric you can use whether you buy leads, run your own ads or hire someone to run them. It is the same structure we use in our own draft lead standard.

Start with the question a lead has to answer

Every request that reaches your inbox should answer one question with a yes: is this someone I would want my team to call back today? Everything in the rubric breaks that question into parts you can check without arguing about it.

If a criterion can’t be checked from the record, it doesn’t belong in the definition. “Serious buyer” can’t be checked. “Requested a heat pump install at a postal code on our list” can.

The seven checks

1. Direct

Did the person contact your channel, about their own property? A request that arrived through your website form, your tracked phone number or your own Google listing is direct. A request that was collected somewhere else and then sold, shared or “matched” to you is not, even if it looks the same in your inbox.

Direct matters because it tells you who the person thinks they are talking to. Someone who filled in your form expects to hear from you. Someone who filled in a marketplace form may expect to hear from five companies and choose the cheapest.

2. Consented

Did the form tell the person who would receive their details and why, before they pressed send? In British Columbia, private-sector privacy law expects organisations to collect personal information for purposes a reasonable person would consider appropriate, with notice and consent. In practice that means the consent text names the business that will contact them, the box is not pre-ticked, and the version of that text is stored with the request.

Marketing consent is a separate question. Agreeing to be contacted about a furnace quote is not agreeing to a newsletter. Keep the two apart on the form and in the record.

3. In service

Is the requested work on your service list? Write the list down. “HVAC” is too broad to check; “heat pump install (ducted and ductless), furnace replacement, central AC install, AC repair” is checkable. Anything not on the list, such as duct cleaning only, commercial rooftop units or a hot water tank, is held, not counted.

The list is also a business decision. If you want fewer repair calls and more installs, the definition is where you say so.

4. In area

Is the property inside the area you agreed to serve? A radius on a map is hard to check and easy to argue about. A list of postal areas (the first three characters of a Canadian postal code) is easy to check from the form and easy to change in writing when your crews’ range changes.

5. Contactable

Is there a working phone number or email? The test should be simple and documented: one real contact attempt, recorded with its result. A number that is disconnected or belongs to someone who never made the request fails. A number that goes to voicemail twice does not fail the check; that is an outcome, not a disqualification.

6. Unique

Is this the same person or property as a request in the last 30 days? Match on phone, email or address. Homeowners resubmit forms when they don’t hear back quickly, or fill in the form and then call. Counting both inflates the numbers and hides a response-time problem. Hold the second one and link it to the first.

Choose the window deliberately. Thirty days suits most residential HVAC work; a maintenance-plan business might want longer.

7. Genuine

Is it a real request for work? Spam, vendor pitches, job applicants and test submissions all arrive through the same form. They should be easy to spot and easy to exclude, with the reason recorded.

What to record but not use to disqualify

Some information is useful for your reply but shouldn’t decide whether a request counts. Timing (“this spring”), budget, whether the person owns the home and interest in rebates are the usual examples. Record them when the person shares them. Don’t let them quietly turn into reasons to reject a request unless you have agreed that in writing.

There is a good reason for the restraint. A homeowner who isn’t sure about timing is still a real enquiry, and how your team handles that first call often decides whether they become a customer. Disqualifying them on paper doesn’t change the market; it only changes the report.

Never let the definition promise more than a request can

A request is an expression of interest. It is not a booked estimate, a sale or a commitment to hire. Any vendor, agency or internal report that blurs those lines, for example by calling every form fill a “customer” or quoting “booked jobs” without records, is making a claim that should be backed by evidence. Canada’s Competition Act prohibits false or misleading representations in promoting a business interest, and that applies to lead vendors’ claims about their own product as much as to anyone else’s.

The safest definition is the one that only claims what the record shows.

Disputes: decide the process before you need it

A definition is only as good as the process for applying it. Before launch, agree:

• Who decides. Usually the vendor or manager applies the checks and you can challenge the result.
• How long you have. Seven days from receipt is a workable window. Long enough to make a contact attempt; short enough that the record is fresh.
• What a challenge needs. A reason from the checklist above. “Didn’t buy” is not a reason; “phone number belongs to someone else” is.
• What happens next. Under a per-lead agreement, a valid challenge usually means a credit or replacement. Under a managed programme, it changes the report. Either way, write it down.

A note on calling people back

If your team makes outbound marketing calls, as opposed to replying to a request someone just made, Canada’s telemarketing rules apply. The CRTC’s guidance written for HVAC businesses says plainly that a company is liable for the actions of its lead generator, and that the business itself needs its own Do Not Call List registration and an internal do-not-call list. A lead definition that relies on cold calls inherits that risk.

Inbound requests avoid most of it. That is one reason a strong definition starts with “direct” and “consented”.

A one-page template

Put this on a single page and attach it to any agreement:

Check	Rule	Evidence in the record
Direct	Came through our own channel	Channel and page or number
Consented	Notice named us; box ticked by the person	Notice version and time
In service	On our written service list	Service requested
In area	Postal area on our list	Postal area
Contactable	Working phone or email	Contact attempt and result
Unique	No match in the last 30 days	Match check result
Genuine	Not spam, vendor, applicant or test	Reviewer note

Then add one line: recorded but not used to disqualify: timing, budget, ownership, rebate interest.

The point of writing it down

A written rubric does three things. It makes vendors comparable, because you can ask each one to apply the same seven checks. It makes reports honest, because every held request has a reason. And it makes your own response problems visible, because duplicates and unreachable requests stop hiding inside a single “leads” number.

None of this needs software. It needs a page, agreed in advance, and the discipline to hold every request against it.

Sources

• Competition Bureau Canada: false or misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices, checked 2026-10-19
• OIPC BC: guidance on the Personal Information Protection Act, checked 2026-10-19
• CRTC: telemarketing obligations for heating, ventilation and air conditioning businesses, checked 2026-10-19

General information, not legal advice. Rules and programmes change; check the sources before acting.

Next: Exclusive contractor leads: what exclusivity should mean in a contract