← All posts
Lead cost

You're spending $106.87 a lead and never calling back.

Sunday, 8:47 PM. A water stain is spreading across a bedroom ceiling in Mill Woods — leftovers from last week's rain. The homeowner grabs her phone and searches "roofer near me."

Google Local Services shows her three names. She taps the first. Rings twice, then voicemail. She hangs up — she doesn't leave messages; almost nobody does. She taps the second number. Same thing.

The third roofer picks up. He asks two questions, books an inspection for Tuesday morning, and texts her a confirmation before she puts the phone down. Race over. The first two roofers never knew they were in it.

Here's the part that should sting: those first two roofers paid for that call. A roofing lead from Google Local Services costs $106.87 right now, per Lead Smart's September 2026 payout data — up from $73.62 a year earlier. Separate Q2 2026 data from 99 Calls put the average roofing lead at $101.15, up from the mid-$60s the year before. The price keeps climbing. The phone still isn't being picked up.

And Google doesn't refund the leads you miss. The charge lands whether you picked up, sent her to voicemail, or were on a roof in Terwillegar with the phone sitting in the truck.

That price didn't arrive by accident. A year ago the same lead cost $73.62. That's a 45% jump in twelve months — more roofers bidding on the same Edmonton searches, all driving the price of every ring upward. You're paying more for every call at the exact moment your ability to catch them hasn't changed at all.

The research on what happens next isn't kind. A 30-day study by 411 Locals tracked 85 businesses and found 62% of calls went unanswered. Phone Consumer Network research found 85% of callers who reach voicemail never call back. And Harvard Business Review audited 2,241 firms and found companies that made contact within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead.

Put those three together and the picture is ugly: you pay $106.87 for the ring, you miss most rings, and the ones you miss almost never come back. You're not buying leads anymore. You're funding the competitor who answers.

There's a comforting story most contractors tell themselves: "I'll call her back at lunch." She called at 10:15. You called back at 12:40. By then she'd already booked the third roofer — the one who picked up at 10:16. Harvard's finding wasn't about politeness. It was about math: every hour you wait, the odds of qualifying that lead collapse, and after a day they've flatlined.

Run it with your own numbers:

That $534 didn't vanish. It walked into the books of the roofer who picked up — a roofer whose reviews are no better than yours, whose price is no lower, who simply had someone available when the phone rang.

The fix isn't buying more leads. More leads just means more $106.87 donations to your competition. And the answer isn't fewer leads either — cutting ad spend to "save" the $534 just trades the problem: fewer rings, same miss rate, slower weeks. The leads were never the problem. The unanswered rings were.

The fix is catching the ones you already bought — every ring answered and booked in under a minute, whether you're on a roof, at the supplier, or it's 9 PM on a Sunday and the stain is spreading.

That's what we do. Every missed call gets answered right away — nights, weekends, holidays. The homeowner in Mill Woods doesn't care about your systems. She cares that someone picked up.

Stop buying leads for the roofer down the street.