Well as I started this I thought it best I came back in. (been working away a few days and the forum on the blackberry is rubbish!)
I certainly wasn't expecting S&G to be here! I welcome them and have read their posts with interest and all your valid replies. It is certainly a can of worms. From my prospective I see two major issues with the way in which S&G has set up their system.
First and obvious is cost. It is astonishing to think that a lead and job could cost £1000 or £20 + 3%? so either way its several hundreds of pounds for a lead. So adding this into the cost of a job can only cost the client in the end if the works goes ahead or the contractor £20 each time it doesn't! But either way S&G gets payment. The PV industry is increasingly more and more competitive with more and more installers achieving MCS every week (and welcome to them as well) so the cost of installation is coming down and down. It is hard to agree adding further costs into the equation is beneficial to anyone. Why are these costs so high? What is S&G reasoning to think a possible £1000 for a lead is value for money?
Second point is regarding authenticity of leads. With the current system, and I accept that S&G state they check each lead, there is a huge element of uncertainty. No one person can guarantee a genuine lead and yet if option two is chosen it will cost you £20 to find out as a minimum, more if you go out on a waste of time survey. Why penalise the installer for a miss-managed lead if it is bogus. This should be down to S&G.
I do belong to a lead generation company. How their system is based works very well for our circumstances. Surprisingly and to much scepticism the majority of leads are genuine with their system, calls are vetted and we receive the FULL client information, Name, Address, Email etc etc, not just a POSTCODE, for US to contact them directly, Talk on the phone, and arrange a survey. If they are bogus we know on the phone before paying for the lead and before committing time and money to a false lead survey. If the lead is false we DON’T pay for it. If it is genuine we do but at a set one off fee. £25 per lead paid on invoice at 30days. Not prior to receiving any information. I consider this to be a fair option and work this into our monthly advertising budget. We choose how many we want at any time each month from none to….well what ever! If we are flat out we opt out for one week, two week or what ever. It’s on our terms 100%. A fair price for a fair lead in an area of our choice.
S&G, like said in earlier posts, seem to me to be creating a chocolate tea pot company! Inventing an unnecessary product of unfair fees for installers to estimate installation cost from poorly gathered information. Bogus leads generated from local installers trying to find out competitors estimates etc. This cannot be stopped regardless of what S&G say and I would invite you all to try it! Email address off google or hotmail and there you go.
So I say to S&G. Justify your costs? Justify your methods? And Justify your system? A fairer system being NO up front fees will encourage your people to justify leads that bit harder and if bogus leads still filter through WAVE the FEE for it. Drop your fee cost, £1000 is just ridiculous. You may well find fairer fees will lead to more revenue!
