Replacing low-quality leads: how an honest guarantee works

"Lead quality guaranteed" appears in every second proposal — and is almost never spelled out. Here is our model taken apart: what counts as an irrelevant inquiry, how the criteria are fixed before launch, and where the boundary of an honest replacement runs.

Why pay-per-inquiry breaks motivation

When a contractor is paid for every inquiry, they have no reason to filter traffic: every contact is revenue, and sorting out quality becomes your sales team's problem. The "pay for a qualified inquiry, replace the rejects" model flips the motivation: an irrelevant inquiry becomes the contractor's cost, and filtering traffic becomes profitable for them. This is not a bonus feature — it is a different economics of the work, as we argued in "Lead or qualified buyer".

What counts as an irrelevant inquiry

The criteria are fixed in the contract before launch — not "by feel" afterwards. Our baseline list:

— the contact doesn't exist or doesn't answer after a series of attempts at different times and through different channels;
— the person never left an inquiry and isn't interested in buying;
— the request is outside the segment: a budget several times below entry, a different destination, rental instead of purchase;
— a duplicate of an inquiry already delivered;
— an inquiry from a competitor, an agent or a job seeker instead of a buyer.

Every point is a verifiable fact with a contact history — not a judgement call. Disputed cases are reviewed against recordings and logs.

How the replacement process works

Every inquiry passes scoring before handover — most rejects are filtered at that stage and simply never reach the invoice. If an irrelevant inquiry does get through to the sales team, the client has an agreed window to file for replacement. The claim is checked against the contract criteria; a confirmed reject is replaced with the next qualified inquiry — free of charge and without haggling. Replacement statistics are visible to both sides: a shared thermometer of traffic quality, not a battlefield.

The boundary: what is not a replacement case

Honesty works both ways. These are not replacement cases:

— a buyer who confirmed interest and budget but changed their mind after talking to a manager;
— an inquiry the sales team reached a week later, when the person had already bought elsewhere;
— "not our client" without a specific contract criterion broken;
— a deal that fell through in price or terms negotiations.

The guarantee covers the quality of the inquiry at the door — not the outcome of the sales team's work. That is exactly why it can be unconditional: the boundaries are known in advance and never move after the fact.

Frequently asked questions