Cost Per Booked Job: The Formula That Actually Ranks Vendors

Why Cost Per Lead Is the Wrong Comparison

Two vendors quote you $50 and $199. The $50 option looks cheaper until you ask what share of those units actually becomes a signed roof. Cost per lead measures what you paid for one item. Cost per booked job measures what you spent to win one piece of work, and it is the only number that tells you anything about return.

The formula is simple: take the price of one unit, divide by your conversion rate from that unit to a closed job, and you get your real acquisition cost.

The Input That Actually Moves the Number

Sticker price is the easy part. Conversion rate is where roofing companies get the math wrong, because "conversion rate" means something different depending on what you bought.

For a shared marketplace lead, conversion rate has to include every lead that never answers the phone, was already sold to a faster competitor, or was never a real prospect. By industry estimates, shared roofing leads close at roughly 8% to 20% once every dead lead in the batch is counted, versus 25% to 35% for exclusive leads.

For a booked appointment, the hardest step, getting a real homeowner to agree to a specific time, has already happened before you paid. That is why appointment vendors that book and confirm slots tend to show a smaller gap between their advertised and real-world conversion rate than shared-lead vendors do.

Worked Example: Three Real 2026 Pricing Models

Here is the formula applied to three real, currently published vendor pricing models, using the industry-estimate close rates sourced below. This is back-of-envelope math built from public price bands, not a guarantee from any vendor.

Minyona and The Lead Giants pricing and no-show policy are from their own published 2026 rate cards. VA Horizon's setup fee is one-time; the per-appointment cost approaches the flat $199 rate as volume increases. Close-rate figures are industry estimates, not vendor guarantees, and your own tracked conversion rate should replace them once you have a month of data.

What a No-Show Policy Does to the Real Number

The formula above assumes every unit you paid for was actually deliverable. That assumption breaks down fast on a vendor with no no-show protection. If 1 in 5 "booked" appointments is actually an empty driveway and you paid for it anyway, your real cost per booked job is roughly 20% higher than the sticker math shows, before you even get to close rate.

That is the entire argument for a free-replacement policy: it keeps the price you see closer to the price you actually pay. Read the no-show and replacement terms before comparing any two appointment vendors on price per unit alone.

A Worksheet You Can Reuse on Any Vendor

1. Write down the all-in price per unit, including setup fees and minimum order requirements, not just the advertised per-lead or per-appointment number.
2. Track your own conversion rate from that unit to a signed job for at least a full month before trusting a vendor's advertised close rate.
3. Divide price per unit by your tracked conversion rate. That is your real cost per booked job for that vendor.
4. Check the no-show and replacement policy separately, and adjust upward for any vendor with no guarantee.
5. Compare the final cost-per-booked-job numbers across vendors, not the sticker prices.

Sources

The external data in this guide draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• GhostRep, roofing lead cost benchmarks
• Minyona, roofing leads pricing
• The Lead Giants, roofing appointments pricing
• RoofLink, roofing industry statistics (close rate benchmark)

FAQ