What Per-Lead Pricing Rewards
A shared solar lead is generated once and resold to roughly two to five buyers at the same time, each of them calling, texting, or emailing the same homeowner, per LeadDistro’s comparison of exclusive versus shared solar leads. The vendor gets paid the moment the lead is delivered, regardless of what happens after, and the buyer who wins the sale is decided almost entirely by who reaches the homeowner first: speed decides about 78% of solar sales under that model, according to AgentZap’s solar lead statistics. Nothing about that payment structure gives the vendor a reason to care whether the homeowner is a genuine fit, whether they actually want a consult, or whether anyone ever shows up. The vendor’s incentive is volume of leads sold, full stop.
What Pay-Per-Sit Pricing Rewards Instead
VA Horizon’s solar appointments are exclusive, meaning a homeowner is never sold to more than one buyer, and double-confirmed before they land on your calendar. The billing follows the same logic: a $300 one-time setup, then $249 per appointment, matched to your written criteria, with no-shows never billed and weekly billing backed by receipts. There is no version of that structure where VA Horizon gets paid for handing off a name and walking away. Payment only happens once a real, qualified homeowner actually sits down for the consult.
The Incentive, Not Just the Price, Is the Difference
Two vendors can charge the same rough number per unit and still be selling completely different things, because the payment trigger decides what the vendor is actually working to deliver. A per-lead model is paid for delivery of a contact, so its incentive stops at delivery. A pay-per-sit model is paid for a kept, criteria-matched appointment, so its incentive runs all the way through confirmation and show. That is not a marketing distinction. It is the entire reason a vendor billing on pay-per-sit has a direct financial reason to double-confirm before your rep drives out, and a vendor billing on a raw lead does not.
Sources
The external data in this article 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.