What Makes a Lead “Valid”? Our Definition, In Plain English

Ask ten lead companies what a "valid lead" is and you'll get ten answers — most of them written by lawyers, all of them convenient for the company selling the leads. Ours fits in two sentences, and it's the same definition on our pricing page, in our FAQ, and in this post. If a lead doesn't meet it, it doesn't deduct from your deposit.

The definition: two things must be true

1. The person fills out our form and requests your service. Every lead starts as a real request submitted through Gold Star Referrals — a homeowner or property owner who told us what they need, where they are, and how to reach them. Nothing is scraped, purchased from a data broker, or recycled from an old list.

2. We place that person in contact with you. The request gets matched to your services and territory, and the connection is made — their information comes to you so the conversation can start. A name sitting in a spreadsheet isn't a lead; a person placed in contact with your company is.

When both are true, the lead is valid and its price — from $15 Shared or $25 Exclusive, by radius — deducts from your $200 deposit. That is the entire test.

The one case where you never pay

There is exactly one automatic exception, and it's mechanical, not a judgment call: no charge is applied to a lead whose phone number AND email address are both invalid. Both have to be bad. If the phone is wrong but the email works, you have a real way to reach a real person — the lead is valid. If the email bounces but the phone rings, same thing. Only when there's no working way to contact the person at all does the lead cost you nothing. No disputes process, no screenshots, no "submit a claim within 48 hours."

What a valid lead is not

Valid doesn't mean guaranteed work. A valid lead is a real person, with a real request, placed in contact with you — whether they hire you depends on your response time, your price, and your conversation, the same as any referral a past customer sends your way. And a valid lead isn't an exclusive promise unless you chose Exclusive: Shared leads go to you and up to two other companies. The definitions never change based on which option you picked — only the price and the competition do.

Why we keep it this simple

Complicated definitions always bend toward whoever wrote them. A two-part test — real form request, placed in contact — can be checked by both sides in seconds, and the both-contacts-invalid rule removes the one argument that poisons every other lead program. If you're comparing lead sources, ask each of them for their definition in writing before you spend a dollar. Ours is also spelled out on the FAQ page and in the Q&A below.

Questions & Answers

Carli James writes for Gold Star Referrals.