Four leads hit your queue at 3:40 on a Tuesday in August. A no-cool call from a customer with a maintenance agreement. A web form asking about a $14,000 system replacement. An Angi lead for a thermostat swap. A form from a zip code you do not serve.
Your CSR has time to call one right now. Which one?
Without a rule, the answer is whichever came in first, or whichever the CSR likes. That is lead scoring done in someone's head. This post gives you a way to write the rule down: a plain scoring sheet you can use in a spreadsheet today and hand to software later.
What lead scoring is, in one paragraph
You give each lead points for things you already know about it: what the job is, how urgent, where it came from, whether the customer is in your area and how much money is at stake. The total tells you how fast to respond and who should handle it. That is all. The jargon around it (MQLs, predictive models, AI scoring) is mostly for companies with thousands of leads a day. A trades shop with 200 to 2,000 leads a month needs a sheet.
What the research says about it
Not much, and we would rather say so. We did not find a published study that tests a specific scoring model on home services leads. The ideas behind scoring come from two things we can source.
- Speed matters most early. The research on lead response, covered in what the speed-to-lead research says, shows contact odds fall quickly with delay, and that many companies reply slowly or never. That is the reason to spend scarce attention on the right leads first.
- Booking rates vary by when and how a call comes in. ServiceTitan's data shows large shops booking 61% of calls at peak against 21% after 6 p.m. Calls are not equal, so treating them equally is wasteful.
The point values in this post are our starting recommendations. Validate them against your own booked jobs.
The scoring sheet
Score each lead on five questions. Add the points. The maximum is 100.
1. How urgent is the job? (0 to 35 points)
| Situation | Points |
|---|---|
| Emergency: no heat or cooling in extreme weather, active leak, no power, storm damage | 35 |
| System down but not an emergency | 25 |
| Problem getting worse, wants service this week | 15 |
| Planning or comparing, no deadline | 5 |
2. How big is the job? (0 to 25 points)
| Job type | Points |
|---|---|
| System or roof replacement, full repipe, panel upgrade | 25 |
| Major repair, water heater, sump pump, large estimate | 15 |
| Standard repair or diagnostic | 10 |
| Small job: fixture, thermostat, minor repair | 5 |
Adjust the categories to your trade. A $14,000 replacement lead is worth a fast call from your best salesperson.
3. Is the customer a fit? (0 to 20 points)
| Fit | Points |
|---|---|
| Existing customer or maintenance agreement member | 20 |
| In your core service area, new customer | 15 |
| Edge of service area | 5 |
| Outside the area or a service you do not offer | 0 |
4. How did they reach you? (0 to 10 points)
| Source | Points |
|---|---|
| Inbound phone call | 10 |
| Referral | 10 |
| Your own website form | 7 |
| Paid marketplace lead (Angi, Thumbtack) | 5 |
| Unknown source | 2 |
These point values reflect how likely the customer is to be talking to one company versus several. Replace them with your own booked-job rates by source once you have 60 days of data.
5. How complete is the information? (0 to 10 points)
| Detail | Points |
|---|---|
| Valid phone, address and a clear description of the problem | 10 |
| Phone and some detail | 6 |
| Phone only | 3 |
| Email only | 1 |
What the score tells you to do
| Score | Tier | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 75 to 100 | Hot | Live call within 5 minutes, best CSR or salesperson. Alert a manager if no contact in 15 minutes. |
| 50 to 74 | Warm | Call within 15 minutes. Instant text first. Full follow-up cadence. |
| 25 to 49 | Standard | Text and call within the hour. Standard follow-up cadence. |
| 0 to 24 | Low | Automated reply, call next business day if in area. Light touch. |
The tiers connect to the response-time targets in how fast should a contractor respond to a lead and the touch schedule in our follow-up cadence.
A worked example (illustrative)
These numbers are made up, to show how the sheet works.
The four leads from the start of this post:
| Lead | Urgency | Size | Fit | Source | Info | Total | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No-cool call, maintenance agreement member | 35 | 10 | 20 | 10 | 10 | 85 | Hot |
| $14,000 replacement inquiry, web form | 5 | 25 | 15 | 7 | 10 | 62 | Warm |
| Angi thermostat swap | 5 | 5 | 15 | 5 | 6 | 36 | Standard |
| Form from outside service area | 5 | 10 | 0 | 7 | 6 | 28 | Standard, out-of-area rule applies |
The CSR calls the no-cool member now. Within 15 minutes, the replacement inquiry gets a call. The thermostat swap gets a text. The out-of-area form gets an automated reply and a check on whether the area is an actual limit.
One note on the replacement inquiry: it scores warm, not hot, because urgency is low. Plenty of owners would want it called within five minutes anyway, because of the dollar value. If that is your rule, add an override: any lead with a size score of 25 is hot. Rules like that are the reason to keep the sheet in your hands and not buried in a vendor's model.
Rules and overrides to write down
- Emergencies always jump the queue. Any urgency score of 35 gets a live response regardless of total.
- Existing customers never score below warm.
- Out-of-area leads (fit score of 0) drop to the low tier whatever the total. They get a reply, not silence. A short "we do not serve your area, here is who might" is fine.
- Do not score on anything you should not use. Do not use a customer's name, neighborhood or other personal traits as a proxy for how good a lead is. Score the job, the urgency and the fit to your service area. That is both fairer and more accurate.
How to check it works
After 60 days, group leads by tier and look at booked jobs and revenue.
- If the hot tier books far more than the warm tier, the sheet is sorting well.
- If hot, warm and standard book at similar rates, your points are not tracking what matters. Change one question at a time.
- If a high-value lead type keeps landing in the standard tier and booking, raise its points.
Review it quarterly. Pair it with your call outcomes from call booking rate benchmarks and how to measure yours.
Turning the sheet into a system
A sheet works for a small shop with one person watching the queue. Beyond that, the scoring needs to run automatically: read the form, check the address against your service area, check the customer record, assign the tier, route the alert. That is the lead scoring component of our Booked-Jobs Recovery System, connected to your field service software so scores use your real customer and job history. Our AI lead generation and follow-up service describes the wider build. The Angi-specific side is covered in how Angi and Thumbtack leads work.
Frequently asked questions
What is lead scoring for a contractor?
It is a simple point system that rates each incoming lead on urgency, job size, fit, source and information quality, so your team knows which leads get an immediate call and which can wait.
Do I need software for lead scoring?
No. A spreadsheet or a printed sheet works for a small shop. Software helps once volume grows or when you want the score to read your customer records and service area automatically.
How do I qualify roofing leads?
Use the same five questions with roofing categories: storm damage and active leaks score high on urgency, full replacements score high on size, and a free inspection request with no timeline scores lower. Adjust the points to your booked-job history.
Is there proof that lead scoring improves booking?
We did not find a published study of scoring on home services leads. The sheet is a way to apply what the response-time research suggests, to put speed where it matters. Test it against your own data.