Every lead that reaches you here already did the hard part before you ever heard about it. Someone read a sizing guide, ran their numbers through a calculator, and answered a project questionnaire with their location, their system, and their budget signal — then Grid CEO handed the file to one, two, or three installers. Not eight. Not a spreadsheet resold every ninety days until nobody on it answers the phone anymore.
That’s the whole pitch. What follows is the mechanics behind it: how a lead actually gets made, what it costs against what a shared marketplace charges (and why the higher number is the better deal), what the vetting bar is, and what the $145–495/yr directory tiers buy you if you want standing visibility on top of individual leads.
1–3
Pros per lead
Never a shared blast list.
15–25%
Industry benchmark — exclusive leads
Typical close rate on exclusive leads across the industry, vs. 3–8% shared — not Grid CEO’s own track record.
$145–495
Annual listing
Vetted pool + routing priority.
How a Grid CEO Lead Actually Gets Made
The engine starts with content, not a form: sizing calculators, cost breakdowns, permitting checklists — the pages people land on when they’re seriously specifying an off-grid solar, battery, backup-generator or well/water project, not idly Googling “solar panels.” A finished load calculation or sizing result is most of a project brief already, so by the time someone reaches the questionnaire they’ve mostly screened themselves out of “just curious.”
- Content qualifies the visitor. They arrive through a guide or calculator specific to their trade — solar sizing, battery-bank design, backup-power sizing, well/water source selection.
- The questionnaire captures the project. Location, system type, rough budget signal, timeline, and what’s actually driving the decision (new build, outage, a well that’s gone dry).
- We score it. Location covered by a vetted pro, budget realistic for the ask, timeline near-term — low-signal submissions get filtered before they ever cost you a phone call.
- It routes live. Typically within minutes, to between one and three pros matched on trade and service area — never the eight-to-twelve-way blast a shared marketplace runs.
- It holds, then moves on. An exclusive lead stays with its first-matched pro for a set response window before it’s offered to the next-eligible one, so nobody inherits a lead three other companies already called about.
Why an Exclusive Lead Costs More — and Still Costs Less
This is the part that gets an installer’s math backwards, because it looks wrong on the invoice.
A shared-marketplace lead is cheap on paper — $30–70 is typical — and expensive in practice, because the same file sold to six or eight other companies collapses everyone’s odds down toward single digits: whoever calls first and cheapest usually wins, so most of that $30–70 buys nothing but a fast no. Blended across the industry, the real cost to close one solar or battery job — every dead lead counted — runs $3,000–7,000, however the leads were sourced.
An exclusive Grid CEO lead runs $80–200 in most markets, shared with at most three companies and usually just one. In the US, tight-supply metros price higher on their own — California’s wildfire-driven backup-power anxiety alone has pushed a single exclusive lead to $1,000–1,929, purely on how few installers are chasing how much urgency. In Europe, the same tightening shows up market by market rather than in a published per-lead number yet — Spain and Portugal’s booming off-grid finca market and the post-Iberian-blackout rush to battery-backed homes are producing comparable buyer urgency, and pricing is following it.
| Shared marketplace | Grid CEO exclusive | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per lead | $30–70 | $80–200 (higher in tight metros) |
| Companies who see it | 6–10 | 1–3 |
| Close rate (industry benchmark by lead type, not our data) | 3–8% | 15–25% |
Key number
Do the division most installers skip. A $50 shared lead closing at 5% costs $1,000 per booked job. A $90 blended exclusive lead closing at 18% costs about $500 — half, even though the sticker price is nearly double.
Where Your Listing Actually Shows Up
A directory entry that only lives on one page is worth roughly what a business card in a drawer is worth. Grid CEO’s guide library already links out to the directory from inside the content itself — a post walking a homeowner through the questions to ask an installer, or through county permitting, ends with a line pointed straight at this page: “We check every applicant against this same list before routing a homeowner your way.” As the library grows past fifty guides across solar, battery, backup power and water, that’s fifty places a vetted listing can surface next to the exact decision it’s relevant to — not a static page nobody without your URL ever finds.
What It Takes to Get Listed
- Active business license and liability insurance in every state, province or country you claim to serve — verified before your first lead, not after a complaint.
- A trade credential where one exists — NABCEP-class certification and state electrical/solar licensing in the US; your country’s installer scheme in Europe (Germany’s Elektrofachkraft, France’s QualiPV, Spain’s REBT-authorized installer, and equivalents elsewhere). We check the registration number, not just the claim on the form.
- A track record we can call and verify — brand-new shops get a conversation about it, not an automatic pass.
- No unresolved complaints on your state licensing board or BBB file in the US, or your national trade register in Europe, at the time you apply.
- A real response-time commitment. Routed leads carry a same-day-or-faster contact standard; miss it repeatedly and your routing priority drops, tier or no tier.
- One phone call with a real person on our side before you go live. Automated sign-ups don’t get routed leads.
We re-run the same checklist every year at renewal, and off-cycle if a homeowner reports something. Getting listed once doesn’t buy a permanent pass — the pitch to homeowners depends on everyone in the pool still being checked.
Directory & Lead Pricing
Two separate things sit under that $145–495/yr range: the annual fee that puts you in the vetted, routable pool at all, and the pay-per-lead price you’re billed on top of it each time a matching project routes to you. Tier only changes how early and how exclusively you see it.
| Tier | Annual fee | Directory listing | Lead routing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listed | $145/yr | Public profile: service area, trades, credentials | Standard queue, up to 3 pros per lead |
| Priority | $295/yr | Featured placement + badge | First look, ~15% off standard per-lead price |
| Exclusive Partner | $495/yr | Top placement, one spotlighted per trade/region | First refusal, 24-hr hold, ~25% off standard price |
Billed in USD — roughly €135 / €275 / €460 at current rates; Europe-based partners are billed the EUR equivalent at renewal. Individual leads are always billed separately, pay-per-lead, on top of the annual fee.
How the Exclusive Partner cap works
We sell Exclusive Partner to at most two companies per trade, per state or country region — past that, the tier stops meaning anything, so we stop selling it there. If both seats in your trade and area are filled, you’re offered Priority with a waitlist instead of a tier that quietly isn’t exclusive.
Who We’re Recruiting
Solar installers — grid-tied, hybrid and true off-grid. Battery and storage integrators. Standby-generator installers. Well drillers and water-system installers, where groundwater work is often the more tightly permitted trade of the two, checked against your regional water authority rather than a general contractor board. Full-system integrators who take a build end to end. If you send trucks to a job site rather than sell equipment over a counter, you’re the audience.
Service area works the same in both editions: claim every state you serve in the US, every country or region you serve in Europe. In the US, that claim is the literal filter routing runs on today — homeowner matching is currently open in the 25 states plus Washington, DC where a lead marketplace needs no extra registration or licensing; every other state is queued and switches on as its one legal prerequisite clears, and nothing is billed per-lead there before it does. In Europe, homeowner-side routing opens country by country as our vetting completes there — your claimed areas decide where you’re first in the queue as each country switches on, and nothing is billed per-lead before routing is live in yours. Either side, list where you don’t actually send crews and you’ll just get leads you can’t take.
Do I have to pay the annual fee to receive leads?
Yes. The annual fee is what puts you in the vetted, routable pool at all — it’s a check we run once and then re-run every renewal. Individual leads are billed separately, pay-per-lead, on top of whichever tier you hold.
How exclusive is “exclusive”?
A shared lead is capped at three companies. Win one exclusively — buy it at the exclusive price or take the top bid in its exclusive window — and it’s yours alone, released to nobody else. A lead is never resold beyond the three-buyer shared cap, and once it’s bought exclusively it’s off the board entirely.
What if there’s no lead volume in my area yet?
We’re built out unevenly by design — some states and countries have months of content and questionnaire volume behind them, others are new. Ask for the last 90 days of matching-lead volume in your area on the application call and decide with real numbers, not a pitch.
Can I list more than one state, province or country?
Yes — claim every service area you genuinely send crews to on one application. There’s no per-area surcharge; the flat annual fee covers every area you list within one trade category. A second, unrelated trade — say, well drilling alongside solar — goes through its own vetting.