How to Buy Moving Leads: Shared vs Exclusive, a Buyer's Checklist and the Cost per Booked Move

How to buy moving leads without wasting the budget

To buy moving leads, you open an account with a lead provider, set the area and the move types you want, prepay or set a monthly budget, and receive the contact details of people asking for moving quotes. The real question is not where to buy them. It is how much you can pay for a lead and still make money once you count how many you reach and how many book, and that depends far more on how fast you call than on which provider you pick.

Shared vs exclusive leads

A shared lead is sold to several movers at once, so it's cheaper and the customer gets several calls within minutes. An exclusive lead goes only to you, costs more, and gives you time to make a proper quote. Many providers also sell by move type (local, long distance, commercial) and by move size, and that filter matters as much as the price.

Worked example: cost per booked move

These are assumptions for illustration, not provider prices: 100 leads from each source, a $1,400 average local move. Ask each provider for its real price and test it against these columns.

In this example, the cheap shared lead costs $240.00 per booked move and the expensive exclusive lead costs $291.67, against a $1,400 move. Both can work. What breaks the math is a shared lead you call back an hour later: by then three other movers have quoted, and the booking rate falls toward zero. A lead you pay $12 for and never book costs you $12, plus the time.

Speed is the lever. If calling inside five minutes books 12% of exclusive leads and calling the next morning books 5% (assumptions), the same $3,500 of leads brings 12 moves or 5: a difference of $9,800 in revenue from one month's spend.

Checklist before you buy from any provider

1. How many movers get each lead? Get the number in writing.
2. What counts as a bad lead, and what's the refund policy? Wrong numbers, duplicate requests and moves outside your area should be credited.
3. Can you filter by zip, distance, move size and move date? A studio apartment 90 miles away is not your lead if you run a two-truck local company.
4. How was the lead collected, and can they show the consent record? You're the one calling and texting, so ask how the person agreed to be contacted.
5. Is there a contract minimum? Start with a small test budget on month-to-month terms.
6. How are leads delivered? Instant delivery to your phone or software beats a daily email list.

Track it for one month before you scale

For every lead, log the source, the minutes until your first call, whether you reached them, whether you sent an estimate and whether it booked. After a month, divide each source's spend by its booked moves. Keep the sources under your target cost per move, drop the rest, and move the budget to the cheapest source of all: your own website quote form and referrals from past customers, which you don't share with anyone.

To quote the leads you buy, use the free moving quote calculator and the moving company estimate template; for setting your rates, see how to price moving jobs.

Where Unmanually fits

Unmanually is a 24/7 AI Office Manager for moving companies that you run by voice. When a lead comes in, it calls or texts within a minute, asks the room count, the addresses and the date, quotes from your rates and books the survey or the move. It follows up the ones who didn't decide and tells you which sources booked. You approve before anything goes out. See Unmanually for moving companies.