An operator's field guide to every acquisition channel, and the industry nobody talks about.
By Guillaume Heintz, Founder & CEO, Dolead · April 2026 · 18 min read
There is a moment in every company's life when someone finally does the math.
A bathroom remodeling company in Phoenix has been running Google Ads for eight months. The marketing director is proud: eighteen leads last month. The CFO pulls up a spreadsheet. Of those eighteen leads, the sales team reached twelve. Of those twelve, five agreed to an in-home estimate. Three signed a contract. The ad spend was $14,000. The agency fee was $2,500. The cost to acquire each of those three customers: $5,500.
The marketing director calls it a pipeline. The CFO calls it a problem. They are both right, and the distance between those two truths is where most growth strategies quietly bleed out.
I co-founded Dolead in 2009. Since then our team has generated millions of leads across home services, education, energy, and telecom, on three continents, in a dozen languages.
This article covers every meaningful channel for finding leads, then dives into the one most businesses either do not know exists or have been burned by: the lead vendor industry.
Some of what follows will make my competitors uncomfortable. Hadrien Baradel, who runs our American operations, put it well: "Every vendor claims transparency. You are the first one to actually publish the parts that make your own industry look bad." That is exactly the point.
If you sell anything to anyone, what follows is the math.
An operator's field guide to every acquisition channel, and the industry nobody talks about.
By Guillaume Heintz, Founder & CEO, Dolead · April 2026 · 18 min read
There is a moment in every company's life when someone finally does the math.
A bathroom remodeling company in Phoenix has been running Google Ads for eight months. The marketing director is proud: eighteen leads last month. The CFO pulls up a spreadsheet. Of those eighteen leads, the sales team reached twelve. Of those twelve, five agreed to an in-home estimate. Three signed a contract. The ad spend was $14,000. The agency fee was $2,500. The cost to acquire each of those three customers: $5,500.
The marketing director calls it a pipeline. The CFO calls it a problem. They are both right, and the distance between those two truths is where most growth strategies quietly bleed out.
I co-founded Dolead in 2009. Since then our team has generated millions of leads across home services, education, energy, and telecom, on three continents, in a dozen languages.
This article covers every meaningful channel for finding leads, then dives into the one most businesses either do not know exists or have been burned by: the lead vendor industry.
Some of what follows will make my competitors uncomfortable. Hadrien Baradel, who runs our American operations, put it well: "Every vendor claims transparency. You are the first one to actually publish the parts that make your own industry look bad." That is exactly the point.
If you sell anything to anyone, what follows is the math.
Lead vendors generate leads using their own media spend, technology, and landing pages, delivering them into your CRM on a performance basis. You pay for qualified leads, not clicks.
Lead daisy-chaining. The consent problem. The volume trap. Shared leads sold as exclusive. The aging problem. The attribution shell game. The TCPA gray zone.
"The lead generation industry is at an inflection point. Regulation is tightening, and companies that invested in compliance infrastructure early are now winning deals their competitors cannot even bid on. Transparency is becoming a competitive weapon."
Arthur Saint-Pere, Co-Founder, Dolead
Key questions: Where do leads come from? Are they exclusive? What validation happens? Return policy? Real-time delivery?
"The most common failure pattern is a company that signs a twelve-month contract based on a demo, never defines 'good lead' in writing, and then spends six months arguing about quality."
Hadrien Baradel, GM of America, Dolead
"The first thing I calculate is not CPL. It is the total cost to acquire a customer through that vendor, including our internal sales cost per lead handled."
Mehdi Houkari, CFPO, Dolead
"We built the entire pipeline as a single system. The model feeds signals back into the bidding algorithm in near-real-time. That feedback loop is the product."
Vlad Zloteanu, CTO, Dolead
Full-service: Dolead, CIENCE, Belkins, Callbox. Marketplaces: Service Direct, Angi, Thumbtack. B2B Data: ZoomInfo, Apollo.io. Compliance: ActiveProspect.
"The conversation has completely shifted. Now the first question is 'can you show me your consent documentation?' The buyers have gotten smarter."
Sebastian Guevara, VP of Partnerships, Dolead
SEO builds the floor. Paid media fills the gaps. Vendors scale the ceiling. Referrals multiply everything.
"Every new client I onboard, I tell them the same thing: the lead vendor is only half the equation. If your team is not calling leads within five minutes, you are leaving money on the table."
Matt Segien, Head of Sales, North America, Dolead
Disposition every lead. The math does not lie. Do the math.
Audit Your Lead Vendors: dolead.com/lead-partner-scorecard
Guillaume Heintz is the Founder and CEO of Dolead, co-founded in 2009 with Arthur Saint-Pere. Reach him at guillaume@dolead.com or LinkedIn.
Lead vendors generate leads using their own media spend, technology, and landing pages, delivering them into your CRM on a performance basis. You pay for qualified leads, not clicks.
Lead daisy-chaining. The consent problem. The volume trap. Shared leads sold as exclusive. The aging problem. The attribution shell game. The TCPA gray zone.
"The lead generation industry is at an inflection point. Regulation is tightening, and companies that invested in compliance infrastructure early are now winning deals their competitors cannot even bid on. Transparency is becoming a competitive weapon."
Arthur Saint-Pere, Co-Founder, Dolead
Key questions: Where do leads come from? Are they exclusive? What validation happens? Return policy? Real-time delivery?
"The most common failure pattern is a company that signs a twelve-month contract based on a demo, never defines 'good lead' in writing, and then spends six months arguing about quality."
Hadrien Baradel, GM of America, Dolead
"The first thing I calculate is not CPL. It is the total cost to acquire a customer through that vendor, including our internal sales cost per lead handled."
Mehdi Houkari, CFPO, Dolead
"We built the entire pipeline as a single system. The model feeds signals back into the bidding algorithm in near-real-time. That feedback loop is the product."
Vlad Zloteanu, CTO, Dolead