Exclusive Lead Generation | Shared Leads vs Exclusive Leads | James Dooley Podcast

In this video, Kasra Dash interviews James Dooley about exclusive lead generation and why most businesses are leaving money on the table by buying shared leads from platforms like Bark, Checkatrade and other third-party lead sellers. James explains the difference between non-exclusive leads (sold to 5+ competitors, driving a race to the bottom on price) and true exclusive leads that only your business receives – and why that instantly boosts close rates, margins and sales team morale. He breaks down how his Rank & Rent model works: building and ranking niche websites for your most profitable services, sending you real-time, exclusive inquiries, and only charging a fee when you actually win and get paid for the job.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

So we're going to be talking about exclusive lead generation for businesses. I'm joined with James, how you doing?

James Dooley:
All good, mate.

Kasra:
The question that everybody wants to know: what is exclusive leads? Because a lot of people might be buying from third-party websites and they might not be getting the best close rate on some of the leads. So what’s exclusive leads, and how can they impact your close rate?

James:
Exclusive leads is where you're getting the leads exclusively for yourself. Obviously you get a much, much higher conversion rate when you've got exclusive leads, because it's only you as a company that’s got that inquiry.

Whereas certain places online in the UK like Yell, Pages, Advertising, Checkatrade, Build a Builder, stuff like that – what they do is they might charge you a fixed fee per lead, but they might sell that same lead to five different companies. So they're getting £250 per lead.

Kasra:
So you're telling me that I'm paying, let's say Checkatrade, £50 an inquiry, and that inquiry is also going through to four of my other competitors as well?

James:
Yeah.

Kasra:
So surely that means that it's first come, first serve. And then also, would that mean that I would need to lower how much I'm quoting out? Let’s say it's for some wall panelling or whatever. Would that mean that I'm being super-competitive because—

James:
Yeah, it's what we call with a lot of business owners “a race to the bottom” on price.

Most of the time it’s the cheapest price. I mean, people do look at best value to be fair, but if you're only one in five, you've only got a 20% chance of winning that job.

Plus you've got to remember that they might also fill out forms on other websites – you could be one in ten.

In certain industries, when you get an exclusive lead that comes through to you – like say you're a locksmith and you ring them back straight away, or you're a mortgage broker and you ring them back straight away – they don't really need to be speaking to somebody else, as long as the perception is that they’re getting some sort of value. They're going to order from you or work with you; they're not even going to speak to the others.

The worst part is, if you're not getting exclusive leads, you’re spending £50 on a lead and you never manage to get hold of them. Or you do, and they say, “Sorry, I've had it sorted” – and this is 15 minutes after you've bought the lead, because the first person who spoke to them has already dealt with the situation and already managed to package up and sell what they wanted.

Certain markets are a bit longer – it’s going out to tender, and they might need three prices anyway. But exclusive leads convert so much better than non-exclusive.

Kasra:
So let's say, for example, I have been buying leads from Bark or Checkatrade or whatever, and maybe I've not had the best results and I want to go down the exclusive route. What would you recommend? Where should I look?

James:
We ourselves do a rank-and-rent model, which absolutely 100% guarantees a return on investment.

Kasra:
What’s a rank-and-rent?

James:
A rank-and-rent is where we will dig deep into your niche, find your most profitable products, and we will rank a website for those terms and rent you out that website.

Kasra:
So let’s say, for example, I was an accountant, and Checkatrade or Bark or wherever I was getting the inquiries from just didn’t work. So I come to you and I want one of these rank-and-rents. What’s the process like?

James:
We dig deep. If you just turned around and said, “I’m an accountant,” I'd say, “What's your USP?”

So what’s your unique selling point?

Because “I’m an accountant in London” is very, very competitive. You’ve then got to start saying: accountants do a lot of different services.

What’s your target demographic?

Is it research and development tax relief?

Is it that you're a tax advisor?

Are you a chartered accountant or just a cheap accountant?

Because actually, if you're not chartered, we might go down the route of saying, do you think you're affordable? And they might be like, “Yeah, we’re £39 a month,” and we might say, “Okay, we'll go down the route of ‘affordable accountants’ or ‘cheap accountants’.”

But if you're a chartered accountant and you don't want to be seen as cheap or affordable, then it’s like, all right – there might be business mentorship as well as what you're doing. You might help with investments, with tax relief, maybe even offshore at times.

We've got to dig deep and understand: where do you make the money? Then we'll go deeper into that – we call it going down a rabbit hole. We’ll build the site on it, you get the inquiries, you only pay us once you start converting those inquiries into profit, and you only pay us a portion of the profit.

So it's risky on our behalf, but for customers it's a million times better than even paying for exclusive leads, and it’s a million and ten times better than buying non-exclusive leads.

A lot of people are buying non-exclusive leads; exclusive leads are a lot better – but even our model means you’ll get exclusive real-time leads, and you’ll only pay on the conversion.

Kasra:
Right, this sounds too good to be true – like, where do I sign up?

So then what's in it for you? Because obviously you've just built me out an exclusive website, and I might not even pay you for, let's say, three months. So what's in it for you?

James:
For us, the reason we went down this model is: initially, we started out where the majority of our inquiries are generated via SEO.

I can't think of anything worse than setting up an SEO agency, because it’s one of the only industries where—if you build a wall, you let the bricklayer build the wall; you don't stand over him asking, “What grade of cement are you using?”

In SEO, they want to know everything you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you're doing it. So probably 70% of the costs are managing the client's expectations and doing reporting, and not actually doing the job.

We moved away from that and decided to go down the route of lead generation. But then we started to realize that lead generation is relatively similar to SEO: you've still got clients, and it feels like you're employed. They're paying you per lead; if that lead’s not good, they're ringing you up within minutes saying, “I don't want to pay £50 for that lead. It says Mickey Mouse,” or, “My competitor just filled in a form and you're trying to charge me £50.”

The truth is, when we were doing lead generation, the only companies that stayed with us were companies that were making a return on investment.

So, as I was saying: SEO agency clients are hard work, lead-gen clients are still hard work. So we tried to just de-risk everything.

We don’t need the big sales team; we don't need lots of calls saying “I don't want to pay for this lead.”

We actually care about the clients. And the positive conversations my sales team now have with customers are always positive, because they’re guaranteed a return on investment.

When it's always positive, the output from my staff and my team is so much better as well, because it’s a happy working environment.

So yes, it's more risky for us and it de-risks it for clients, but the secondary benefits for us just make it worth doing it that way.

Kasra:
Definitely. Now the last question that I have is: surely you're picky with who you work with.

Like, let's say Tom-in-his-van installs lightbulbs. You're probably not working with Tom-in-his-van.

James:
I mean, let's say Tom-in-his-van was Tomslighting.co.uk and he was a big firm – then yes, we could be.

But if it's [e-mail]
, and he's only sending quotes via an email and not sending it on a nice quote template, and his branding is not very good, and he’s not got lots of reviews online – then yeah, I'm not going to work with somebody like that.

Because I could be generating him great inquiries, but because of his branding and his reviews online and his reputation, he might not be converting the leads very well.

So I've got to be very selective with who I work with. Generally speaking, if they've got a good brand, they've got some good reviews, they do a good job and they can convert the leads for the thing they’re asking me to generate – whether it's conservatories or roofing or windows or carpet cleaning, cladding, whatever it is – we can generate leads for it.

If someone searches it in Google, we can be found for those terms. Once we rank the site and generate the leads, it’s up to them to convert them. So yes, we are selective, because we're only as good as they are at converting the jobs.

We’ve got to make sure we're generating the right quality of leads, but then they’ve got to be good at converting those leads.

Kasra:
So then let's take a look at some factors that you look at. There’s some important ones that people watching might not understand.

Let’s say a company has 2.5-star reviews on Google. Why is it important to get higher reviews – say 4.8 or 5 – instead?

James:
Because if I generate you a lead for replacing your roof, and it's a great lead – I've done everything I can my end, I’ve found you a school, a university, a college or just a residential house that wants a new roof – and you replace roofs and you're going to send a quote…

You send it through to them, they’re kind of happy with the quote, let’s say it's £8,000 to replace the roof. And then they get another quote for £8,000 from a competitor of yours.

Naturally, what is that client going to do? They’re going to start doing a bit of research on both.

If one of them’s got 4.8 stars out of 5, and you’ve got 2.5 stars out of 5, who are they going to go with?

They're going to go with the 4.8.

So my client, if they've only got 2.5, has lost the job through no fault of my own. I want to make sure the companies I’m working with stand a good chance of winning the job, whatever they do.

If they don't look good online, I'm not going to work with them, because it affects my bottom line – even though I'm generating them great exclusive leads.

Kasra:
Then what about quote templates? Because you mentioned that as well.

James:
If certain companies—let's say you were a school, and we stick with the example of having a roof replaced.

The school business manager might go out to three different companies. And let’s say they’re all £20,000, because the school is generally a bigger roof.

If your £20,000 quote didn’t look very professional, the school business manager says, “We're not going to use them.”

Let’s say you’ve both got 4.7 stars on Google, or on other platforms like Trustpilot. The school business manager goes to the head teacher and puts both quotes down on the table.

First impressions mean a lot.

When both quote templates are there, and that's £20,000 and that's £20,000, and the school business manager says, “Which one of these do you think I should go with?” – even the wording on a quote template, or the logo, can literally win you that job or lose you that job.

So little fine details like that – we want to be making certain that holistically everything ticks the box:

“These look like a professional company.”

“Yes, they've got good reviews.”

“Yes, the website looks nice.”

It's not all about how your website looks, but if everything else is equal and the quote templates are side by side, and that one looks more professional than that one – and I don't just mean from the logo; it could be the wording, the guarantee, the warranty they offer, what they're going to do – if this one looks like they’re getting more value out of the £20,000 than these…

Or: “We’re going to use a breathable membrane that’s going to give you a 25-year guarantee on this,” compared to “I’m just going to install the membrane,” this is going to convert better.

So from a business standpoint, it’s all about ticking the boxes to make sure you're good enough to convert the leads.

It’s not that the business owners are choosing us as a lead-generation company – no, I’m completely de-risking it for you. You’ve got to make sure you’re good enough to take our leads. They’re exclusive leads, and the exclusivity means we need to make certain the customer is converting.

Kasra:
There have definitely been times where I’ve personally gone out for quotes – for example for a boiler – and one big turn-off is sometimes they just have a Gmail or Yahoo email.

Another big thing is the response time. I’m getting a fan fitted and the company that came back to me within 20 minutes were like, “Yeah, we're going to book you in for Friday,” which is tomorrow.

And then the other company actually came back to me two days after, when they were meant to come today, and I was just like, “You know what, there’s no point. You took too long to reply, I've already booked in with company A.”

So I think those two are big things as well. It might just be me being picky, but—

James:
No, absolutely. For sure.

From the data you've seen as well, companies that have got:

a bespoke quote template,

good reviews,

a website,

a branded email,

good KPIs with their sales team,

and they’re actually getting back to clients quickly and not just, “Oh, it's Friday, we'll do it on Monday” –

All of these things just add up.

Kasra:
Yeah, definitely. From my experience and the data you've shown me, it really does.

James:
Obviously it makes a massive difference. When we were initially speaking about non-exclusive leads, if they're going out to five other companies and those first impressions from the five other companies are that they got in touch faster, the client is going to think, “I think these seem more professional.”

So for those who provide exclusive leads, that helps even more – but we still want to make sure they're ticking the KPIs.

Kasra:
Definitely. So that has been the video. Is there anything else that you want to add?

James:
Yeah. To get in touch, if you are wanting a consistent flow of quality inquiries, go to fatrank.com/contact, fill in the form, give your details of your existing website and the industry that you're looking to have leads generated for.

The team will be back in touch the same day. They'll be asking you a few questions – some of these questions might be awkward, like:

“What’s your budget?”

“What are you currently spending on advertising?”

This is important for us to understand whether we feel we might be able to work with you or not.

If you've only got £100 a month budget, we won’t be able to work with you. We’re going to be putting a lot of investment into these sites; you're going to be getting exclusive leads, but we need to be certain that the industry you're in is a good trending niche or it’s an evergreen product/service that people are always going to want, and that you're good enough to take these leads.

If you are, you get a 100% guaranteed return on investment. So get in touch today and see whether you're the right fit for our rank-and-rent, no-risk supply of inquiries.