Your competitors are calling the same lead. Yours never will be.
Most solar leads get sold three, four, five times before anyone dials — so the call starts as a price war you didn’t choose, against reps you’ve never met, over a kitchen table you’re not standing in. The Day Company runs one of Illinois’ most thorough independent solar resources, and every lead here is generated under that same brand name, never through an anonymous funnel. When a homeowner decides to talk to a company, that request goes to exactly one partner. Never resold. Never shared. Never recycled. Anyone can apply for partnership — installation companies and individual closers alike. Not everyone qualifies.
What is this? The Day Company is an independent Illinois solar and battery resource serving ComEd and Ameren territory homeowners. We generate homeowner interest under our own brand — through our published guides and our own advertising — qualify each request through our own survey and review process, and deliver it to exactly one partner company — one that has cleared our partner vet first. We are not a list broker: every lead originates on our own properties, carries consent captured under our brand, and is sold once.
The Day Company LLC has been a registered limited liability company operating this brand since March 2023 — a fact you can confirm in the public business registry rather than take our word for.
If you sell solar in Illinois and want lead flow you can actually inspect the source of, this page is for you — and that includes individual closers: the program is the same whether you’re one seat or a whole floor. Applying is open to everyone; approval turns on territory and fit.
Why these numbers matter to a lead buyer, not a homeowner.
You are not deciding whether to go solar. You are deciding whether this market is worth buying into — and these are the four numbers that answer that, translated for a buyer instead of a homeowner.
Put together: deals big enough to justify real lead spend, genuine incentive money to close with, real bill pain driving the calls, and years of runway before any of that changes. That is the business case, not a homeowner’s case — and every figure above is public, dated, and linked, the same standard we hold our consumer pages to. Run it against your own numbers below.
What a block of leads could be worth to you.
Your numbers, not ours — nothing saved, nothing submitted. This does not include what you would pay for the leads; that is sized to protect your margin and set on the intro call, not guessed at here.
Arithmetic on the numbers you enter — not a quote, a guarantee, or a projection of what any lead block will actually produce. Enter your average profit per deal to see a value.
See if your territory’s open →Nobody dreams of knocking sixty doors in a heat advisory. Or a wind chill warning.
Buying exclusive leads isn’t really competing with other lead vendors. It’s competing with what most solar teams are actually living: knocking doors themselves, or paying someone else to.
Illinois doesn’t do mild. Summers bring the kind of heat and humidity that turn an afternoon of door-knocking into a war of attrition against your own body — and the reps who are actually good at this are doing it to fifty or seventy doors a day, not five. Winters do the opposite: wind chill that makes two minutes on a porch feel like a decision you regret. Most people who take a knocking job don’t make it through their first real season of either.
Field-sales surveys consistently put annual door-knocking turnover above 30% — and for a large share of teams, over 50%. That’s not a knock on the people. Nobody sticks around for a job this physically brutal for this little certainty of a paycheck.
And if you’re not knocking yourself, you’re usually paying someone to — on a split. A setter on commission costs you a percentage of every deal they ever bring in, for as long as they’re on your team. Recruit them. Train them. Ride out the ramp-up while they learn to survive rejection all day. Hope they’re still around in month four instead of one of the ones who quit. Then keep paying that split on everything they close, indefinitely.
A lead you buy costs what it costs, once. No recruiting pipeline. No training cycle. No season where your whole business depends on whether your knockers showed up in a heat advisory. No split owed on a deal three years from now — just a homeowner who already wants to talk, delivered straight to whoever’s going to close them.
This is what buying leads actually replaces. Not a cheaper vendor — a season of blisters, a training pipeline, and a split fee that never ends.
You already know what’s wrong with bought leads.
If you’ve bought leads before, none of this will be news. It’s the reason this program exists.
None of this makes shared or aged leads worthless — they work for specific operations, and we say so plainly in our neutral comparison of exclusive, shared, and aged solar leads. What it makes them is a poor fit for a team selling on margin rather than volume.
How a Day Company lead is made.
Four steps, nothing hidden. The difference from everything above is that you can walk the first step yourself, today, on the public site.
A homeowner finds us
Through our published Illinois guides or our own advertising — always under The Day Company brand, never an anonymous funnel or a co-registration page. Whichever path brought them, they know whose name is on it before your call.
They qualify themselves
A multi-step survey covers homeownership, property type, utility, bill range, and where they are in the process — so tire-kickers filter out before anyone’s time is spent.
Our team reviews it
A real person screens each request before it goes anywhere. Renters, heavily shaded roofs, and out-of-territory requests are routed elsewhere — they never become your problem.
You receive it — alone
Delivered to one partner: you. Never resold, never shared, never recycled. Consent was captured on our own branded properties, and the homeowner is expecting the conversation.
Homeowners are told, on every page of the public site, that their information goes to our review team and then to the one company that will conduct their review. Exclusivity isn’t a sales angle here — it’s the promise the leads were generated under, and before any company can be that one company, it clears the vet below.
The four steps above are the summary — the full mechanics of how our Illinois leads are generated covers the content engine, every survey question, the consent language verbatim, and what we deliberately don’t do.
What lands in your CRM, field by field.
No vendor should make you guess at this. Every lead arrives with the same complete record — contact details, the qualification answers that decide whether it is worth a trip, and the provenance to prove where it came from.
Full name, phone number, email address, and property address — the address being the part cheap lead sources most often leave you to chase.
Utility territory (ComEd or Ameren), monthly bill range, ownership status, and roof condition including shading. Enough to size and prioritise before you dial.
Submission timestamp, every answer from our nine-question qualification survey, and the consent record available on request for any lead you ask about.
However your team actually works.
Set up before your first block, and changeable later. Most partners run two — a webhook into the CRM for the record, and an SMS so the closer moves on it immediately.
Timing: leads are delivered once they clear the human review step — minutes during working hours, not an overnight batch. Nothing is held back, aged, or bundled for later. If a lead ever reaches you stale enough that the homeowner does not recall submitting, that is a defect and the replacement terms in the partner agreement cover it.
How this compares to the leads you’ve bought before.
Swipe the table sideways to see both columns →
| The Day Company | Typical shared-lead vendors | |
|---|---|---|
| Who else gets the lead | No one. One buyer per lead — you | Commonly sold to several companies at once |
| Where leads come from | Our own consumer brand and site — publicly inspectable | Undisclosed affiliate networks and purchased lists |
| Territory | Illinois-first — ComEd & Ameren; new states built dedicated for proven partners | National, tuned per state at best |
| What the homeowner saw first | Sourced, dated Illinois answers — rates, Illinois Shines, net metering | A generic form or sweepstakes-style ad |
| Consent | Captured on our own branded properties | Varies by affiliate source — you inherit the risk |
| Who gets to buy | Vetted partners only — five published checks first | Typically anyone who pays — vetting rarely disclosed |
| Bad-contact policy | Replacement credits for invalid leads, defined in writing | Varies; often disputed after the fact |
| Commitment | Prepaid weekly blocks — start with a pilot | Varies; often longer terms |
| Typical close-rate premium | Exclusive leads are commonly reported at roughly 2–3× a shared lead’s close rate across lead-generation industries | The baseline that premium is measured against |
“Typical shared-lead vendors” describes common industry practice as buyers widely report it — not any specific company. If a vendor you use does better than this column, good: hold us to the same standard. The close-rate premium above is a cross-industry pattern reported widely in mortgage, insurance, legal, and home-services lead generation — solar-specific, independently verified studies are scarce, so treat it as directional, not a measured claim about any vendor including us. And the honest limit of our own column: if you need five hundred leads a month across forty states starting Monday, a national volume vendor serves you better than we do. We are deliberately narrow, and narrow has a ceiling. The way to settle it for your own operation is arithmetic, not adjectives — our Illinois lead buyer’s guide walks the cost-per-sale math and the nine questions worth asking any vendor, this one included.
Partnership here is a loop, not a faucet.
Lead vendors sell you a list and hope you come back. This runs the other way: your results improve your flow, your production earns you ground, and the cap protects what you built. Long-term by design — because the economics only work when yours do.
Partners report dispositions — what closed, what stalled, what was junk — and that data feeds straight back into the targeting behind your next block. The longer you’re a partner, the better your leads get. Your feedback is the product improving itself.
When volume expands or a new territory opens — including new-state buildouts — performing partners hear about it before anyone else. Priority is earned with results, not with seniority or a bigger check.
Exclusive flow only stretches so far, so we cap partners by territory and stop selling when it’s spoken for. That isn’t scarcity theater — it’s the arithmetic that keeps “one buyer per lead” true.
Everyone can apply. Not everyone qualifies.
Every lead is a homeowner who trusted our brand with their information, so the bar has two halves — trustworthy first, capable second. Solo closer or fifty-seat floor: same application, same vet, same bar.
Half one: the vet.
We only work with high-quality, trustworthy companies — and “trustworthy” here isn’t a vibe, it’s a checklist. Before any partner buys a single lead:
Solo closers clear the same vet, adapted to the role — and they name the installation company their deals run through, because that company gets the checklist too. The application is where you make the case. The full vetting process states what we look up, where we look it up, and exactly what turns an application down — including what you should be checking on us.
Good — this page is public on purpose. What you should take from it: your request is never posted to a marketplace or sold to a list. It goes to one company, and only after that company has cleared every check above. And your choices stay yours at every step — see our Privacy Policy and Do Not Sell or Share page.
Half two: the capacity bar.
Installation companies, sales organizations, and individual closers — same program, same exclusivity, whatever your size. The vet adapts to your structure; the bar doesn’t.
Speed-to-lead decides outcomes, and it also protects the homeowner’s experience. Teams that work leads the same day get the most from this program.
Partnerships run on consistent prepaid weekly volume — sized to your capacity on the intro call, starting with a pilot.
Lead resellers and brokers, and operations that sit on leads for days. And two hard stops: a territory that’s spoken for stays a no until capacity opens, and a vet that turns up a discipline record or a complaint pattern is a no regardless of budget.
What changes once you clear the bar.
The vet above is real, and it exists for a reason. Here is what is waiting on the other side of it.
Nobody else is calling this homeowner. The conversation starts on fit and design, not a discount fight three other reps are also having on the same kitchen table.
A small pilot block first, no card collected on this page, no annual contract. You judge the quality on your own phones before a single dollar of real volume moves.
ComEd and Ameren rates have both climbed since 2024 — the numbers are above — and homeowners are feeling it on their own bills right now. You are not creating interest from nothing; you are meeting motivation that already exists.
Tell us who you are. We’ll bring the numbers.
Pricing depends on territory and weekly volume — so it’s set on a short intro call, not guessed at on a web page. Anyone can apply — companies and individual closers alike. Every partnership starts with a pilot block, so you judge the quality on your own phones before committing to volume.
Nothing is charged on this page and no card is collected anywhere in this form. You apply, we run the five-point vet on you, we talk, and only then — if both sides want it — does a pilot block get invoiced. Applying creates no obligation on either side. Information you submit here is used to evaluate a potential business relationship and is never sold. Territory capacity is genuinely limited — exclusive lead flow only stretches so far — so if your area is taken, we’ll say so rather than dilute it.
Partner application
Company, territory, and capacity — that’s all we need to start. A real person reads every application.
Form not loading? Email [email protected] with your company name, territory, and weekly capacity — same result.
Partner questions, answered the way we answer everything.
What does "exclusive" actually mean here? +
One buyer per lead. Every lead is generated under our own brand, on our own properties, and delivered to exactly one partner company — never resold, never shared with a second buyer, never recycled into a later batch. That is also the promise the homeowner saw when they submitted their information, so exclusivity here isn't a pricing tier. It's how the leads exist.
Where do the leads come from? +
Our own consumer brand. The Day Company publishes thirty sourced Illinois solar guides — ComEd and Ameren rates, Illinois Shines, net metering, batteries — and runs its own advertising under the same name. Homeowners raise their hand on our site and funnels, not on an affiliate network's form. You can audit the source yourself: it's all public at theday.company.
What areas do you cover? +
Illinois first — ComEd and Ameren service territories, where the entire brand, every guide, and every qualification question was built. We don't run a national campaign and "tune it for Illinois." For established partners, we also build dedicated lead generation in other states — see the out-of-state question just below.
I'm outside Illinois — should I still apply? +
Yes, two ways. Out-of-state teams that want to work Illinois homeowners can absolutely apply — distance isn't the bar, how you work leads is. And for established partners who've proven out, we build dedicated lead generation in other states: the same brand-first, one-buyer model, rebuilt for your market. New-state buildouts are earned, not bought off the shelf — producing partners get them first.
I'm an individual closer, not a company — can I apply? +
Yes — and you're named on this page on purpose. Solo closers buy the same exclusive blocks as installation companies: same leads, same one-buyer rule, same replacement terms, with volume sized to your pipeline on the intro call. What we evaluate is how you work leads — speed, professionalism, follow-through — not your headcount. You'll also name the installation company your deals run through: it clears the same vet, because the homeowner's experience is only as good as whoever shows up on the roof.
What makes an Illinois-educated lead different? +
The homeowner arrives already oriented: they've read sourced answers about their actual utility's rates, what Illinois Shines pays, and how supply-only net metering works. Your first conversation starts closer to a decision — you're confirming and designing, not explaining what a REC is to a skeptic.
How is each lead qualified before I get it? +
Two layers. First, a multi-step survey covering homeownership, property type, utility, bill range, and stage in the process. Second, our team reviews each request before delivery — renters, heavily shaded roofs, and out-of-territory submissions are routed elsewhere and never reach a partner.
How do you vet partners? +
Five checks before anyone buys a single lead. License and registration, verified for the role. Illinois Shines standing — your work runs under an Approved Vendor in good standing, checked against the state's public list and its published disciplinary actions, which is the same check our vendor-verification guide teaches homeowners to run. Reputation history — public reviews and complaint patterns. Signed conduct standards in the partner agreement — disclosure compliance, no pressure tactics, TCPA-clean outreach, no reselling. And the interview. Solo closers clear the same vet adapted to their role, and the installer their deals run through clears it too. Homeowners trust us with their information; partners have to earn the same thing.
What happens if a lead is bad? +
Invalid leads — bad contact information and the like — are covered by replacement credits, defined in writing in the partner agreement before you buy anything. We'd rather replace a bad lead than argue about it; the roster stays small enough that the relationship matters more than any single lead.
Why isn't pricing published on this page? +
Because it genuinely varies — by territory and by weekly volume. Publishing one number would either overcharge some partners or misprice the work. It's set plainly on the intro call, in writing, before any commitment — and every partnership starts with a pilot block so the quality proves itself first.
Am I signing a long-term contract? +
There's no lock-in — prepaid weekly blocks under a straightforward purchase agreement, no annual commitments. But the relationship is built to be long-term: your disposition data keeps tuning your flow, production earns territory priority, and partners stay because the numbers work — not because paper makes them. Start with a pilot, scale when it's earned, pause when you need to.
Do you sell homeowner information to multiple buyers? +
No — and this is the same answer we publish for homeowners. Every page of our consumer site tells them their request goes to our review team and then to the one company that will conduct their review. Selling a lead twice would break the promise the lead was generated under. One request, one partner — and only a partner that has cleared the vet.
How do I get started? +
Apply on this page — it takes about two minutes. We review every application, and if there's a potential fit we book a short intro call to cover territory availability, pricing, and the agreement. From there it's a pilot block, then scaling at whatever pace your close rate justifies.
Everything we’d tell you on the call, in writing first.
You should not have to book a call to learn how this works. These four pages cover the mechanics, the category, and our process — including the parts that are true of every lead vendor, not just us.
A buyer’s guide for installers and closers: what to ask any vendor, how consent and TCPA exposure actually work, and the checks worth running before you send money to anyone.
Read the buyer’s guide → Exclusive vs shared vs aged leadsA neutral comparison of the three lead types — what each actually costs you in contact rate, close rate, and sales-team morale, with the case for each honestly stated.
Compare the lead types → How our Illinois leads are generatedThe full mechanics, start to finish — the content engine, the qualification survey, the review step, and exactly what consent language a homeowner agrees to.
See the whole process → Our partner vetting processThe five checks in detail: what we look up, where we look it up, what disqualifies an applicant, and what we ask you to sign before a single lead moves.
Read the vetting process →Lead flow you can audit. Exclusivity that’s structural.
Walk the consumer site, read what your future leads read, then tell us who you are. Anyone can apply — the seat is earned. If the fit is real, the numbers come next: a pilot block first, quality proven on your phones, and a long-term loop from there — not a lead faucet.