A good enquiry comes in at 10 in the morning. Someone's seen your van or a post in a local group, they like the look of you, and they message to ask if you've got room for a weekly clean. You're up a ladder doing a kitchen at the time, gloves on, hoover going, so you see it that evening and reply then. By then they've booked the cleaner who answered at half past 10.
Notice what happened there. The job was gone before you'd even said a price. Speed won it for the cleaner who answered first.
Most cleaners worry they're charging too much. It's the wrong worry. The keenest enquirers are messaging 3 or 4 cleaners at once, and the first credible reply usually takes the job. The sales research backs this up hard: an audit of more than 2,000 companies found the average first reply took around 42 hours, and nearly a quarter never replied at all. The ones who got back within the hour were about 7 times more likely to win the work. A separate study found that replying in 5 minutes rather than 30 made a lead 21 times more likely to turn into a real customer.
Those are sales figures, not cleaning ones, so don't take the exact numbers to the bank. The direction is the bit that matters, and every cleaner already knows it in their gut: the quick reply wins, and almost everyone is slow.
Here's the hard part, though. The advice "just reply faster" is useless to you, because not being on your phone is literally the job. You can't tap out a quote with marigolds on and a client's bathroom half done. So the trick is to set things up so the reply happens without you having to stop and send it.
Here's how to do that.
Give them a price, not a "I'll get back to you"
An enquirer wants to know two things straight away: can you do it, and what will it cost. The longer either answer takes, the more likely they've booked someone else by the time you've worked it out.
A clear price on the day beats a "let me pop round and have a look" next week, every time. You don't have to come up with it on the spot, but you do need a way for someone to get a real, sensible number fast, without waiting for you to be free.
Put one way to book everywhere you're found
Your enquiries come from all over: a Facebook group, a WhatsApp message, a text from a neighbour, the odd email. When they're scattered across three or four inboxes, replies get lost and you forget which ones you've answered.
Have one simple way for someone to get a price and book a slot, and put it everywhere you turn up. The same link in your group posts, your WhatsApp, your flyer, the side of the van. Then every enquiry lands in the same place and nothing slips through a gap.
Let them book the slot themselves
If booking needs a second conversation to sort ("what days are you free?", "okay I'll take Tuesday"), that's another gap for someone to go cold in. Every back-and-forth is a chance to lose them.
The smoother thing is to let them pick the slot and book it themselves once they've got the price, so the keen ones are booked in before they've had time to message anyone else. You just confirm it when you're back off the round.
Make the first impression do some selling
A scribbled "yeah I can do £15 an hour" doesn't tell a careful client much. A clear price that shows what's included, on something that looks like a proper little business, tells them you're reliable before you've cleaned a thing.
You don't need a fancy website. You need the moment they first hear from you to look like someone who's got their act together, because that's half of why they pick you over the next cleaner.
Put it together this week
You don't need anything fancy to start. Work out your rates once and write down what a typical job costs, so you can give a real number fast. Set up one simple way for someone to get that price and book a slot, and put it everywhere you turn up. Then let the keen ones book themselves in while you get on with the clean.
Do that, and the enquiries stop slipping away into the evening pile. You win the work while your hands are full, and more of the people who message you end up as regulars on the round.