You paid for the lead. That money is already gone whether you book the job or not. So the only question left is the one most cleaners get wrong: what happens in the first call decides whether you just bought a customer or just bought air. The lead is not the job. The first contact is the job. Here is exactly how to win it.
Speed is the whole game
There is one statistic every cleaner buying leads needs tattooed on the back of their hand. In the landmark MIT and InsideSales study of more than 15,000 leads, the odds of qualifying a lead were 21 times higher when contacted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes (Lead Response Management Study). Not 21 percent higher. Twenty-one times. The buyer's intent is at its absolute peak in the moments right after they hit "send," and it falls off a cliff from there.
The reason speed wins is human, not technical. When someone requests a cleaning quote, they are sitting there, phone in hand, ready to talk. Wait an hour and they have already moved on to their day — or worse, already talked to someone else. The classic Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 companies found the average response time was 42 hours, and nearly a quarter of businesses never responded at all (Harvard Business Review). Forty-two hours. For a lead the buyer expected someone to act on within minutes.
Here is the part that should make you smile, because it is pure opportunity: only about 0.1% of companies actually respond to a lead within five minutes (Revenue.io). The bar is on the floor. Almost nobody is fast. If you simply call back within five minutes, every single time, you are already beating ninety-nine percent of your competition before you have said a word. Speed is not a nice-to-have. It is the cheapest competitive advantage in this entire business.
So set up your phone to win. Turn on notifications for new leads. Keep your ringer on during the day. If you are on a ladder or up to your elbows in a job, send a fast text in the first minute — "Hi, this is Maria from Sparkle Clean, I just got your request and I'd love to help. Can I call you in 20 minutes?" — and you have still planted your flag first. Responding inside the first minute has been shown to lift conversions dramatically (). The first responder usually wins, so be the first responder.
Luciano Rezende · Founder, CleanerFlow
Luciano founded CleanerFlow after years building tools for residential cleaning professionals. He writes about the economics of getting clients, pricing jobs, and running a cleaning business that lasts.
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Speed gets you on the call. The first thirty seconds decide whether you stay on it. People decide fast whether they trust you, and a cleaner is about to be handed a key to their home — trust is everything here. Do not waste those seconds with "um, hi, I saw you wanted, uh, a cleaning?"
Open with three things, in order: your name and company, a direct reference to their exact request, and one easy question. It sounds like this:
> "Hi Sarah, this is Maria from Sparkle Clean Co. I just saw your request for a move-out cleaning on the east side — I do those all the time. Quick question so I can help: is this for the place you're leaving, or the new one?"
Look at what that does. It tells her who you are. It proves you actually read her request instead of blasting a copy-paste script. And it ends with a small, easy question that turns a cold call into a conversation. You are not pitching. You are helping. That posture changes everything, because the customer can hear the difference between a salesperson and a professional who has clearly done this a hundred times.
The script
You do not need to memorize a speech. You need a simple structure you can run every time, in your own voice. Here it is.
1. Open and connect (the 30 seconds above). Name, company, their request, one easy question.
2. Ask, don't pitch. Get the details you need to quote with confidence: How many bedrooms and bathrooms? One-time or recurring? Any pets, and do they shed? How soon do they need it? Every answer is a reason to talk about the outcome, not the price. "Three bathrooms and a dog — got it, that's a deep clean and I'll bring the right products so the place actually smells fresh, not just looks clean."
3. Paint the outcome. People do not buy hours of labor. They buy a spotless home they did not have to clean. "When I'm done, you'll walk in and it'll feel like a new place — every surface, the baseboards, inside the microwave, all of it."
4. Quote with confidence, then go quiet. State your price like it is a fact, because it is, then stop talking. "For a place that size, a deep clean is $220." Do not nervously add "but I can do less if that's too much." Silence is not awkward. Silence is you respecting your own price.
5. Book on the spot — the most important step, covered next.
The three mistakes that kill the call
Mistake 1: Being slow. We have covered it, but it is the number one killer, so it leads the list. A perfect call tomorrow loses to an okay call in five minutes. If you fix only one thing, fix your speed.
Mistake 2: Leading with price. When the first words out of your mouth are a number, you have turned yourself into a commodity, and the only thing left to compete on is being the cheapest. The cheapest cleaner is in a race they will lose. Talk about the outcome first, build a little trust, and the price lands as reasonable instead of as a sticker shock. Never open with a rate.
Mistake 3: Ending with no next step. "Okay, let me know!" is where most jobs go to die. You have done all the work of being fast, friendly, and confident — and then you hand the decision back to a busy person who will forget you exist by dinnertime. Every call must end with a concrete next step, and that next step is a booked time. Which brings us to the one move that turns calls into income.
Book on the spot
Do not leave the call without a date on the calendar. "I'll think about it" usually means "I'll forget about it." So make booking the natural end of the conversation, not an awkward ask.
The technique is simple: offer two specific time slots and let them choose. Never ask "so, do you want to book?" — that is a yes-or-no question and the easy answer is no. Instead ask a "this or that" question: "I can do Thursday morning or Saturday afternoon — which works better for you?" Now they are not deciding whether to hire you. They are deciding when. That small shift wins more jobs than any discount.
The moment they pick a slot, lock it in while you are still on the phone. "Perfect, I've got you down for Thursday at 9 — I'm sending you a text right now to confirm." Then actually send it before you hang up. A confirmation they can see makes the booking real, and a text trail means they can't lose your number. The job is yours.
Why this matters more than the lead price
A lot of cleaners obsess over paying a dollar less per lead and then lose the job in the first thirty seconds of the call. That is backwards. The lead price is fixed the moment you buy; your close rate is the part you control, and the first call is where you control it. Lifting your close rate from 25% to 35% on the very same leads is worth far more than shaving a few dollars off the price — it is the difference between a channel that drains you and one that prints money. For the full math on what a lead is actually worth, read how much to pay for a lead.
This is also exactly why we cap every lead at three buyers. When a lead is shared with five or six other cleaners, even a perfect first call can lose to whoever happened to dial one minute sooner. Fewer competitors on the same lead means your speed and your script actually decide the outcome — which is the whole point of paying for a quality lead in the first place.
And remember: paid leads are an accelerator, not your entire strategy. They buy you demand today while your free channels grow. For the complete picture of where cleaning work comes from, read the pillar guide on how to get cleaning clients.
Win the first call and the lead pays for itself many times over. Lose it, and you paid for nothing. The good news is that almost nobody else is fast, almost nobody else has a script, and almost nobody else books on the spot. Do those three things and the first call stops being a gamble — it becomes the most reliable money you make.
