VanlyMost UK tradespeople know they miss leads. What they don't know is the actual cost.
A plumber in Bristol I spoke to last month runs a one-man operation. He pays Checkatrade roughly £180 a month for leads. He told me, with some pride, that he replies to "most" of them — usually by the end of the day, sometimes the next morning if he's flat out. He thought he was doing fine.
Then we did the maths together. He gets around twenty enquiries a month. He converts about three into jobs. The rest? He assumed they just "weren't serious." The data says something different.
The 60-minute window
Harvard Business Review studied response time across 2,241 US companies and found that contacting a lead within 60 minutes of their enquiry made you seven times more likely to qualify them than if you waited just an hour longer. Wait 24 hours and your chances drop by another order of magnitude.
For UK tradespeople, this is even more brutal. Why? Because the customer who messaged you at 9:14am didn't only message you. They messaged three other tradies on Checkatrade, two on MyBuilder, and probably WhatsApped a mate's recommendation as well. By 10am, one of those people has replied. The job is gone.
You didn't lose because your price was wrong, or because your reviews were worse. You lost because someone else got there first.
What "fast" actually means
Customers don't have a stopwatch. But behavioural research is clear: the perceived gap between "instant" and "soon" is enormous. A reply within 5 minutes feels like the tradesperson is on the ball. A reply within an hour feels acceptable. A reply the next day feels like you don't care.
The reality is that tradies aren't slow because they don't care. They're slow because they're holding a 22mm push-fit while their phone vibrates in a pocket they can't reach without dropping the fitting.
The cost, in numbers
Let's stay with the Bristol plumber. Twenty leads a month. He converts three. Average job value: £350. Monthly revenue from leads: £1,050.
If he could capture and reply to leads within 60 seconds — not 60 minutes — research suggests his conversion would roughly double. So:
- Current: 3 jobs × £350 = £1,050/month
- With fast reply: 6 jobs × £350 = £2,100/month
- Annual difference: £12,600
He's paying Checkatrade £2,160 a year. He's leaving £12,600 a year on the table because of slow replies.
Why the obvious fixes don't work
You can't hire a receptionist for £12,600 a year — at least not full-time, and a part-time one won't cover the hours leads come in (evenings, weekends, lunchtimes when you're driving between jobs).
You can't "just check your phone more" because the moments you're best at the job are also the moments you can't physically pick up.
Auto-reply scripts ("I'll be in touch soon!") tick the seen box but don't qualify or book anything — the customer still gets a lukewarm response that doesn't beat the next tradie's actual reply.
What does work
Three things, in order of effectiveness:
1. Reply with intent, not acknowledgement. "Hi, I can do that — when's good for you to chat?" beats "Got your message, will get back to you." You don't need a long reply. You need to ask one question that moves the conversation forward.
2. Capture the phone number on first contact. Many platforms (Bark, MyBuilder) hide it. Get the customer onto WhatsApp or SMS as fast as possible — that's where qualifying happens.
3. Automate the first reply. This is the bit tradies resist most, because they think AI will sound robotic. Modern AI doesn't — and auto-reply is only one of the things AI actually does for a tradie business in 2026, it's just the one with the most obvious ROI. The customer waiting at 9:14am for a reply doesn't care whether it's you or your assistant typing, as long as it sounds like you and books them in.
The honest version
The platforms know all this. Checkatrade publishes its own data on lead response time being the single biggest predictor of conversion. They're not hiding it. They just can't make you reply faster — that's on you.
Most tradies will read this and think "I should be quicker." Then a job kicks off, the phone goes in the pocket, and three leads die before lunchtime. Not because you're a bad businessperson. Because the system isn't built for someone who's also doing the work.
If you want to fix it without hiring, the answer is software that replies for you. There are a few options. We're building one of them — Vanly — because the founder spent enough time as a subbie to know the problem from the inside. But you don't have to use ours. You just have to fix it.
The £12,600 is sat there.