Stop doing free site visits

By DZ, founder of QuoteX · 19 July 2026 · 4 min read

My family has run a cleaning business for over twenty years, and for most of those years Saturday mornings belonged to quote inspections. Drive out. Walk through. Drive back. Write it up. Send it. Wait.

A lot of those quotes never called back. Nobody tracks this properly, but if you run a cleaning business you know the feeling: the polite "thanks, we'll let you know" that you already know means someone's cousin is doing it for cash.

The maths nobody does

Call the round trip plus walkthrough 1.25 hours. Call your working hour $70 — somewhere between "what I charge" and "what I clear." That's roughly $85 of capacity per inspection, spent before you've quoted a cent.

Now the part that stings: that cost applies to every quote, but you only win some of them. Win one in three and each won job carries about $255 of inspection cost from itself and its two dead siblings. On a $400 clean, you gave away more than half the job's value before you started it — and it came out of your weekend.

What the visit was actually for

Strip it back and the inspection answers one question: what condition is this place really in? Size you can ask. Scope you can ask. Condition — the state of the oven, the grout, the carpets — is the thing clients under-describe, sometimes innocently, sometimes not.

Phone cameras answer that question now. One wide shot per room, close-ups of the oven, the shower screen and the carpets, and you know what you're walking into — usually better than a rushed walkthrough, because you can zoom in on the photo of the rangehood as many times as you like.

"But clients lie in photos"

Some do. The answer isn't to drive out — it's two lines of process. First, quote from the photos with a written variation clause: if the condition is materially worse than shown, extra charges are agreed in writing before work starts. Second, compare the property to the photos when you arrive and actually use the clause. The photos become evidence instead of a leap of faith. (Full write-up: the oven problem.)

When you should still visit

Large commercial contracts, strata common areas, anything with recurring revenue attached where the walkthrough is really a sales meeting — go in person. The rule isn't "never visit," it's "never spend an hour of capacity on a maybe when a photo answers the question."

What to do this week

1. Write your photo checklist (one wide per room; close-ups of oven, bathroom, carpets).
2. Add the variation clause to your quotes — copy it from here.
3. Next enquiry, reply: "Can you send photos of each room? I'll have your quote back today." Watch how many say yes when the trade is a same-day price.

Or automate the whole loop — that's why we built QuoteX.