Does the first reply win the job? What the evidence actually says

"The first reply usually wins."

We've printed that, more than once. It's in our Checkatrade posts and our roofing one, stated as a fact, with nothing behind it.

So I went looking for what is behind it. Nobody has measured it for UK trades. The numbers everyone quotes come from American companies selling sales software. And what the UK evidence does show is more useful than the slogan.

Where the famous numbers come from

"78% of customers buy from the company that responds first." Trace it back and you arrive at a 2008 white paper from a US firm selling lead-management software. Its own summary says "in some industries". The body pins the figure on someone at another lead company, talking about property buyers and the first estate agent to contact them. There's no sample and no method. These days it's credited to a "Lead Connect survey", which I can find no trace of.

"Reply within five minutes and you're 100 times more likely to win." The real study is from 2007. It used three years of data on six companies, published by a US firm selling sales software. The 100 was the odds of getting someone on the phone at five minutes against thirty. The 21 that travels with it was the odds of "qualifying" them. The report says in terms that it did not address close ratios.

"Harvard found replying within the hour makes you seven times more likely to convert." That's a short magazine piece from 2011. One of its three authors ran the same software company. The seven was the chance of qualifying a lead, which it defined as having a meaningful conversation with a decision maker. The companies were American.

"Calling within a minute lifts conversion by 391%." From the firm behind the 78% white paper, in 2010. It was measured against that firm's average conversion rate, on its own clients' web leads.

"35 to 50% of sales go to whoever responds first." No source at all that I could find. The earliest appearance is an unsourced line in a 2012 list of marketing statistics.

Every one I could trace is about sales staff contacting people who had filled in a web form. None is about a householder choosing a tradesperson. None is British.

They've reached the trade anyway. Checkatrade's own advice to tradespeople says companies that respond in under five minutes are "100 times more likely to convert that lead". The study didn't measure that.

How people actually hire

Citizens Advice published the best UK evidence in July 2026. It surveyed 3,438 people who had used a trader in the previous eighteen months.

• 36% found them through someone they knew.
• 27% had used them before.
• 16% used a recommendation site such as Checkatrade.
• 23% got quotes from several traders.

Add the first two together. Nearly two-thirds of hires came by referral or repeat custom, where there's nobody to race.

It holds on big jobs too. A government evaluation of heat pump grants asked 1,310 owners how many quotes they had got. Forty per cent got one, and 27% got three or more. The report says those who took a single quote tended to be more confident in their installer, usually someone they knew or had been recommended.

Citizens Advice, Which? and TrustMark all tell people to get three quotes. About a quarter do.

Asked what decides it, 500 homeowners in a 2026 poll for an insurer put quality of work first, at 59%. Trustworthiness came next at 51%, then clear pricing at 40%. Speed of reply isn't on the published list.

The nearest thing to support is a 2024 poll of 2,000 homeowners for the Federation of Master Builders and TrustMark. It found 38% of 18 to 29-year-olds would hire the first tradesperson they got a quote from. That was the highest of any age group, and the figure for everyone wasn't published.

Three things keep reply speed in the picture, though.

People read responsiveness as a sign of what you'll be like. Citizens Advice's interviewees judged traders on "responsiveness, tone, punctuality, or overall professionalism", because there isn't much else to go on.

Plenty of people have been left with no reply at all. In a 2023 poll of 2,000 adults, 41% said a tradesperson had gone silent on them. It was commissioned by a company that sells home emergency cover, so hold it loosely. It still suggests the bar isn't being first. It's turning up in the inbox.

Tradespeople believe it themselves. In a 2026 survey of 140 tradespeople for a job-software company, 55% thought they had definitely or probably lost a job because a quote went out too slowly. That's a belief, from a small sample, and it's about quotes rather than first replies. It is also why the slogan sticks.

Where speed does matter: the platforms

This is the part of the slogan that survives, and you can read it in the platforms' own rules.

• Rated People limits each job to three tradespeople. Once three have bought it, it's gone. Speed there decides whether you can quote at all.
• Bark lets up to five respond. It is also the only platform I found that has ever published a number. In 2018 it said the first to respond was 48% more likely to be hired. It has since taken the post down.
• Checkatrade sends a quote request to several members, and to more of them on bigger jobs. A lead that still needs someone after "typically 4 hours" is released more widely.
• MyBuilder lets the customer choose who to shortlist from everyone who expressed interest, "based on your profile, work history and reviews". Its terms count your recent replies as the fourth of five things that decide how high you appear.
• Google's Local Services Ads say a consistently fast response time could improve your ranking, and that missed calls may count against you.
• Facebook gives a Page its "very responsive" badge for answering 90% of messages within 15 minutes, over the last seven days.

So on the platforms, speed buys you a place in the queue and a better position in it. That's worth having, and it's documented.

What it doesn't buy is the job. Take Bark's 48% at face value, and assume one of the responders gets hired. With two in the running, the first to reply wins about 60% of the time. With three it's about 43%, and with all five about 27%. On the only number a platform has published, the first reply loses more often than not once three people are in.

Urgent work is different, probably

I can't give you a figure for this, because nobody has published one.

The reasoning is sound enough. Someone with water coming through a ceiling isn't collecting three quotes. Citizens Advice's interviewees with urgent repairs described taking shortcuts, including going with the first trader available. Someone planning an extension takes their time and reads the reviews.

Checkatrade's design points the same way. It sends complex, expensive jobs to more trades, because homeowners want more quotes before they commit.

So speed probably matters most where the job is small and urgent, and least where it's large and planned. That is a judgement, not a finding.

What a first reply has to do

Less is known here than you'd hope. I found no independent evidence on whether an automatic acknowledgement helps, or on what a useful first reply contains. I can't claim to have looked everywhere.

What there is points one way. Those Citizens Advice interviews put tone next to responsiveness. A reply that shows you read the enquiry probably does more than a quick one that didn't. I can't put a number on that either.

What I'd say instead

Most work isn't a race. Two-thirds of it comes from people who already know you, or know someone who does.

Where it is a race, on the platforms that share one enquiry between several trades, a quick reply improves your odds. Sometimes it decides whether you can quote at all. The best published figure puts the advantage at about half as likely again. That's an edge, not a win.

Replying at all, and sounding like someone who'll turn up, counts for more than replying first.

And nobody has measured any of this for UK trades. That includes us.

What we've changed

We had "the first reply usually wins" in what Checkatrade costs. In whether Checkatrade is worth it we said a business replying within the hour "converts a very different share" than one replying at 9pm. Our roofing post said shared platforms mostly come down to who replied first.

None of that was sourced. All three now say what the evidence supports, and link here.

Where grafter.ly fits

It can't make you first, and it won't claim to.

What it does is narrower. An enquiry emailed to your grafter.ly address becomes a job, with the customer's details pulled out of it. The customer gets an acknowledgement automatically, in your words if you've written your own. You get an email with what they said and how to reach them, and hitting reply goes to the customer.

Two limits worth knowing. Your email waits for the enquiry to be read first, which can take a few minutes. And the acknowledgement isn't sent when an enquiry arrives through a marketplace's relay address, because a reply to that address doesn't reach the customer. On the platforms, which is where speed counts most, the first reply is still yours to send.

After that it's the same as any enquiry. You can ask the customer what you need to know in two taps, or send a guide price before anyone drives anywhere.

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Sources. The famous numbers: the Leads360 white paper "First to Call" (2008), from the Internet Archive's copy of its landing page and the paper itself; the same firm's 2010 paper; the 2007 Lead Response Management report; Harvard Business Review, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads (March 2011); the 2012 list that carries the 35 to 50% figure; a current example of the "Lead Connect" attribution; and Checkatrade's advice on responding to leads. How people hire: Citizens Advice, Built to fail (July 2026) and the full report; the government's evaluation of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme; the advice to get three quotes from Citizens Advice, Which? and TrustMark; Markel's 2026 poll; the FMB and TrustMark poll; HomeServe's 2023 poll; and the 2026 trades survey as reported by HPM and PHAM News. The platforms' own rules: Rated People's three-tradesperson limit, from an archived copy because its live site blocks automated checks; Bark's terms and its 2018 post, also archived; Checkatrade on Request a Quote and the Opportunities Board; MyBuilder's sign-up page and terms, section 6; Google on ad rankings and managing leads; and Meta on the badge. All checked 3 October 2026.

This is a reading of published evidence, not advice about any one platform. Their rules change, and each one's own help pages are the place to check.