There is a version of this advice that amounts to cleaning your house before the cleaners get there, and it is nonsense. There is also a real version, which is that fifteen minutes of the right preparation converts directly into a better result, because it moves the crew from tidying to cleaning.
Pick up, do not clean
Clear the floors and the flat surfaces of the things that live on them: laundry, post, toys, papers, the dish rack. A counter with nothing on it gets wiped end to end. A counter with eleven objects on it gets wiped around eleven objects, and the difference is visible for the rest of the week.
You do not need to wipe anything. Putting things away is the entire task.
Say where things go
The most common complaint about any cleaning service is that something was moved and not put back where it belongs. The crew does not know that the blue basket lives in the hall closet. If a room has a rule, write it in the request notes or on a card on the counter, and it becomes part of the job rather than a guess.
The same goes for anything fragile, anything that is not to be touched, and any surface with its own instructions: an antique finish, an unsealed stone counter, a floor that has been treated.
Pets
Say in the request that there is a dog or a cat, how many, and what happens on the day. A crew that knows to expect a dog behind the kitchen door works faster and leaves the door shut. A friendly animal loose in the house while a vacuum runs is a slower visit for everyone and an escape risk at the front door.
Getting in
Decide before the day how the crew gets into the house, and put it in the notes: somebody is home, a code, a lockbox, a neighbor. In Inverness and the Barrington villages a long private drive with a gate at the road is common, and a gate code nobody was given costs an arrival window.
Say where to park, too, if the answer is anything other than the driveway.
What you do not need to do
You do not need to strip the beds unless you want them changed, and if you do, leave the fresh linen on the bed. You do not need to pre-treat anything, move heavy furniture, empty the bins or run the dishwasher. You do not need to be home, and you do not need to follow the crew around.
If there is something you would like done that is not part of a normal visit — inside the oven, inside the refrigerator, the interior windows, the inside of the kitchen cabinets, a load of laundry — add it to the request rather than asking on the day, because each of those takes real time and the visit is scheduled to the work in it.
After the visit
Walk the house while it is still fresh. If something is not right, say so quickly and specifically — which room and what — rather than generally and later. A named problem in one room gets fixed. "It was not great" cannot be.