Congratulations!

You’ve got a new lead and you’re getting on a discovery call, but are they ready to hire you as an ad manager?

Yes? Congratulations! You’ve got a new lead. You’re jumping on a discovery call.

Now, we need to identify if they are ready to hire you as an ad manager. That’s a very different thing than finding out if they are even ready to run ads. Anybody can just run ads and have a funnel. We want to find out if they’re ready to hire an ad manager because if they’re not, you can both be in for a very stressful time.

We’ll look at five things to determine that. Number one is, do they even have something to sell? If they’re in business, then yes, they will have something to sell. Now, that can vary. Some of the selling may be offline. I worked with a very well- established restaurant franchise with over 80 restaurants across Australia. We were not selling much online.

We were doing brand awareness and audience building so that we were staying front and center of mind in the newsfeed. People would see it and then they would reach out or they’d be going out for dinner and they go, “Let’s go there!” Because we were present in the newsfeed. So there will be businesses that are just off to that audience building and that brand awareness so that the sales can actually happen offline.

But if you’re working with coaches and course creators, then yeah, generally those sales are all happening online. What can happen for a lot of these niches is that they tell you to build a list, which is absolutely true. We want to be building lists because Facebook can do anything to us at any time. So we want to get people off Facebook and into our database.

Now, does this person have something to sell straight away, or are they just committed to list building? Which is, you know, is quite a bit of an outlay to be investing into building your list without having something to sell. They could be down $3,000 a month on their ad spend.

They might be spending a hundred dollars a day, or maybe they’re only spending $30 a day; however, if they’re not making sales straight away, do they have the capacity to run that for two or three months? Do they have money that they do have set aside that they are committing to this? And if they’re planning their launch in three months’ time when their products may be ready, if that’s the case, they also need to be aware that you could launch, but you may not make your money back for the previous three months. So it’s very important for you to know if they have something that they are selling straight away. Because if they’re not, if they are just focused on list building, then they can get a bit stressed out.

They may not last too long. Those costs per leads may be coming in higher than they anticipated. They’re getting half the amount of leads coming in and they just want to give up and can it all. So it could be very stressful for you. If they’ve got something that they can sell straight away to offset that lead generation cost, that is super valuable.

If they do just have that budget and they are just focusing on audience building, that is okay too. But see if they’ve got something to sell straight away so they can recoup that lead generation cost.
Number two is, have they sold it organically? You want to know if is this a validated offer. Has it been selling already without Facebook ads?

And if so, how are they selling it via just word of mouth by groups that they are in? Are they speaking on stages and getting things sold that way? Are they going to networking events and selling it there? How is it being sold? Has it been validated?

If they just come up with this, ‘hey, here’s my new product or offer that is out here to the world, but I haven’t sold it to anyone,’ there’s no validation. You don’t know if it’s going to sell. If it hasn’t sold with warm audiences, so we have no idea how it’s going to sell with cold audiences. And even if it does sell with warm audiences, we still don’t know how it’s going to sell with cold.

But we do know that people do want it at least if it’s not validated, if it hasn’t been sold, or if it is all brand new. There is a lot of testing to do, and they need to be aware of that. They’re going to be up for ad spend as they get that data. And they are also going to be up for ad management services. Are they prepared to invest into that for two to three months to dial everything in?

Number three, what’s the product suite? Do they only have one offer or do they have several that’s really going to be important for you as well as your running ads?
Because if they’ve just got the one offer at $497 and they’re expecting to cover their ad spend, pay you and go and lie on a beach getting those margaritas. Not likely to happen on a $497 product. So they actually need to have these other offers. They may have something before that $497 offer that is offsetting that ad spend like an SLO (as we call them a self-liquidating offer) that could then ascend into that $497 offer, and then maybe ascend into a $5,000 product, which is really where they’re going to make bank.

So what is their product suite? If they are just coming out the gate with one offer, then things again could be tight depending on what that offer is. Even if they do have multiple offers, you will want to just focus on one when you get started so that you can launch that funnel, test it, revise it, optimize it, and get it working.

What can happen is if things don’t start selling, your client can go into a bit of panic mode and go, “This isn’t working; let’s try this.”

And then they’ll try that for a few weeks. “This isn’t working; let’s try this.” And nothing gets the time and attention to get it properly dialed in and optimized. So if they do have additional offers, make sure that it’s agreed upon that you’re focusing on this one for eight weeks to really get it dialed in, test different hooks, and test different messaging.

Number four, do they have a funnel? They may have been selling things organically. It doesn’t mean they’ve got a landing page. Doesn’t mean they’ve got the Thank You page. Doesn’t mean they’ve got the email sequences that are going through.

So make sure you know what assets they have in place and that they have a funnel to sell this product. I know ad managers that have gotten clients on board and had been going through getting sales, but still their clients haven’t been terribly profitable. The ad managers discovered that they don’t even have an email sequence that’s going out after this webinar. So again, that’s really going to impact you and your ad management services and make it look like things aren’t working.

Ads are just one part of it. So you need to make sure that your client has these other pieces all in play so that you, as their ad manager, can do the best job that you can bringing people in and having them convert on the other side.

Number five, can they invest into getting the data? That’s what I was talking about before, that it may take two or three months to get a funnel dialed in. Are they able to invest in not only the ad spend, but also having you on board to get that? If they’re expecting to just get an ad manager on board and start bringing in sales straight away, because they’ve got a new Amex and they’ve got this limit and they need to get it paid off every month, they’re thinking just six sales a month will do that. Then it can be very stressful if you go for the month and no sales come in (which can happen), especially if it is a new product or offer. You may get six sales depending on the price.

There’s so many variables with it, but they need to be able to invest, get the data, make decisions with the data, and keep going. You do not want to be getting clients on board who are not ready for you as an ad manager because that’s just going to cause a revolving door of clients for you. People will come on board, they’ll get stressed after month number two, and they’re already itching to get out.

And you’re in a constant onboarding cycle. It’s not good for you or for your business. It’s not good for your mental health as an ad manager, and it’s not good for your clients as well. So making sure that they are ready to hire an ad manager with those five points is going to save you and your client a lot of stress.

Now, there’s options after this. If they’re not ready for an ad manager, as mentioned in last week’s episode, you could offer them coaching or consulting services to be able to help them get to the place to be ready for an ads manager. You could also be offering them a strategy session if they don’t have funnels and assets in place to be able to get them in order and help get them another step closer to getting an ad manager, which would ideally be you.

I hope you found this useful today. And if you want to learn more about strategies to becoming an elite ad manager and working with premium clients who pay you premium prices, head over to eliteadmanager.com to learn more about the certification program and when we’re running the next intake.