Everyone tells you to put a booking calendar at the end of your funnel. What if that’s exactly where you’re losing half your leads? For businesses that rely on a sales team to close high-ticket offers, generating the lead is not the end of the process. The handoff is where businesses lose or win the opportunity.
Thomas Mcnaught is back to break down a client case study that flips conventional wisdom. Most of their spend goes to Meta lead forms, the format everyone calls low quality. Yet show rates jumped roughly 20% once setters started calling every lead. Plus, they’re turning six-figure ad spend into seven-figure monthly revenue at roughly a 7X MER.
We discuss the impact of speed to lead on conversion rates, why we let Meta run through the weekend, and the capacity problem that comes with scaling this well. If you fix the human part of your funnel, running winning ads gets easier.
In this episode:
- How Meta lead forms work for high-ticket lead generation
- Choosing between setter phone calls and calendar bookings
- The difference between MQLs and SQLs in a sales-assisted business
- Why the call booking calendar at the end of your funnel can kill show rate
- How speed to lead affects conversion rates
- The best times to schedule Meta and Google ads
- How to manage sales team capacity and double-booked calls
Mentioned in the Episode:
Partner with Tier 11’s marketing experts: http://tiereleven.com/apply
Creative Diversification Playbook: https://perpetualtraffic.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Creative-Diversification-Playbook-Practitioner-Guidance.pdf
Tier 11’s Data Suite: https://www.tiereleven.com/what-we-do/data-suite
Previous Episodes with Thomas Mcnaught:
- https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-804-bad-data-and-10-minute-video-ads-were-killing-this-account-heres-the-fix/
- https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-807-why-your-best-performing-ad-might-be-the-one-getting-zero-conversions/
Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491
Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK
Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1
Connect with Thomas Mcnaught:
- LinkedIn – https://www.thomasmcnaught.com/
Connect with Ralph Burns:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
- Hire Tier 11 – https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
If Your Sales Funnel Has a “Book a Call” Button…This Episode Is for You
00:00:00:03 – 00:00:13:20
Thomas Mcnaught
People say you should always have that call booking calendar at the end of your funnel so someone can automatically do it, but you’re missing the next step. Is people really showing up to these calls? What is your drop-off rate? Is it 50%, 60%? Could be worse than that.
00:00:14:12 – 00:00:39:12
Ralph Burns
If you’re a high-ticket lead generation business, if you’re a sales assisted business, if you are an offline closed business, you basically rely on a salesperson after a lead comes in to close the sale, whether you’re in healthcare, whether you’re in high ticket sales, or whether you’re actually selling online 20, 30, $40,000 pieces of equipment, well, today’s show is all about the right way and the wrong way to do it.
00:00:40:04 – 00:00:45:01
Thomas Mcnaught
We found the actual people showing up to the calls, like jumped up. I think it was like about
00:00:49:10 – 00:01:06:23
Ralph Burns
Hello, and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns Burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11, and very excited to have our Scottish growth strategist extraordinaire back on for not once, twice, three times we have coerced him to come onto the show here.
00:01:07:16 – 00:01:11:09
Ralph Burns
Welcome back, Thomas McNaught, to Perpetual Traffic.
00:01:12:22 – 00:01:19:12
Thomas Mcnaught
Thank you for having me again. Surprised we got to three. Let’s see if we can, let’s see if we can get to five. Five’s the new milestone. The new KPI.
00:01:19:22 – 00:01:24:07
Ralph Burns
Five’s the milestone. Does that make you like a regular guest as soon as you’re on the air five times?
00:01:24:08 – 00:01:29:21
Thomas Mcnaught
Is that- I think so, I think that’s what it is, full-time guest. Full-time, yeah, on the show.
00:01:30:03 – 00:02:02:21
Ralph Burns
Well, I mean, if you keep bringing stories like this to the show, we’re gonna have you on like into perpetuity. Like, that’s why we call it Perpetual Traffic, because once we get a good g- cohost, it goes perpetually. So anyway, well, as I mentioned in the intro, we’re not exactly sure precisely what to call this business, but we look inside Tier 11, we’ve got lots of these types of businesses that it, a lead is generated by some kind of form of paid traffic,
00:02:03:01 – 00:02:23:18
Ralph Burns
Meta, Google, even TikTok, maybe even LinkedIn to a certain degree, and then there’s an intervention in the middle of that for book a scheduled call, or they fill in a lead form, which we’ll talk about today, and then they need to talk with a salesperson or a counselor or somebody, maybe even a consultant.
00:02:24:09 – 00:02:51:09
Ralph Burns
Uh, and in the p- personal injury law space, this is usually the intake supervisor. So there’s some kind of human interaction that happens after that lead, and we can refer to this as a sales assisted business, a high ticket lead generation business, maybe if you’re in the coaching space, or an offline closed business, because we’ve got a lot of clients that actually have very, very high-end products, like tens of thousands of dollars, that need to be closed by the intervention of the salesperson.
00:02:51:20 – 00:03:12:06
Ralph Burns
If that’s your kind of business, then this is your show today, because Thomas Mcnaught has a great initial case study for a client of ours that is doing it so right and doing it so well, and there’s so much I think you can learn if you’re that type of business just from that individual case study.
00:03:12:06 – 00:03:32:19
Ralph Burns
And we’ll talk through it here, and then of course, you can also see this over on perpetualtraffic.com/youtube if you wanna watch the video version of it as well. So take us through what this business is without mentioning too much on the specifics, and we can even talk about some numbers here, which I think will kind of blow people away.
00:03:32:21 – 00:03:43:17
Ralph Burns
But talk about sort of what the evolution has been, why you feel like they’ve had this huge level of success, and like a little bit more about the story behind the story here.
00:03:44:05 – 00:04:00:20
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah. Yep. So like you said, there’s obviously a a few names we could really call this type of business, and there’s many businesses that could fall into it. Um, but essentially, yeah, they are, are a business who provides, boiling this way down, but they provide a service, um, and it’s a high ticket service.
00:04:01:11 – 00:04:17:09
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, the, the, the leads come in from, uh, marketing, which is Facebook and Google, and then they go on a consultation call. Um, yeah, and then they become a customer. So without giving too much about the exact business, um, that’s what they do. Um, they provide a service for people.
00:04:17:11 – 00:04:35:13
Thomas Mcnaught
And yeah, that’s the funnel that we’re gonna be talking about, because it’s doing extremely well at the moment. Um, and yeah, there’s some stuff that they’re doing that is a bit different from many other businesses, and some things that a lot of stuff you would probably hear doesn’t work on things like Meta ads, like your, your, for example, your, your lead forms on Meta.
00:04:35:17 – 00:04:55:01
Thomas Mcnaught
People are saying they don’t work. But once you’ve fixed this second part of the, the overall funnel here, where it comes to like these, um, what we call them like sales assisted businesses, um- Yeah if you deal with this end, then really the, the first half becomes a lot easier. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of what we’re gonna be talking about and run over some of the numbers and stuff that we’re seeing here.
00:04:55:23 – 00:05:11:15
Ralph Burns
Yeah, it’s like it’s a consultative sales service business, which I don’t know if that’s necessarily- the right name for it. But we generate the lead, and then it’s about the salesperson or maybe even a setter and a closer combination.
00:05:11:16 – 00:05:31:15
Ralph Burns
If you’re not familiar with those terms, then you’re probably not in the sales world, or maybe this isn’t, you know, your show. But usually somebody- Yeah who takes the initial call screens to make sure that it’s a sales qualified lead. So we would refer this backwards as like a marketing qualified lead, something that comes in the door, somebody fills in an application, somebody fills in a lead form.
00:05:31:22 – 00:05:54:10
Ralph Burns
They’re a marketing qualified lead. They have, uh, they have issued intent that they potentially want to engage with your company and/or your service. Then the, the setter, which is usually in that first case, in having managed sales teams, this is usually a, a larger number than the closer, who would come in at a later date.
00:05:54:23 – 00:06:10:18
Ralph Burns
Um, those people qualify, the setter qualifies the lead, and then they determine, “Okay, this is a sales qualified lead that then should be paired with a closer who ultimately closes the sale. Now, you’re looking at this in a lot of different ways in the personal injury law space.
00:06:10:20 – 00:06:28:13
Ralph Burns
This is the qualification of whether or not you actually have a good case that has a chance of actually having some kind of settlement. If you’re selling, you know, 30, $40,000 pieces of equipment, this is probably someone who, are they qualified from a financial standpoint?
00:06:28:14 – 00:06:46:12
Ralph Burns
Are they a good potential customer for you? So whether or not the, the setter and the closer is one person, or whether it’s two people, in this case, for this business, it’s actually two separate people. But the point is, is like this type of business is really, really common now, and it comes in a lot of shapes and sizes.
00:06:46:13 – 00:07:05:22
Ralph Burns
And this, this is big in the healthcare industry. This is big sometimes in the e-commerce space. We have a number of clients who sell to incri- like, i-in a wholesaler sort of way. So they’ll have individual buyers, but then they also have buyers that will buy, you know, thousands of pieces of this particular piece of equipment.
00:07:06:00 – 00:07:30:06
Ralph Burns
So very, very high-end sales. And you obviously, you need a salesperson in the middle of that to be able to get them to the point where they actually, you know, pay for the service, y-you know, get on a payment plan, whatever it happens to be. So for, for this one here, this is really selling a coaching program for people who are looking for a particular end state.
00:07:30:22 – 00:07:51:09
Ralph Burns
And- it’s a, a higher end buyer, so there’s a qualification process that happens. But not all leads, not all marketing qualified leads become sales qualified leads, and not all MQLs are all SQLs. So let’s talk about that just to begin with and what this process kind of looks like with this, this individual client.
00:07:53:02 – 00:08:15:08
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah. So exactly like you said, there is two parts to it. So you’ve got your setters and your closers in this case. Um, a lot of people will just have closers, you know, and that’s, that’s the big differentiator here that I’ve seen work so well. Um, so for example, you might have a business. We send them leads through Meta or Google, wherever it is, and then someone will book into a call directly on a booking calendar.
00:08:15:19 – 00:08:33:01
Thomas Mcnaught
And then obviously whenever they book, sometimes it could be seven days in advance or whatever you set. Some people might set it to three days in advance, whatever you set that calendar at. Someone will book in that slot, that time slot, and then, yeah, you will basically either send up a follow-up on that, and then you will basically see if they show up to that call or if they don’t.
00:08:33:15 – 00:08:56:03
Thomas Mcnaught
So that’s the standard way of doing things. Um, and yeah, we usually just run that either lead generation on Meta or even like a form. But the one thing that I just want to point out here is when we talk about lead forms, a lot of people now will say lead forms are lower quality on Meta, and they don’t convert the same, and that’s one of the highlighted things here when you’re looking at this whole process.
00:08:56:06 – 00:09:12:23
Thomas Mcnaught
Now, the reason being is majority of our spend for this client is actually to lead forms, which counteracts what most people say again. And the reason we can get away with this and do this so effectively is because of that sales process after the lead comes in is so effective.
00:09:13:11 – 00:09:32:05
Thomas Mcnaught
So like I said, they’ve got the setters who will call that initial lead as soon as they will come in. So it’s that speed to lead effect, where essentially, um, they will call them within, I think it’s a maximum of an, an hour to get them on the call and then book them and qualify them there and then to then go to the, the next step, which is the closing call.
00:09:33:11 – 00:09:49:07
Thomas Mcnaught
And again, we tested this against the calendar side of things on Meta and Google. So we tested, uh, a funnel that basically someone would fill out their initial form, then they would see the booking form, and they would book in that slot there and then, and then basically, if they showed up, they showed up.
00:09:49:09 – 00:10:15:16
Thomas Mcnaught
If they didn’t, they didn’t, and that would be a drop-off in the funnel. The, the… What the setters actually have done is we found that actual people shown up to the calls, like jumped up. I think it was like about 20%, I want to say, off the top of my head. So a lot more people were shown up on these calls, and I think it’s because they’re getting that human interaction first instead of just using an online form, which, as you know, you can fill in and then just discard whenever you want because there’s no human connection.
00:10:16:05 – 00:10:37:14
Thomas Mcnaught
Maybe there’s even no, no feeling of feeling a bit guilty that you don’t show up, you know? Like when you speak to someone, you’re actually speaking to a real person. And because of that, what we started doing was shifting a lot more budget away from that call booking funnel to actually just lead forms, and then the lead forms have also got logic-based questions on them, so we can disqualify people out on the lead forms as well.
00:10:37:22 – 00:10:54:15
Thomas Mcnaught
So we make sure we’re getting the right people who come through. Um, and then again, once they go through, they’ve got the option to book. So the option is there, but the setters will close them, uh, call them, sorry, if they don’t book and then send them to the closer, um, on that final call.
00:10:55:05 – 00:11:02:03
Thomas Mcnaught
And again, it’s been working so well. Um, so but that’s the, that’s the breakdown of the funnel and what’s happening for this business.
00:11:03:15 – 00:11:31:15
Ralph Burns
So explain this a little bit more. So lead forms, uh, the, the, like you said, this big knock on lead forms on Meta is that they’re lower quality leads. However, if you have a lead form that then has a booked scheduled call and they actually do schedule a call with the closer in this case, those are not leads that the setter is calling, or they’re calling both, which, how, how do you differentiate?
00:11:32:16 – 00:11:50:13
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah, correct. So, um, anyone who’s ran lead form, there, there is a couple of new versions out now where you can actually book directly in the, the lead forms now as well. We’re not running them at the moment just because this is doing so well. It’s like don’t touch what’s working, you know? It’s the old motto. But basically, um, yeah, they, they complete the lead form.
00:11:51:07 – 00:12:11:08
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, and then if you know when you complete the lead form, you’ve got the option at the end to add a link in or a button that basically says you can, you can make it say whatever you want. But the, the common way of doing it for a business like this is like book a call. So then they can click that button, and then it takes them off of Meta to a call booking landing page, and that’s where your calendar is, and then they can book it there.
00:12:12:05 – 00:12:31:19
Thomas Mcnaught
So we’re running two versions. We’re running one that doesn’t have the button on it, and we’re also running one that does have the button on it. And, and that reason, and the reason behind that, sorry, is that we can- Provide the setters with lots of leads, but at the same time run that call book in one, and even if someone doesn’t book the call directly there and then, the setter catches them.
00:12:32:11 – 00:12:48:05
Thomas Mcnaught
So they’ll maybe wait, like, 30 minutes to an hour if they, they see that that lead has come in because of the initial form is filled. So someone fills that out. Again, they’ve got that option to press that button and then book the call. If they don’t, that gets moved to the setter to chase them up through the phone.
00:12:48:20 – 00:13:07:11
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, so you’re basically getting that two chances to reach someone, essentially. If they, if they don’t book, you’ve got the setter calling them and booking them in that way, maybe asking, “Well, was there a reason why you never pressed that button?” Some- sometimes you might even see, like, “Oh, I never even seen the button.” You know, and that could be part of it as well. So the setters is doing a job that you might not even know there was a break in the funnel at that point.
00:13:08:06 – 00:13:26:01
Ralph Burns
We can leave links in the show notes if you’re not exactly sure exactly what a lead form is on Meta, and we’ll just explain a little bit further, ’cause this is a huge thing for us. ‘Cause we always sort of say, you know, lead forms and, and, uh, lead gen ads on Meta typically don’t work. However, in this case- they are working.
00:13:26:15 – 00:13:43:00
Ralph Burns
So if I do not book, I f- submit my information, and it auto-fills a lot of cases. It’s, it’s maybe not the email that I actually use, but it’s the email that’s associated with Meta. But also- Yeah there’s a phone number that’s on there on the lead form. I submit that, so I’ve captured my information.
00:13:43:13 – 00:14:02:22
Ralph Burns
Then there’s a booking, uh, there’s a page immediately after that or sort of an it opens up to a, the ability for me able to click a button to go book. If I fill in the form and I actually do schedule a call with the closer, is the setter still calling me or no?
00:14:04:03 – 00:14:20:22
Thomas Mcnaught
The setter won’t call you in that case- because you’ve booked a call. Yep. Got it. But, um, like I mentioned, we’re finding now that leads are showing up a lot more when the setters call compared to the someone booking on the call, which is why we’re now shifting a lot more budget away from even, like…
00:14:21:07 – 00:14:37:03
Thomas Mcnaught
And it kinda goes against everything. Like, people say you should always have that call booking calendar at the end of your funnel so someone can automatically do it. But you’re missing the next step. Is people really showing up to these calls? What is your drop-off rate? Right. Is it 50%, 60%? Could be worse than that.
00:14:37:19 – 00:14:47:19
Thomas Mcnaught
What we have found is when someone, when the setter is touching that person from the phone call, the conversion rate to show up is way better than someone just booking into a calendar with their own intent.
00:14:48:10 – 00:15:16:04
Ralph Burns
Yeah. That’s why I was asking about that, because- Yeah if I fill in the application, maybe this is something to potentially test, but, you know, obviously working with the business owner on this, but I also book a call. Like, is my show-up rate, even if, uh, on that booked call, booked scheduled call with my closer, if the setter calls just to confirm, will the close rate or the show rate for the closer actually increase?
00:15:17:04 – 00:15:22:18
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah, that’s a good point, actually. That is a really good point. Maybe we’ll take that- All right we’ll take that on our next call. Yeah.
00:15:23:02 – 00:15:38:23
Ralph Burns
I think- Because, I mean, obviously you don’t wanna, you don’t wanna change what’s, what’s working, and it’s obviously working right now. Yeah. But it’s like these guys, I look at… I mean, I ran sales teams for 20 years. I mean, present company excluded. S- salespeople just want the easiest path for a sale, of course.
00:15:39:12 – 00:16:06:08
Ralph Burns
But setters, if you’re actually touching the sale in some way, shape, or form, the, the setter and the closer are both incentivized, I have to assume. Yeah. And I know the business owner here. I know he’s a super sharp guy when it comes to this sorts of stuff. So if the setter can actually increase the chances of the closer having that prospect get on the call for the show rate, then they both should be incentivized if there is a lift.
00:16:06:11 – 00:16:25:15
Ralph Burns
Anyway, that’s sort of next phase maybe. Uh, the point is, is that the intervention there is, like, if there is no booked call, the setter immediately calls. And you’re saying within an hour or how is that usually timed? ‘Cause I know you’ve got all kinds of metrics here to measure- the effectiveness of this little part.
00:16:25:21 – 00:16:41:10
Ralph Burns
It’s a huge part, though. This, this is the crux of everything, because think about you’ve already spent all the money on Meta and on Google to get them interested with all your creative diversification, all the stuff that we do here. But then they finally, this is the zero moment of truth.
00:16:41:11 – 00:17:01:02
Ralph Burns
It’s like they’re hot, they’re a prospect, they wanna talk to somebody. Sometimes they book a call, sometimes they don’t. So if you’re in this business where you’re in consultative sales or you have a salesperson that is a part of your sales cycle, this is the most important step, in my opinion.
00:17:01:11 – 00:17:01:20
Ralph Burns
Right there.
00:17:04:04 – 00:17:06:07
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
00:17:07:04 – 00:17:16:22
Ralph Burns
So i- the other part to this is salespeople and setters and closers only work so many hours, and it’s interesting, you’re, you’re running these ads at very specific times. Talk about that.
00:17:18:09 – 00:17:39:10
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah. Well, w- on, um, Google, we’re running them at specific times. On Meta, we’re just keeping them running, and there’s a couple of reasons behind that as well. Um, so like I mentioned, a lot of people will give the lead forms a bad stick. You know, they’ll say they’re, the, the leads are not high quality, and, and I’ve got to admit, I would have tended to agree with them if I’d never seen the results that we’re currently getting.
00:17:39:22 – 00:17:55:21
Thomas Mcnaught
Um- and I think the big difference is what we’re doing here is you’ll also know the lead forms are always cheaper in terms of actually the lead cost. If you were to do it on a landing page, you’ll usually find maybe, like, two to three times the cost on average, maybe a bit more, depending on the business.
00:17:56:12 – 00:18:23:17
Thomas Mcnaught
Right. If you’re running a lead form to landing page lead. And the difference here is you’re getting the volume at a cheaper cost using the lead forms, but you’re getting the setter to basically chase them up quicker. So that combination is what I think makes it powerful. So on Meta, um, we do find that the, in this case, the setters don’t work at the weekends, but we still send them over the weekend in this case on Meta.
00:18:24:19 – 00:18:41:15
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, nine to, nine to five EST. Um, and then on Monday what happens is they’ve just got this massive bunch of leads to call, and we actually tested trying to, um, trying to, like, time stop it on a Monday to Friday, nine to five, and it wasn’t as effective as just letting Meta do its thing.
00:18:42:06 – 00:18:49:19
Thomas Mcnaught
Interesting. So we didn’t wanna br- we didn’t wanna break it. We wanted to just let the algorithm do its thing and run. Um, there is certain cases where you might- It probably
00:18:49:23 – 00:19:01:23
Ralph Burns
knows, not to interrupt, but, like, it probably- knows Monday through Friday, like, the intent is greater, is my well, actually I wouldn’t… No, actually, keep going. I’m gonna sat, sat- I don’t know what- Yeah.
00:19:02:12 – 00:19:09:02
Thomas Mcnaught
I was, I was thinking the same, but you might find, like, Saturday, Sunday also- Saturday, Sunday you’re catch- catching people when they’re not at work is what I was thinking.
00:19:09:07 – 00:19:23:05
Ralph Burns
I’m like- And they’re thinking about, uh, my change in, in this p- particular case. This is a major life change that they would be considering- and thinking about maybe Saturdays- That’s possible and Sundays. Okay. Got it. We’re sort of reverse engineering this from a psychological standpoint. Anyway, keep going.
00:19:23:08 – 00:19:42:06
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah. They’re getting, they’re getting that, they’re getting that downtime, I guess. Um- so, so yeah, that’s… We were trying to basically put, like, some rules in place to stop the ads running or drop the budget down, and we’re like, “This is just not the same quality that we’re getting.” And we think, um, just letting it run is better, and that’s what we’ve been doing.
00:19:42:07 – 00:19:58:14
Thomas Mcnaught
We’ve been letting it run on Meta. But on Google, we’ve been setting specific times to run things, um, because like we talked about, Google is demand capture, so people will be sear- searching at certain times. Um, and we’ve got them running nine to five EST on Google, excluding weekends.
00:19:58:20 – 00:20:12:23
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, and we just introduced Google as a new channel actually, um, and again, it’s performing really well. We’ve just got some updates before this call, like how well it’s doing in terms of the spend, which is insane to see. Um, so yeah- About a 10X- we’ll be choosing the budget now
00:20:13:00 – 00:20:16:09
Ralph Burns
about a 10X return is, like- you know, it’s sort of… Yeah.
00:20:16:22 – 00:20:37:18
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah, roughly. Yeah, yeah. It’s crazy. In terms of ad spend to revenue, yeah, it’s, it’s really good. And that’s also, um, just so people know the difference, that’s, a lot of that’s non-brand, which is also quite unusual. Because when you talk about Google, a lot of the, the stuff comes from brand search mainly, um, because it’s low-hanging fruit for Google to just capture a person searching for your business name.
00:20:38:22 – 00:20:54:11
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s kind of the setup that we’ve got. So we’ve got Google doing its thing, capturing all the, the specific time slots, and then Meta doing its thing, just keeping it open, letting the algorithm surf what it’s doing and, yeah, get as much leads as possible because those setters are basically crushing it.
00:20:55:04 – 00:20:55:07
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah.
00:20:56:03 – 00:21:12:21
Ralph Burns
So there’s a couple of different elements to this as well. Like, when we first started talking about this, there’s some pretty large changes that actually happened within the business. So the offer, uh, but this is, this has been a client for some time now, and the offer has changed.
00:21:13:09 – 00:21:32:14
Ralph Burns
The sales infrastructure has changed and improved dramatically. There is some fundamental after we get their attention and consideration and ultimately conversion to a lead, there is a lot of things after the fact, a lot of, you know, checks and balances, a lot of metrics, scoreboards, all of that.
00:21:32:15 – 00:21:47:04
Ralph Burns
Like, there is a- a heck of a lot that has happened sort of after the click in the sales process. Can you talk to that a bit and some of those shifts, maybe even starting, like, with the difference in the offer and then sort of continuing from there?
00:21:48:19 – 00:22:13:00
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah, the offer is another massive part of it. Um, I don’t know the exact pricing of the offer before because when we started working with them again, the offer had changed. Um, but it definitely helps with overall conversion rate, and it’s… Like anyone who understands basically the, I guess, the, the funnel process, the higher your offer, basically the more you can spend to acquire that customer in, in a nutshell.
00:22:13:16 – 00:22:32:15
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, so, and with these setters and closers being in place now, which again, I don’t think was in place the last time, um, when the client was with us. It’s gonna be a lot more difficult if you’re just trying to run ads to someone, picking up a call here and there, you know, like maybe not as strict on the calling people back.
00:22:32:16 – 00:23:01:10
Thomas Mcnaught
And during the sales process, I guess, that lower offer, basically your sales, um, cycle not dialed in, you’re just working against yourself. No matter how much you spend on the ads, um, both on Google and Meta, you’re just not gonna get what you need. And with that, um, again, the offer change, it’s off the top of my head, I think it’s maybe about three times the price of what it was before, so they’ve raised the price, and it just makes it so much easier to acquire the customer and, and basically spend more on the ads.
00:23:01:21 – 00:23:22:07
Thomas Mcnaught
It gives us the ability to basically spend more to book a call, um, and, and capture a lead as well. And with that, what we’re finding is, I don’t know how it’s, it’s doing this, but it’s going down every month in terms of the cost per lead. It’s getting better and better and more efficient. The only thing I can think of is, is the data that’s getting back to Meta is liking it and it’s seeing it, because the creative is obviously doing well.
00:23:22:14 – 00:23:41:13
Thomas Mcnaught
We’ve got that diversification in place in there. Um, and literally the golden rule here is because it’s doing so well, we’re really not trying to do too much in terms of, like, changing stuff. We’re introducing the creatives that we spoke about on our last call, with that creative di- diversification and things that are working and not working, using the, the who creates, whole creates, et cetera.
00:23:42:08 – 00:24:03:00
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, and we’re, we’re putting it in when needed rather than just say, “Hey, let’s put in 10 ads and see what, see what happens.” You know? It’s like, well, let’s complement what’s working. Let’s put ads in here and there rather than just forcing stuff into Meta. So yeah, it seems to be going really well, and the offer, like y- like we were talking about there, is a massive part of it, I would say, as well as that sales team being dialed in.
00:24:03:21 – 00:24:23:02
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of different things. The price went up, and you’re right- Yeah it was about a 3X increase, 2 to 3X increase thereabouts. So- more, more profit to play with, so to speak, to acquire more customers, and obviously the lead cost going down.
00:24:23:03 – 00:24:39:06
Ralph Burns
Like when you are selling more expensive stuff and your lead cost is decreasing, that’s always a good thing because the margin that’s in between there is gonna- Drop right to the bottom line, which is very good from, from a business standpoint. And not to mention, these guys are providing a tremendous service.
00:24:40:06 – 00:25:00:00
Ralph Burns
And this is the, something that’s in the market right now. A lot of competi- well, like tons of competition. You know, not only in just sort of the large companies like the Fortune 500 companies that are trying to go after this, or Fortune 1000 companies, but really, like it is fulfilling a need that is in demand right now especially.
00:25:00:11 – 00:25:17:21
Ralph Burns
So there is that whole part to it. So you got, you got a hot, you know, expansive market with a clientele that, you know, they are, uh, they’re in the… I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily in the 1% of, uh, of wage earners, but they’re in the top 5 to 10%.
00:25:17:23 – 00:25:36:05
Ralph Burns
These are people that are not, you know, just they’re the, you know, the rank and file getting paid $15 an hour here in Massachusetts. So like this is, there’s a lot of factors that are converging here, but this is a market that’s in pain, and they have real desires, and I’ve seen a lot of their ads, and at some point maybe we can even show them.
00:25:36:06 – 00:25:54:17
Ralph Burns
But it really speaks to the emotional part of the struggle that they’re experiencing. And- we’ve talked about this with some of our healthcare clients. Like, that’s what we try to do with our messaging extraction and the whole messaging engine, and all the things that you and I have spoken about here on this show.
00:25:55:04 – 00:26:17:06
Ralph Burns
So there is a lot of things that go into this. Good product, good market, good messaging. However, it’s the sales part of it that, in my opinion, is probably the biggest X factor. Because when we’ve spoken about this many times before, ’cause of my sales past experience, is speed to lead is key.
00:26:17:19 – 00:26:44:11
Ralph Burns
When somebody fills in a form for your service, whether or not it is an actual lead or a spam lead, which you do have to deal with sometimes with lead ads to a certain degree, and maybe we can even talk about that. As soon as you s- the longer time you spend to get back to that lead, there is an exponential decrease in their ability and their capability to buy your product.
00:26:45:01 – 00:27:04:14
Ralph Burns
And if you get to them in under a minute, it increases. It’s almost three, it’s almost 400% higher. There’s a 400% higher likelihood of someone buying from you, and then as soon as you get past five minutes, an hour, it just starts to degrade.
00:27:04:18 – 00:27:22:14
Ralph Burns
And I’ll show you a chart of this. We’ll leave a chart for this, uh, in the show notes here to show this to you specifically. So speed to lead and human interaction is a big, big part of this, especially in an AI world right now. Nobody is expecting a call from an actual human. So- Yeah this is sort of bucking the trend.
00:27:22:15 – 00:27:46:11
Ralph Burns
Like, we’re all so used to dealing with chatbots and, you know, I made a call to, I forget where it was the other day. I couldn’t tell if it was a human or an AI chatbot, and by about the second or third minute I realized it was an AI chatbot, and it was really, really good, and they were good. But the point is, is a lot of the things that they’re doing here are right and are counter to way that everyone else is going, and I think that’s one of the big reasons why this thing is working.
00:27:47:23 – 00:28:05:04
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And just a- another part of that as well, like, like you said, Ralph Burns, these are, these are qualified leads. This is not, and it’s not a cheap lead to acquire. These are people who, like you said, have got the high salary. They’re basically in a higher role usually where their, where their, their job is.
00:28:05:11 – 00:28:26:08
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, so that’s, that’s another part of this. And it’s like if you just wanna waste the spend on that and you don’t wanna get that sales process in place, you’re just gonna burn through your, your ad budget very fast and, and then basically try and solve it by looking at the ads, when really the other side of that is getting that process in place and, and basically really dial- dialing it in to, to get the most effect out of your ad spend.
00:28:27:05 – 00:28:59:16
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I actually think, like, there’s a lot of parts to this that can actually improve. ‘Cause you were saying that with some of the setters, I mean, they are taking upwards of maybe even an hour to get back to the, the prospect. And if you can narrow that down, I mean, I know just from personal experience, as soon as you wait an hour plus, there’s a 7X likely- less likelihood of them becoming a customer than if you were within a minute or five minutes or even 10 minutes, and that’s that speed to lead component to it,
00:28:59:17 – 00:29:27:02
Ralph Burns
which could be a whole other next level of scale, and it’s almost like it’s an internal process. However, the way that things are working right now, things are definitely moving in the right direction because of this component right here, which I think is super, super important. You, you marry the right type of messaging with smart lead capture, uh, you know, a filtration process from MQL to SQL, and then you’ve got all the other parts to it.
00:29:27:06 – 00:29:43:09
Ralph Burns
A, a, a hungry market. You’ve got higher AOV, which allows you to be able to reinvest back into ad spend. It’s this sort of flywheel that’s really starting to continue here. It’s gonna be really interesting to see the sort of next stage of growth with these guys as it progresses.
00:29:44:16 – 00:29:55:00
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And like I said, this has been their best month so far. I don’t know if we want to say the exact numbers here, but yeah, it’s, it’s a, a big difference in, in terms of ad spend to revenue.
00:29:56:07 – 00:30:06:09
Ralph Burns
Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, they’re spending six figures plus per month, and they are making well into the seven figures in revenue per month.
00:30:06:12 – 00:30:07:02
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah, 7X.
00:30:07:02 – 00:30:09:05
Ralph Burns
Yeah, um- 667 was basically.
00:30:10:05 – 00:30:10:17
Thomas Mcnaught
664
00:30:10:22 – 00:30:33:05
Ralph Burns
6F. And that is based upon media efficiency ratio. That’s based upon the entirety, like as you look into the Tier 11 data suite. We’re not talking about, like, what Facebook and Google are reporting. Like, this is real numbers in the door. We’re seeing seven figures in revenue based upon a low six figure, you know, per month ad spend, which I’m sure is going to be increasing.
00:30:33:07 – 00:30:52:04
Ralph Burns
And then it’s a matter of capacity, hiring more salespeople Uh, you know- there is a very rigorous process, uh, uh, from the business owner to make sure that all those salespeople are performing it seems like, which is really good. Like, you have to be that way, and this thing is just gonna continue to scale and scale and scale.
00:30:53:16 – 00:30:57:11
Thomas Mcnaught
Yep, 100%. I’m looking forward to see how far we can push it as well.
00:30:57:13 – 00:31:10:09
Ralph Burns
Yeah, so what, what do you think the next steps are here for as we sort of conclude? What’s, what’s your, what’s your outlook? And, uh, maybe we’ll talk about it maybe the next couple of times you, you come back on Perpetual Traffic, which you are gonna come back on Perpetual Traffic now.
00:31:10:10 – 00:31:15:21
Thomas Mcnaught
Now you- Yeah, I mean- three times. You’re just gonna keep going I need to get to five. Need to get to five now. Five.
00:31:16:08 – 00:31:18:15
Ralph Burns
The, the magic, the magic number. Yeah.
00:31:19:10 – 00:31:35:06
Thomas Mcnaught
Um, the next step, so it’s interesting you talked about that there, about capacity. That’s a- that’s actually the current issue that we’re running into now, where we are providing that much leads and that much booked calls that they need to increase the capacity. Um, and that’s for a couple of reasons. It’s not just because of the volume as well.
00:31:36:03 – 00:31:56:15
Thomas Mcnaught
Again, we talked about the business owner. Very, very, very sharp guy. Um, so basically cutting out anyone who’s potentially not performing, dropping down the budget to obviously align with that in terms of booked calls. Because we were finding, like, people were getting double-booked with the amount of leads and calls that we were pushing in, so we had to pull the budget back, um, slightly on the Meta side.
00:31:57:06 – 00:32:13:13
Thomas Mcnaught
But on the Google side, what we’re looking to do is start pushing the budget up on there, because like I mentioned, the non-brand stuff is, is doing well, and we’ve only just started testing this for about the last month or so. Um, so start pushing that up, um, so that we can see how well that continues to grow the business. So that’s the next steps.
00:32:14:03 – 00:32:16:10
Thomas Mcnaught
Yeah, and we’ll see how, we’ll see how it goes over the next few months.
00:32:17:09 – 00:32:32:23
Ralph Burns
Awesome. Awesome. Well, uh, definitely we’ll have some follow-up here. So if you are a… I’m just gonna rattle off some of the names that we refer to these types of businesses. An appointment-based services business, a consult-led business, one of our favorites, high-ticket lead generation business.
00:32:34:02 – 00:32:57:07
Ralph Burns
The one that we really like is a sales-assisted business, and it doesn’t matter- Yeah what it is. Like, there’s a… I th- I’m thinking of, like, a dozen or so of our clients right now that are in this niche that we’re just doing so well with, but there are all these little things that you can do to get to the next step, and all these tiny little incremental tests, incremental improvements lead to big results.
00:32:57:23 – 00:33:21:18
Ralph Burns
And we’re talking a 7X return on a multi-six-figure ad spend when it comes to media efficiency ratio. So the proof is right there. So amazing job. Look forward to having you come back and give us an update on this. And of course, uh, all the, uh, things that we mentioned here on today’s show, I made a couple of references to a few different, uh, pieces of information that you should definitely check out.
00:33:22:11 – 00:33:43:21
Ralph Burns
Speed to lead is one of them. We’ll show you the graph of that, and then also some of the resources that we mentioned on the show will be over at perpetualtraffic.com. And of course, if you wanna watch this over on YouTube, subscribe to our channel at, uh, perpetualtraffic.com/youtube. So Thomas Mcnaught, thank you for coming on for the third time, on his way to five times.
00:33:44:08 – 00:33:48:08
Thomas Mcnaught
Thanks for coming back on Perpetual Traffic. Thank you. Appreciate it for having me on.
00:33:49:05 – 00:34:15:15
Ralph Burns
All right, everybody. Uh, like I said, all the show notes over at perpetualtraffic.com. Super appreciate you listening here today. And of course, wherever you listen to podcasts or watch podcasts, leave us a rating and review. Helps us get out to a wider audience to teach people how to do this stuff the right way through metrics that matter and growth that scales, and we are scaling this business, that’s for damn sure.
00:34:16:03 – 00:34:20:22
Ralph Burns
So stay tuned for future episodes. Till next show, see ya.
