The money you pay an ad platform such as Meta or YouTube to show your ads. It does not include the cost of the people who make the ads or run the account.
Example: $300 a day for 30 days is $9,000 of ad spend.
These are the 90 words coaches and experts use to buy ads, run funnels and sell on calls, from ROAS and CPM to show rate, close rate and cash collected.
Brecken Troike's webinar returned 36.96x on ad spend: $326,552 on $8,836. Results are not typical.
By Anshjeet Singh, founder of Cashflow Coaches. Updated 24 October 2026.
The money you pay an ad platform such as Meta or YouTube to show your ads. It does not include the cost of the people who make the ads or run the account.
Example: $300 a day for 30 days is $9,000 of ad spend.
A funnel where people answer a few questions before they can book a call. The answers screen out people who can't pay or don't fit, so your closers talk to buyers.
About three typed questions is the sweet spot.
A setter talks to new leads by phone, text or DM, checks that they fit, and books the good ones onto a closer's calendar. Setters fill the calendar; closers sell.
Setter pay is often $25 to $50 per qualified call plus 2% to 5% of upfront cash, with no salary.
Moving a buyer from a smaller offer to a bigger one, such as from a $47 course to a $5,000 program. A planned ascension path raises what each buyer is worth over time.
Example: 200 buyers of a $47 course, and 3% move up to a $5,000 program: $30,000 from people you already paid to reach. One operator reported low-ticket buyers taking 6 to 9 months to move up.
Working out which ad, email or post gets the credit for a lead or a sale. Ad platforms count in their own way, so check sales against your CRM and your bank.
Check: sales the ads dashboard claims ÷ sales in your CRM. If ads claim 14 and the CRM shows 9, judge ROAS on 9.
The average amount a buyer pays per sale. It tells you how much each new client is worth on day one.
Formula: revenue ÷ number of sales. Example: $54,000 from 9 sales is a $6,000 AOV.
The share of leads, viewers or attendees who book a sales call. It shows whether your funnel turns interest into calls.
Formula: booked calls ÷ leads × 100. Example: 60 calls from 750 leads is an 8% booking rate. Aim for 30% or more of live attendees booking a call.
The return on ad spend at which ads pay for themselves and nothing more. Below it you lose money; above it you make money.
Formula: 1 ÷ profit margin. Example: if you keep 50% of each sale after delivery costs, you break even at 2x.
Any funnel whose goal is a booked sales call rather than a checkout. Webinar, VSL and application funnels are all call funnels.
Formula: booked calls × show rate × close rate × cash per sale = cash. Example: 60 × 60% × 25% × $4,500 = $40,500.
Money that has landed in your account in a period, not money promised. It is the most honest sales number a team can report.
Example: a client signs a $10,000 deal and pays $4,000 today. Cash collected today is $4,000; the contract value, the full amount agreed, is $10,000. The one pay change that reliably works: pay reps on cash collected, not signed deals.
The share of paying members or clients who cancel in a period. High churn means you have to keep replacing buyers just to stand still.
Formula: cancellations ÷ members at the start of the month × 100. Paid communities keep about 80% of members a month on average. The best keep 90% or more.
The share of people who saw your ad and clicked it. A low CTR usually means the hook or the offer is not landing.
Formula: clicks ÷ impressions × 100. Cold paid traffic usually gets a link CTR near 2%.
The work of turning strangers into paying clients: getting attention, capturing leads, booking calls and closing sales. For coaches and experts it usually means ads, a funnel and a sales team.
Formula: ad cost per client = cost per booked call ÷ (show rate × close rate). Example: $167 ÷ (60% × 25%) = $1,113.
The total you spend to win one new client: ads, setter and closer pay, and tools, divided by new clients. It is the number that tells you whether you can afford to grow.
Formula: total acquisition cost ÷ new clients. Example: $10,000 of ads plus $3,000 of commission ÷ 9 clients = $1,444. One operator selling $10,000 to $15,000 programs reports about $2,000 to win each client.
The connected parts that win clients every week without you doing it all by hand: offer, ads, funnel, follow-up, sales team and tracking. If one part breaks, the whole system slows.
Test: you can predict next month. If $10,000 of ads turns into about 60 booked calls and 9 clients month after month, you have a system.
The share of sales calls that turn into a sale. Count only calls that actually happened, not calls booked.
Formula: sales ÷ calls held × 100. Example: 9 sales from 36 calls is 25%. On one-call closes, 20% to 25% is usual and 30% or more is above average.
The salesperson who runs the sales call, answers doubts and asks for the money. In high ticket offers closers are usually paid commission on cash collected.
A $10,000 price at 10% commission, with 80% collected, pays a closer about $800 a sale.
People who have never heard of you, reached through paid ads. They need more proof and teaching before they book a call. Warm traffic is the opposite: people who already follow you, opted in before or watched your videos.
Our example: one client, Blake Mathews, went from $0 to $1,230,101 in 60 days on cold traffic webinars. Results are not typical.
Pay tied to results, usually a percentage of each sale. Setters and closers on high ticket teams are mostly paid this way.
Example: a closer on 10% of cash collected earns $600 on a $6,000 sale paid in full.
The page people land on right after they book a call. It confirms the time and often holds short videos that answer doubts, so more people show up ready to buy.
In one reported case, adding one short video to the confirmation page raised show rate by 19%.
A way to send lead and sale events to Meta straight from your server or CRM instead of only from the browser pixel. It fills gaps left by ad blockers and privacy settings, so the ad platform learns from more real results.
One operator reported cost per lead falling 40% the next day after sending a qualified-lead event only for applicants who fit.
Ad spend divided by the number of sales (or another action you choose). Unlike CAC, it usually counts ad spend only.
Formula: ad spend ÷ sales. Example: $10,000 ÷ 9 sales = $1,111.
Ad spend divided by the number of sales calls booked. For a high ticket offer sold on the phone, it is the ad number that matters most.
Formula: ad spend ÷ booked calls. Plan on $100 to $300 per booked call, and $500 to $1,000 for long sales cycles or very big tickets. Our example: one B2B client booked calls at $66 each on a $15K offer. Results are not typical.
What you pay, on average, each time someone clicks your ad. It moves with your CPM and with how many people click.
Formula: ad spend ÷ clicks. Example: $10,000 ÷ 2,500 clicks = $4.
Ad spend divided by the number of people who opted in. On a webinar it is often called cost per registrant.
Formula: ad spend ÷ leads. On cold live webinars, $10 to $15 per registrant is great and $15 to $20 is average.
What you pay for your ad to be shown 1,000 times. It is the price of attention before anyone clicks.
Formula: ad spend ÷ impressions × 1,000. Cold paid traffic for high ticket funnels usually runs CPMs of $30 to $80.
The ad itself: the video or image plus the words. Creative does most of the targeting on Meta today, so you need a steady flow of new ads.
9 or fewer of every 100 high ticket ads tend to work. When a winner gets tired and costs rise, that is creative fatigue.
Customer relationship management software: one place for every lead, call, note and sale. GoHighLevel and HubSpot are two common ones.
Five fields to track: source, date booked, call held (yes or no), outcome and cash collected. With those five you can work out every rate on this page.
Leads who opted in or booked before and then went quiet. Reactivating them means reaching out with a new reason to talk, which costs far less than new ads.
Example: 2,000 old leads, 3% reply to a reactivation text and a third of those book: 20 calls with no new ad spend.
A service where the provider builds and runs the work for you, instead of teaching you to do it. You give access and approvals; they ship.
A done-for-you retainer is often about 15% to 20% of the setup fee, such as $2,000 a month after a $10,000 build. Compare with DWY.
A setter who works inside Instagram or other direct messages, starting conversations with followers and booking the ones who fit onto calls.
About 100 conversations usually give about 4 booked calls a day, a 3% to 4% booking rate.
A service where the provider coaches you and builds alongside you, but you do a good part of the work. It costs less than DFY and takes more of your time.
Done-with-you programs often run a one-to-one call every two weeks over 8 to 16 weeks.
An end of day report each setter and closer fills in before logging off. It lists the day's numbers so a manager can spot problems the same day.
Typical fields: conversations, calls booked, calls held, no-shows, sales, cash collected and one note on what blocked a sale.
A recorded webinar that plays on a schedule or on demand, so it can run every day without you going live. It trades some sales for a lot of saved time.
Automating a live webinar costs about one point of ROAS, such as 4x falling to 3x.
An all-in-one CRM and marketing platform that holds funnels, calendars, email, SMS and sales pipelines in one account. Many coaching and agency teams run their whole funnel on it.
Set up first: one pipeline with the stages booked, held, no-show, won and lost. Show rate is then held ÷ booked, and close rate is won ÷ held.
An offer built so the value is so clear that saying no feels silly. You raise the dream outcome and the odds it works, and cut the time and effort it takes.
Value check: (dream outcome × odds it works) ÷ (time to result × effort). Raise the top, cut the bottom.
A program or service with a high price, often $3,000 to $25,000 or more, usually sold over a call. Coaching, consulting and done-for-you services are common examples.
High ticket usually starts at $5,000.
Selling a high-priced product or service, usually on a one-to-one sales call instead of a checkout page. Fewer sales, bigger checks, and a team of setters and closers behind it.
Work it back from the goal: at $10,000 with 70% collected, about $7,000 a client, $200,000 a month needs about 20 clients, roughly one a day.
A clear picture of the client you most want: who they are, what they earn, what they want and what stops them. Ads, funnels and calls all get better when this is sharp.
Test: rank your best 10 clients by cash paid and results. The traits most of them share are your ICP. Write your ads and form questions for those traits.
A product that sells know-how: a course, a coaching program, a community or a paid workshop. A business built on them is often called an info business.
For info products, a refund rate above 5% is the number to fix before scaling.
A page built for one action, such as opting in or booking a call. It drops the menu and side links so the visitor has one clear next step.
Formula: actions ÷ visitors × 100. About half of qualified applicants never book when the application and calendar sit on separate pages, against 16% when they are on one.
Getting people to raise their hand and share their contact details so you can follow up. Ads, content, referrals and outreach are all lead generation.
Formula: cost per lead = spend ÷ leads. Example: $10,000 for 750 leads is $13.33 a lead.
A free item people get in exchange for their email or phone number, such as a guide, checklist, training or tool. It starts the relationship before the sales call.
One operator reported 10% to 20% of viewers downloading the lead magnet, even on videos with only about 100 views.
Staying in touch with leads who are not ready yet, with useful emails, texts and content, until they are.
About 1 in 3 webinar buyers watched more than one webinar before buying.
The period after you launch or change a Meta ad set while the system learns who to show it to. Results swing more until it exits.
An ad set needs about 50 conversion events a week to leave learning.
A cheap product, often $7 to $97, sold straight from a page with no call. It turns strangers into buyers and can pay back some of your ad cost.
One operator reported a low-ticket funnel at 0.4x ROAS at launch that showed about 8x a year later, as buyers moved up. See also tripwire and self-liquidating offer.
The total a client pays you over the whole time they stay, including upsells and renewals. It tells you how much you can afford to spend to win one.
Formula: average order value × purchases per client (or monthly price × average months stayed). Example: a $6,000 program plus a $3,000 renewal that half of clients buy gives an LTV of $7,500.
How many dollars a client brings in for every dollar it cost to win them. Higher means more room to spend on growth.
Formula: LTV ÷ CAC. Example: $7,500 ÷ $1,444 = 5.2 to 1. 3 to 1 is a floor only when sales and delivery run mostly on systems. Aim higher when they are done by hand.
Total revenue divided by total marketing spend across every channel. It is a whole-business check that does not rely on any one platform's tracking.
Formula: total revenue ÷ total marketing spend. Example: $90,000 revenue on $20,000 spend is a 4.5 MER.
The share of booked calls where the lead never turns up. It is the flip side of show rate.
Formula: 100 minus show rate. Example: a 60% show rate is a 40% no-show rate.
A planned run of emails or texts sent over days or weeks after someone opts in. Each one teaches, shows proof or answers a doubt, and points to the next step.
Formula: calls booked from the sequence ÷ people who entered it × 100. Judge each email by the calls it books, not its opens.
The share of delivered emails that get opened. Apple Mail and other privacy tools inflate it, so watch clicks and replies too.
Formula: opens ÷ emails delivered × 100. Our example: 2.6M emails sent at a 71.86% open rate. Results are not typical.
The share of people who land on your page and give their details. It is the first conversion rate in most funnels.
Formula: opt-ins ÷ page visitors × 100. Registration pages usually convert 20% to 50%.
An online group that members pay to join, usually monthly. Many coaches pair a free community that builds trust with a paid one that holds the program.
About 20% of visitors join a free Skool group from the about page, against about 4% for a paid group.
How long it takes for a new client to pay back what it cost to win them. The shorter it is, the faster you can put cash back into ads.
Formula: CAC ÷ cash collected per client per month. Example: a $1,500 CAC on a $500 a month plan pays back in 3 months.
Letting a client pay a high ticket price in parts over a few months. It raises close rate but lowers cash collected on day one.
One operator found a $12,500 offer collecting only about $4,000 a sale up front, because most buyers took a payment plan. Compare with paid in full (PIF).
A small piece of code on your pages that tells the ad platform when someone views a page, opts in or books. The platform uses it to find more people like your buyers.
The pixel remembers about 180 days but leans on the last two weeks.
The share of page visitors who press play on your video. On a VSL page it shows whether the headline earns the watch.
30% or more is a good play rate.
The emails, texts and videos a lead gets between booking a call and the call itself. It builds trust and cuts no-shows.
One operator reported 75% or more showing and 40% or more closing after sending every prospect a page of past client results before the call.
A service sold like a product: a fixed scope, a fixed price and a set timeline. Clients know exactly what they get, and you can deliver it the same way every time.
One operator sold a $3,000 beta of a course to 10 of 15 to 20 existing clients, about $30,000 up front, before filming it.
The set of emails and texts that remind someone about a call or webinar they booked. Each message restates the date, time and why it matters.
Send a personal touch 24 hours before, the morning of, and 1 hour before the call.
A closer who works from home, taking pre-booked sales calls on Zoom or the phone for one or more businesses. Most are paid commission on cash collected, sometimes with a small base.
Budget 10% to 15% of cash collected for closer pay. A real closer role never asks you to pay to get hired.
Showing ads to people who already visited your page, watched your video or opted in. It keeps you in front of warm leads while they decide.
Warm audiences need 10 to 15 views before they act, against 2 to 3 for cold.
How much revenue you get back for every dollar spent on ads. It is a ratio such as 3x, not a profit number.
Formula: revenue from ads ÷ ad spend. Example: $30,000 from $10,000 of ads is 3x. Webinars usually return 3x to 5x when they work.
A salesperson whose main job is to run the last sales call and ask for the decision. Someone else usually finds and books the lead first. In coaching and other high ticket offers, it means the same as a high ticket closer.
See also appointment setter, closer and remote closer.
The steps a stranger takes to become a client: see an ad, opt in, watch or read, book a call, buy. Each step loses people, which is why it is drawn as a funnel.
Formula: leads × booking rate × show rate × close rate = clients. Example: 750 × 8% × 60% × 25% = 9.
The named steps of a funnel. For a high ticket call funnel: attention, opt-in, nurture, booked call, show, sale, then onboarding and upsell.
Rate at each stage: people at this stage ÷ people at the stage before. That gives opt-in rate, booking rate, show rate, close rate and upsell rate.
A key number that shows whether the sales team is on track. For a call funnel the core ones are calls booked, show rate, close rate and cash collected.
Work KPIs back from the goal: goal ÷ cash per sale = sales, ÷ close rate = calls held, ÷ show rate = calls booked. Example: $100,000 ÷ $5,000 = 20 sales, ÷ 25% = 80 calls held, ÷ 60% = 134 booked.
Every open deal and the stage it is at, from new lead to booked, held, follow-up and won or lost. Your CRM usually shows it as columns.
Formula: open deals × close rate × average deal. Example: 40 open deals × 25% × $6,000 = $60,000 likely to close.
A low ticket offer priced so its sales cover the ad cost of finding those buyers. You get buyers for free and sell them a bigger offer later.
Formula: front-end revenue ÷ ad spend of 1x or more. Example: $5,000 of ads sells 120 copies of a $47 offer, and 10% add a $97 bump: $6,804, so the ads paid for themselves.
The share of booked sales calls where the lead actually turns up. It is often the cheapest number in the funnel to fix.
Formula: calls held ÷ calls booked × 100. High ticket sales teams average near 50%. Our example: 664 calls booked in three months. Results are not typical.
A recorded webinar played at a set time as if it were live, often with a real person in the chat. It sits between a live and an evergreen webinar.
40% or more of same-day sign-ups attend, against about 10% or less when the webinar is 3 or more days away. Run sessions often.
An online community platform that puts a group feed, courses, a calendar and a points system in one place. Coaches use it for free groups that build trust and paid groups that deliver the program.
The average paid Skool group charges about $50 a month.
The course area inside a Skool group, where lessons and videos live. Owners can lock modules by level or price.
One owner reported churn falling from 30% to 5.2% after deleting lessons members were not using.
A group hosted on Skool, free or paid, where members post, learn and get help. A well-run one feeds sales calls and keeps members paying longer.
Our example: we have helped scale 350+ Skool communities. Results are not typical.
A recurring contest run by Skool where community owners race to grow their groups and revenue. Our founder has won it twice.
Sending text messages to leads and clients who agreed to receive them: reminders, follow-ups and offers. Texts are read far faster than email, so they suit time-sensitive messages.
Keep each text under 160 characters so it sends as one message. In the US, get clear consent and follow carrier and quiet-hour rules before you text.
How fast your team contacts a new lead after they opt in or apply. Faster contact means more conversations and more booked calls.
Text within 2 to 3 minutes and call within 5 to 7.
The sales call a lead books from your funnel, often framed as a call to map their plan. Also called a discovery call or sales call.
Value of one call held: cash per sale × close rate. Example: at $6,000 and 25%, each call held is worth $1,500.
A short first call, often with a setter, that checks fit before booking the main sales call. It protects closer time when lead quality is mixed.
A two-call process often closes 35% or more, against 20% to 25% on one call.
A very cheap first offer, often under $50, made right after someone opts in. Its job is to turn a lead into a buyer, not to make a profit.
Example: a $27 offer shown to 1,000 new leads at a 5% take rate gives 50 buyers and $1,350 back toward ad cost.
Offering a buyer a bigger or extra product after they buy, such as a renewal, an upgrade or a done-for-you add-on. A downsell is a cheaper option offered to someone who said no.
An order bump is a small extra shown as a tick box on the checkout page, such as a $27 workbook.
Short tags added to the end of a link, such as utm_source=instagram, that tell your tracking where a visitor came from. Use a different tagged link for each channel.
Example: cashflowcoaches.io/quiz?utm_source=youtube&utm_content=video-12
Your offers lined up from cheapest to most expensive, with each one leading to the next. Free content, then a low ticket product, then a program, then done-for-you.
Add-ons that obviously fit get taken more than 50% of the time. Ones that do not get 1 or 2 in 10.
A sales letter turned into a video: one recording that walks a buyer through the problem, your method, your proof, your offer and the next step. Many are slides with a voice over.
For business owners, VSLs of 2 to 15 minutes work, often under 10.
A short path from an ad to a sales call: an opt-in page, a VSL that sells, then an application and booking page. It runs every day without a live event.
One operator reported $80 to $90 per qualified call from a VSL built on the questions prospects ask most on sales calls.
An online talk or training, live or recorded, that people register for in advance. In a call funnel it teaches, proves and then invites viewers to book a call.
Aim for 80% or more of live viewers still watching at the pitch. The best presenters keep 95% or more.
The share of registrants who actually show up to the live webinar. It drops fast the further out people register.
Formula: live attendees ÷ registrants × 100. On cold traffic webinars, about 20% is average and 30% or more is great.
A funnel that runs ads to a webinar sign-up page, reminds people to attend, delivers the webinar and then books calls or takes orders. It suits offers that need teaching before people buy.
One operator modelled $5,000 of ads at $20 a lead: 250 sign-ups, 50 attend, 15 book, 11 show and 4 buy, which still returns about 2.5x.
A recording of the webinar sent to people who registered but missed it, usually for a few days only. It wins back sales from the many registrants who don't attend live.
In one reported case, a 5 to 6 day replay sequence to non-attendees roughly doubled revenue from the same ad spend.
No term matches that. Try a shorter word, clear the topic filter, or ask us on a call.
Every high ticket call funnel runs on the same chain. Ads buy attention (CPM). Some people click (CTR) and opt in. Some of those book a call, some show up, and some buy. Fix the weakest link first, because each step multiplies the next.
The ranges below are what operators running high ticket funnels commonly report.
| Number | Formula | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| CPM | ad spend ÷ impressions × 1,000 | $30 to $80 on cold traffic |
| Link CTR | clicks ÷ impressions | about 2% |
| Opt-in rate | opt-ins ÷ page visitors | 20% to 50% on a webinar sign-up page |
| Cost per booked call | ad spend ÷ booked calls | $100 to $300 to plan on |
| Show rate | calls held ÷ calls booked | 60% or more is the target for a one-call close; 40% to 50% while testing |
| Close rate | sales ÷ calls held | 20% to 25% usual, 30% or more above average |
| ROAS | revenue ÷ ad spend | 3x to 5x when a webinar works |
| LTV to CAC | LTV ÷ CAC | 3 to 1 as a floor when sales and delivery run on systems |
Dana is a made-up business coach who sells a $6,000 program on sales calls. This is one month of her numbers, using the terms above.
If Dana lifts her show rate from 60% to 75%, the same ad spend gives 45 calls and about 11 sales instead of 9. The cheapest fix is often after the ad. Try your own numbers in the client acquisition cost calculator or the ROAS calculator.
It depends on your margin, so work out your break-even ROAS first: 1 divided by your profit margin. Operators running webinar funnels commonly report 3x to 5x when a webinar works. For high ticket offers, judge ROAS on cash collected, not on contract value.
It can be. If you keep 60% of each sale after delivery costs, break-even is about 1.7x, so 2.8x makes money. If you keep only 30%, break-even is about 3.3x, and 2.8x loses money.
Add up everything you spent to win clients in a period (ads, setter and closer pay, tools) and divide it by the new clients you won in that period. $13,000 spent for 9 clients is a CAC of $1,444.
3 to 1 is a floor only when sales and delivery run mostly on systems. Aim higher when they are done by hand. The faster a client pays you back, the lower the ratio you can live with.
A closer is the salesperson who runs the sales call, answers the buyer's doubts and asks for the money. On high ticket teams closers are usually paid commission on cash collected.
A setter contacts new leads by phone, text or DM, checks that they fit, and books the good ones onto a closer's calendar. They also chase no-shows and old leads. They do not pitch the offer.
One common five-stage version is awareness, interest, consideration, decision and purchase. In a high ticket call funnel that maps to the ad, the opt-in, the nurture, the booked call and the sale.
A video sales letter (VSL) is a sales letter turned into a video. One recording walks the buyer through the problem, your method, your proof, your offer and the next step.
We look at your offer and your funnel numbers and find the weakest step. If you're not a fit, we tell you what to fix first.
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Dana is a made-up example. Her numbers show how the maths works and are not a client result. Benchmarks on this page are what other operators commonly report. They are not Cashflow Coaches results and not a promise. Every real result on this page is a past result from a specific client. None of them is typical.
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