Manual 5 · Vendor Defense · 5.11
How to read the monthly report they send you
You open the monthly report. The charts go up and to the right, the numbers are big, and none of it answers the only question that matters — did the phone ring with real customers. This page is how to read that report the way an inspector reads a job: past the fresh paint, to whether the work is actually there.
You don't need to understand marketing to do this. You need to know which numbers are real and which are theater.
Two ground rules before the decoding.
If no report even arrives, that's not a pass. Ask for last month's report today, in writing — email or text, so the ask carries a date. A vendor who can't produce one just answered this whole page. So did a vendor who never answers at all. Give it five business days, then run the seven tells below on what you can check yourself: your own phone log, your own bank statement.
Digging up the report and the dashboards is screen work — hand it to whoever runs your internet. The one question further down is yours, because it's a phone call.
Not paying anyone yet? Read on. The same split decodes every sales pitch that calls your phone this month.
The one line that splits real from theater
There are two kinds of numbers on any marketing report. Only one kind pays your crew. Report theater fills the page with the other kind.
| Counts activity (theater can fake it) | Counts money (pays your crew) |
|---|---|
| Impressions | Phone calls |
| Clicks · reach | Form fills |
| Rankings · "visibility" | Booked jobs |
One catch on the money column: a vendor's call count isn't a call count until you've checked it against your phone. A tracking number can log robocalls, wrong numbers, and eight-second hang-ups as "calls" — so if the report's call column doesn't square with the calls you remember answering, that's not proof of work, that's tell 4 below, and run it hard.
So the first move with any report: find the calls-and-jobs number. If it isn't there at all, that's your answer. Checking what customers actually touch is its own 20-minute job, on the self-inspection page; this page is about decoding what the vendor hands you.
The seven tells that the work isn't real
Read last month's report against these. Each one comes from an owner's own complaint or post, not from us. One tell is a question to ask; three or more is your exit.
Before you fire off an angry email: leaving is a sequence, not a slam of the door. The vendor may be holding your domain, your website files, your ad account, and your Google login — and a termination notice can be the moment you lose all four. Get your hands on what's yours first, then give notice. Leaving clean is that order, step by step.
- Activity up, phone flat. Every vanity number climbing while calls and jobs don't move. Check this one first.
- The work is aimed at the wrong place. Read where the report says the effort went. One owner found his search work was pointed at Brooklyn for a business that isn't in Brooklyn, and the tracking number on his report rang an unrelated business in another state. A report can look busy while pointing at nobody who could ever hire you.
- Numbers you don't recognize as yours. An electrician's report cited three phone numbers — he only has one. If the report references phone numbers, addresses, or accounts you don't own, the "results" aren't measuring your business at all.
- The data itself smells made up. One owner's figures were, in his words, "just flat out bogus." If the numbers don't square with reality you can check — your own phone, your own bank deposits — stop trusting the report and fall back to counting calls and jobs yourself.
- The spend quietly moved. Watch for ad money drifting to channels you can't check while the one that was working starves. Checkable means you can go look yourself — a page that exists, an ad you can pull up, calls you answered. Uncheckable means the only proof is their dashboard.
- The deliverables look machine-made. If they built you pages or posts, read them. One owner's landing pages were written, in his words, "as if English was not their first language." Low-effort auto-generated work is a sign the monthly fee isn't buying real hours.
- You can't see anything at all. No working dashboard, no visitor tracking, and — in complaints on the record — a site that never got listed in Google in the first place. If you can't independently see your own numbers, that's either the con or a vendor too sloppy to prove his own work. Get your own eyes on the numbers, or get out.
The 90-day question (and the honest version of it)
A quiet first 90 days is not proof of a con. It is also not proof of work. What settles it is what got built, not how long you've waited.
Here's the line between honest patience and being played.
At the 90-day mark, ask one question. An honest vendor answers with named work. A theater vendor answers with a chart.
What specifically was built or done this quarter that a customer could find?
Named work is good, a chart is a tell, and silence — or "let's get on a call about that" with nothing attached — is a chart wearing a hat. Put the question in an email too, so the clock is visible. Give it a week. No plain answer by then is your answer, and you're not being difficult for saying so.
What an honest report actually contains
So you know what right looks like, an honest monthly report is short and checkable. It has three things:
- How many calls and form-fills came in, and roughly where they came from.
- What was actually done that month — these pages written, this listing updated, this fixed — in plain terms you could verify.
- A way to see the call and visitor numbers yourself instead of taking their word.
If your report has those three things, it's doing its job, however plain it looks. If it's a wall of rising bars and no call count, you're being shown theater.
Print this: the report decoder
To count what really matters yourself instead of trusting the report, run the 20-minute self-inspection. If the report just confirmed you're paying for theater, leaving clean is the way out, and fighting the bill is for money already taken. And the five questions keeps the next vendor from selling you theater in the first place.