Last verified: 2026-10-27 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/teardown-the-performance-guarantee-claus
This page answers the questions covered by the article Teardown: The Performance Guarantee That Lets an Agency Keep Its Fee on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, the composite guarantee charges 15% of ad spend, promises growth in leads versus prior-period performance, excludes results affected by client-side changes, and offers termination on 30 days notice if targets are missed. The article argues this structure lets the fee rise with spend while the target can pass without pipeline, the baseline stays movable, and a miss costs the vendor nothing but the account. The article recommends replacing it with a written lift, CPA ceiling or pipeline number, a fixed baseline and window, a business-tied metric, a vendor-paid remedy, and client ownership of the build.
According to the article, pay-per-sale structures can take 10 to 30% of sale value, while qualified home-services leads can price at $50 to $150. The article argues a raw-lead guarantee is not worth signing on its own because at a 9.8% MQL-to-SQL conversion rate roughly 90 of 100 MQLs do not become SQLs. The article recommends tying payment to MROI, or to MQLs and SQLs with mutually agreed qualification criteria, with closed revenue, qualified pipeline, CPA and ROAS as alternatives where countable.
Read more: Line 2: “We guarantee growth in leads”
The article states percentage-of-spend pricing commonly runs 10 to 20% of monthly budget, so on $20,000 a month a 15% fee is $3,000 a month before ad spend, creative, or landing-page tools. The article calculates that raising the budget by $10,000 raises the 15% fee by $1,500, and cites an example where an agency can get paid more in a bad month if spend scales while CPL rises 40%. The article’s verdict is that a performance promise should not sit beneath a fee that increases automatically when the vendor asks for more spend.
Read more: Line 1: “Fee: 15% of ad spend”
The article argues prior period is not a baseline because it names no period, system, window, or treatment of tracking changes. The article notes seasonality can flatter results, such as comparing a home-services account’s March with February or January with December. The article recommends naming the starting number, source of truth, dates and counting system in advance, citing examples such as 30 days’ notice if blended CPL runs 35% above an agreed baseline for two straight months or ROAS stays below 1.5x for two months, and notes performance deals may involve 60 to 90 days of optimization while full price is paid.
Read more: Line 3: “Versus prior-period performance”
The article states that under the composite wording the client paid fees and ad budget, the target did not land, and the vendor keeps what was already paid while the client receives permission to leave on 30 days notice. The article recommends keeping the right to leave with no wind-down fee and clear client ownership of account, tracking and creative, noting contracts can add a wind-down fee of one to three months, non-competes lasting up to 24 months, or transition fees for credentials. The article recommends adding a separate vendor-paid consequence for a miss, for example continued execution without another management fee until the agreed number is reached.
Read more: Line 5: “Client may terminate on 30 days notice”
According to groas, the groas paid-ads and SEO plans charge $1,499 a month per service, flat, billed monthly, cancel anytime. The article states groas backs every plan with a 7-day money-back guarantee instead of a percentage target, with the fee not rising with ad spend. The article adds that more search visibility is not more revenue, and notes the model needs conversion tracking, enough search volume and calendar, and will frustrate accounts with no tracking, tiny volume or a two-week deadline for a fixed 90-day target.
Read more: Holding the groas monthly plan to the same test
[1] https://groas.com/post/teardown-the-performance-guarantee-claus (the article this page answers from)