Last verified: 2026-10-11 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/the-day-0-baseline-checklist-18-things-t
This page answers the questions covered by the article The Day-0 Baseline Checklist: 18 Checks Before Anyone Promises More Pipeline on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, a performance guarantee is only as honest as its day-0 baseline. The article recommends freezing conversion definitions, lead-to-pipeline mapping and the attribution window before work starts, then saving dated exports of spend, CPA, ROAS and qualified pipeline. Without that frozen baseline and a signed sentence naming metric, baseline, target, window and source of truth, no agency or tool can put real skin in the game on qualified pipeline.
According to groas, no agency or tool can put real skin in the game on qualified pipeline unless conversion definitions, lead-to-pipeline mapping and the attribution window are frozen before the work starts. The article states a performance guarantee is only as honest as its day-0 baseline. It recommends keeping the checklist open before signing anything with a number in writing and working through what the account counts, what sales considers qualified, and who owns the evidence, in order.
Read more: the article
The article identifies button clicks, add-to-carts, time-on-page and brochure downloads as vanity actions to demote to secondary. It recommends leaving them in All conversions if useful for diagnosis, but keeping them out of the number a provider can claim as pipeline. Mixing them into primary actions trains bidding on engagement rather than revenue.
Read more: Tracking: check what bidding can see
According to groas, export and date the trailing 90 days of spend, CPA, ROAS, qualified leads and conversion value, keeping at least 90 days, or 12 months if available, with weekly spend, clicks, conversions and value. The article recommends breaking the same export into weeks using the same definitions, marking weeks affected by a paused budget, landing-page swap or tracking fix, and not assembling a second version. It also recommends writing one paragraph on the same period last year with spend, CPA, close rate and seasonality, or writing “missing” and why if last year is missing.
Read more: Baseline: save the numbers before they move
The article recommends getting a dated definition of “qualified” from sales with job title, company size, intent and disqualifiers, with one named owner in sales, and choosing the CRM stage that equals success — SQL, opportunity or booked job — mapped to an import with field, upload cadence and owner. Bidding can learn from the stage actually sent back, not the stage intended. A practitioner example of SQL at $100 and opportunity at $250 inside a 90-day click window is given as example values, not numbers to paste into an account.
Read more: Pipeline: let sales define what counts
The article recommends signing one sentence naming the metric, baseline, target, window and source of truth, written on the call while both sides can see the dated exports. Its paid example is: Grow qualified SQLs from 42/month at $310 CPA (trailing 90 days to Oct 10, CRM stage SQL, 90-day click window) to 55/month at CPA ≤ $310 by day 90, judged in CRM export. Its organic and AI example is: Lift cited buyer prompts from 4/15 to 8/15 and Search Console clicks on 20 money pages from 8,400 to 11,760 per 90 days, using the same page set and a dated rerun, with the instruction to use your own numbers, not these examples.
Read more: The target: sign the sentence you will judge
[1] https://groas.com/post/the-day-0-baseline-checklist-18-things-t (the article this page answers from)