Closes, the guarantee, and the last three price elements.

Twelve more slides. Four closes adapted from the Big Book, two soft closes placed inside the teaching, the analogy that dissolves the works-or-scam binary, the first future-pacing slide in the deck, a named guarantee, and the three named price elements that were missing. Plus the booking route now carried through the entire back half.

7.9→8.4score
12slides this pass
139→173slides

Where the Position 1, 2 or 3 Guarantee comes from

Short answer: it is not yours, it is RGT’s, and it was the single thing I most wanted you to steal.

What it is in the source material

RGT.pdf, slide 22 and again at 46, in the swipe file at _source/Swipe-Files/. RGT sells a done-for-you Amazon ranking service at $3,000 a month on a 48 slide webinar, and it brands its risk reversal: if a keyword campaign does not reach the top three spots, they keep paying to continue it. Four words, stated twice, and a client can repeat it accurately to a colleague who was never on the call.

Where the equivalent was in your deck: nowhere, and everywhere

You had all the substance and none of the packaging. No lock-in and sixty days notice sat in a kicker on the price slide. Direct access to specialists sat on the differentiators slide. Search-only sat in the operating principles. Three separate places, all in paragraph form, none of them named. A marketing manager cannot carry that into a budget conversation three days later, because there is nothing to carry.

What it is now

Slide 157, The Earn It Every Month Guarantee. The same three facts, one slide, one name, and a one-sentence version written specifically to be retold by somebody who half remembers it:

They have to earn it every month, because we can leave with sixty days notice and they know it.

The name is a placeholder

Earn It Every Month is a working title and it is yours to change. The only rule that matters is that whatever you land on appears word for word identically in three places: this slide, what Sophie says on the call, and the proposal. A guarantee that gets paraphrased is not a named guarantee.

The four closes, and why these four

The Big Book carries 41 named closes. Most are written for a direct-sale webinar asking for money today, which is not what you are doing. These four survive the translation to a free call.

CloseAs it appears in your deckSlideWhy this one
Fully Informed DecisionYou cannot make this decision today164Shrinks the ask from choose an agency down to take one step. On a book-a-call webinar the most common silent objection is not price, it is the belief that booking means deciding.
Binary PercentWhat percent do you need166Replaces a yes-or-no with a number, which turns an identity question into an arithmetic one. Also harvests live objections into the chat, which is the last chance to answer them.
Crystal BallIf I could show you next August168Removes desire from the equation to isolate the real objection. If certainty of the outcome would produce an instant yes, the blocker is belief rather than want.
Two PainsTwo kinds of pain169Action against regret. The most reliable close in the book for a decision people can defer indefinitely at no immediate cost, which is exactly what a free call is.

Worth knowing what I left out

Several of the strongest closes in the book lean on loss, shame or a hard deadline: No Wonder You Failed, Unluckiest SOB, Rock Bottom, Fear at the Door. They work, and they are wrong for a room that has just been told for two days that you would rather they did not book if it is not a fit. Using them would cost you the thing that makes your close unusual.

On the juxtaposition point, you were right

You pushed back on this and the pushback was correct, so here is the accurate version.

What I said, and what was actually true

I said juxtaposition was absent. It was not. WHAT IT COSTS TO RUN THIS YOURSELF opens with we did the rent ledger for ads on day one, here it is for search, and then costs the hire, the tooling and the ground lost. That is a juxtaposition against something more expensive and it is a good one. Calling it absent was wrong.

What the real gap was

Adjacency. The comparison sat five slides away from the price, so the two never appeared together. Juxtaposition in the SOP works because the expensive thing and your thing are on screen at the same moment; separated by five slides they are two different arguments rather than one. The other half is that the rent ledger was invoked as a concept but never as the specific figure they wrote down on day one.

What changed

A new slide, THREE NUMBERS, SIDE BY SIDE, immediately before the price. What they rent annually, what in-house costs annually, what this costs annually, in one frame. Two of the three are in their own handwriting. The in-house slide keeps its job of costing the DIY path in detail; this one exists purely to put all three numbers in the same eyeline at the moment the price lands.

What went in, in deck order

Twelve slides. The number in the circle is its position in the revised deck.

18

So is SEO a scam, or does it work

Step 5 Position / Step 6 Paradigm

The belief actually blocking the sale is not that AI search is unimportant. It is that SEO is a binary, either a real discipline or a con, and a burned buyer has already picked con. You cannot argue a binary away, you have to dissolve it, and the gym does that in one image because everybody already accepts that gyms work and that most gym memberships do not. It also lands your paradigm two days before you need it, so sequence beats effort arrives as a callback rather than a claim.

SO IS SEO A SCAM, OR DOES IT WORK

Neither. That question has never had a useful answer.

  • Two people join the same gym
    Same equipment, same fees, same twelve months. One of them changes shape and one of them does not. Nobody watching concludes that gyms are a scam, and nobody concludes that gyms are magic. Everybody understands, without being told, that the difference was the programme.
  • You have been sold exercises
    A blog post here, some links there, a technical fix in March. Every one of those is a real exercise that a good trainer might genuinely prescribe. Done in no particular order, for no particular reason, billed monthly, they produce exactly what they produce in a gym.
  • The question that does have an answer
    Not does SEO work. Ask instead whether anybody was ever running a programme, or whether you were being handed exercises and invoiced. You already know which one you have been buying, and it is worth saying plainly that being angry about it is reasonable.
  • So when I say sequence beats effort, this is what I mean. It is also why the next two days are in the order they are in, rather than being a list of things you could do.

Delivery. Placed on day one on purpose. This belief contaminates everything taught after it, so it has to be cleared before the teaching rather than argued with at the close. Give the third card its beat: telling them their anger is reasonable is what buys the next two days.

103

A quick one, then back to it

Step 12: close, teach, close again

The first mid-deck close, placed at the halfway point of the pillars. It also introduces the persistent footer link, so that by the time the real pitch arrives the booking route is already familiar furniture rather than something produced at the end. Naming the objection first, that nobody internally will do this, is what buys the right to mention the call at all.

A QUICK ONE, THEN BACK TO IT

Three pillars down, three to go.

  • If at any point across these two days you have caught yourself thinking that this is all correct and that nobody in your business is ever going to do it, that is not a failure of nerve. That is an accurate reading of your own calendar. There is a booking link in the footer of every slide from here on. It is thirty minutes with the person teaching you this, it commits you to nothing, and I am not going to mention it again until we are finished.
  • Right. Relevance.

Delivery. Say it once, do not repeat it, and move straight into Relevance. The restraint is what makes it land as a courtesy instead of a pitch.

134

Same offer, said once more

Step 12: close, teach, close again

The second of two mid-deck closes. Across the 32 decks the most-repeated close appears four times against your two, and the SOP describes the pattern in plain terms: show a thing, close, show another thing, close again. The framing here is deliberately anti-climactic, because a soft repeated close in a teaching webinar has to cost the room nothing to ignore.

SAME OFFER, SAID ONCE MORE

Five pillars down. One to go.

  • You now have five of the six, and genuinely enough to audit your own site tonight without me. That is deliberate. It is also the moment most people discover that the constraint was never the knowledge. If what you are looking at is a gap in time or people rather than a gap in understanding, the link in the footer is still there. Same thirty minutes, same person, and nothing at all happens if you decide against it.
  • Last one. Evaluation, which is how you find out whether any of this actually worked.

Delivery. Fifteen seconds, then move. If it feels like it is taking too long it is taking too long.

144

Twelve months from now

Step 4 Excite (future pacing)

19 of the 32 proven decks future pace and this one never did. Every payoff slide in the deck described a mechanism working correctly, which is a feature benefit rather than a felt one. This is the first slide in 161 that describes their situation changed rather than your framework functioning, and it deliberately uses three artefacts they made themselves, so the future being described is populated with their own data.

TWELVE MONTHS FROM NOW

Not the mechanism working. You, next August.

  • The Mirror, run again
    Same three prompts, same machines, one year on. Your name comes back in the first sentence of the first answer, and the competitor you scored yourself against this morning is the one who is missing. Nothing clever happened in between. You did the six, in order, every month.
  • The line item that shrank
    The rent ledger you filled in yesterday has a smaller number on it, and nobody had to make a brave decision to cut the ad budget. It came down because it stopped having to carry the whole business on its own.
  • The meeting that changed
    Somebody asks what is happening with search, and instead of a traffic chart you show them where you are being cited and who is citing you. That is the meeting you have been trying to have for three years.
  • None of that needs anything you have not already been given in the last two days. It needs those things done in order, every month, by somebody whose actual job it is.

Delivery. This is the last thing before the recap and the offer. Slow down. It is the only place in two days where the room is invited to want something.

154

What it cost us to work this out

Step 11 Price: PERSONAL COST

The named element the deck was missing, and it sits directly after what it costs to run this yourself so the two costings answer each other. It also does a second job the SOP does not claim for it: it justifies the generosity. A room that has been given everything for free starts wondering what the catch is, and the honest answer is that the framework cost so much to build that giving it away is not the expensive part.

WHAT IT COST US TO WORK THIS OUT

Since we are on the subject of what things cost.

  • Over a hundred people
    That is the payroll. Specialists in technical, content, digital PR and measurement, working on nothing but search and AI search, every working day. Multiply a hundred salaries by the years we have been doing only this, and you have the real budget behind the framework you were handed for free yesterday morning.
  • Nobody set out to build a framework
    SOURC-E is what was left over after the expensive mistakes. The six pillars are in that order because we ran the other orders first, on real clients, and watched them not work. That is not an insight you can reach with a clever afternoon and a good AI prompt.
  • You have the whole thing
    Not a summary of it, not a teaser for it. Six pillars, the order they go in, the tools, the questions and the scoring, handed over before anybody asked you for a thing. That was the deal on slide four and it still is.
  • I am not telling you this to be impressive. I am telling you because in a few minutes I am going to say a number out loud, and you should know what is sitting behind it.

Delivery. VERIFY THE HEADCOUNT AND SAY IT FLATLY. This slide falls apart if the number is soft, and it is the one claim in the close a sceptic can check on LinkedIn in ten seconds.

157

The Earn It Every Month Guarantee

Step 13 Risk (named reversal)

You already had all three of these facts, spread across a differentiators slide and a kicker on the price slide, in paragraph form. A paragraph cannot survive being retold to a CFO three days later by somebody who half remembers it. RGT sells a $3,000 a month retainer on a four-word guarantee name. Naming it turns no lock-in from a contractual detail into a promise about behaviour, which is the version that travels.

THE EARN IT EVERY MONTH GUARANTEE

It needs a name, or nobody can repeat it accurately.

  • No lock-in, and what that actually means
    Sixty days notice, in any month, with no exit fee and no conversation about what you signed eighteen months ago. Most agencies protect the retainer with a twelve month contract. We do not have one to hide behind, so the only thing keeping you is the work.
  • Specialists, not an account manager
    The person who takes your call is the person who looks at your site. Sophie has just taught you for two days. That is the same access you have in month seven, when the novelty has worn off and this is the point at which most agencies quietly move you to somebody junior.
  • Search and AI search only
    We do not sell paid, or social, or a website rebuild, because we do not do them. There is nothing else for us to move you into on the month the search work gets difficult.
  • Say it back to whoever signs things as one sentence. They have to earn it every month, because we can leave with sixty days notice and they know it.

Delivery. THE NAME IS A PLACEHOLDER AND YOURS TO CHANGE. Whatever you land on, use exactly the same words every time it appears, here and on the call and in the proposal.

160

Three numbers, side by side

Step 11 Price: JUXTAPOSITION + ACTUAL RETAIL PRICES

The comparison already existed but sat five slides from the price, so the two never touched. Juxtaposition in the SOP works by adjacency: the expensive thing and your thing have to be on screen together. This puts all three numbers in one frame immediately before the price, and two of the three are in their own handwriting, so the comparison is theirs rather than yours. The kicker adds the retail anchor the SOP asks for.

THREE NUMBERS, SIDE BY SIDE

Two of them are yours. You wrote them down yourself.

  • What you rent, annually
    The figure on line A of your rent ledger, written yesterday before I had said anything about what it ought to be. For most rooms this size it is the largest of the three, it recurs forever, and the day you stop paying it, it stops working.
  • What in-house costs, annually
    The three numbers from a moment ago, added up. Salary and on-costs, the tooling and the data, and the months of ground you lose while somebody learns on your time. Most people find this lands well above what they assumed before they costed it.
  • What this costs, annually
    Twelve times the monthly figure. Put it beside the other two and it is usually the smallest number on this slide, which is the entire reason I am showing you all three at once rather than showing you mine on its own.
  • And the diagnostic you are about to be offered, your three ranked gaps and a completed Position Brief, is the first fortnight of a paid engagement. You are getting it before anybody has asked you for anything.

Delivery. Do not editorialise on the third number. The slide is built so the comparison makes itself, and saying it out loud is what makes it sound like a sales pitch.

164

You cannot make this decision today

Big Book of Closes: Fully Informed Decision

The single best-fitting close in the book for this funnel. It shrinks the perceived ask from choose an agency down to take one step, which is what a booking actually is. On a book-a-call webinar the most common silent objection is not price, it is the belief that booking means deciding. This removes it in one line.

YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS DECISION TODAY

Good news, if you were feeling the weight of it.

  • Nobody decides whether to change how their company does search off the back of a webinar. You cannot, you should not, and I would think slightly less of you if you did. What you can decide is whether to spend thirty minutes with the person who has been teaching you for two days, and look at your three gaps together. That is the only decision actually on the table. The real one gets made later, with far more information, and it gets made by you.
  • You test drive the car before you decide about the car. This is the test drive, and it is free.

Delivery. Place this immediately after Your Next Step, while the booking slide is still fresh. It is permission, not pressure.

166

What percent do you need

Big Book of Closes: Binary Percent

Breaks the all-or-nothing frame that stops people acting. Replacing a yes-or-no with a number turns an identity question into an arithmetic one, and the arithmetic almost always favours booking when the ask costs nothing. It also harvests live objections into the chat, which is the last chance to answer them.

WHAT PERCENT DO YOU NEED

Worth answering honestly, in the chat.

  • Nobody in this room is a hundred percent sure about anything, including me, and the people who wait to be certain before they move tend to end up certain about nothing. So do not ask yourself whether you are sure. Ask what percent sure you would need to be, to spend thirty minutes on a call that costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Sixty? Forty? Then ask how far you actually are from that number right now.
  • It is almost never far, and the gap is almost never information. If there is a specific doubt in the way, put it in the chat and I will answer it rather than let you leave holding it.

Delivery. Ask the question and then genuinely wait. If nobody types, read one number out loud and ask who is above it.

168

If I could show you next August

Big Book of Closes: Crystal Ball

Isolates the real objection by removing desire from the equation. If certainty of the outcome would produce an instant yes, then the blocker is belief rather than want, and belief is addressable. For this ICP the belief was usually installed by a previous agency, which the kicker names without making them defend it.

IF I COULD SHOW YOU NEXT AUGUST

The awkward question, asked kindly.

  • If I could play you a recording of your own business twelve months from now, and in it you were the name coming back in the answers your buyers actually read, you would book the call before I finished this sentence. You would not weigh it up. So the hesitation is not about whether you want the outcome. It is about whether you believe this is the thing that gets you there, or whether you have stopped believing anything does.
  • That second one is a fair belief to hold after a bad agency, and it is the one thing thirty minutes with a specialist is genuinely good at settling.

Delivery. Kindly is doing work in the subtitle. Delivered with any edge this becomes an accusation and the room closes.

169

Two kinds of pain

Big Book of Closes: Two Pains

The pain-of-action against the pain-of-regret, which is the most reliable close in the book for a decision people can defer indefinitely at no immediate cost. Booking a free call is exactly that kind of decision, so it needs a reason to happen tonight rather than in principle.

TWO KINDS OF PAIN

You are going to pick one of them tonight.

  • The first is the pain of doing something. Thirty minutes on a call, a slightly awkward conversation with whoever signs off the budget, and the admission that this needs to be somebody’s actual job. The second is the pain of having the same conversation next August, running the same three prompts, finding the same competitor named in all of them, and knowing that twelve months of compounding went to them instead of you.
  • Both of them hurt. One weighs a few ounces. The other one gets heavier every month you leave it.

Delivery. Slow. The two halves need equal weight or it reads as a threat. The last line is the whole slide, so land it and stop.

170

Your next step, shown again

RGT: re-show the identical next-steps slide

RGT shows its identical how-to-sign-up slide four separate times, so the mechanics of acting are never more than a few slides away. This re-shows YOUR NEXT STEP verbatim immediately after the two-pains close, which is both the point of maximum intent and the furthest point in the deck from where the booking slide first appeared.

YOUR NEXT STEP

A free SEO + AI-Search strategy call. Shown a second time, verbatim.

  • RGT shows its identical how-to-sign-up slide four separate times across a 48 slide deck.
  • This is the same slide as 163, unchanged, placed at the furthest point from the first showing.

Delivery. Do not re-read it. Say you are putting it back up, then stop talking and let people book.

The booking route, now carried

Not a new slide, but the largest single change in this pass.

68 slides that previously offered no way to act

studiohawk.com.au · book a call now sits in the footer of every slide from 103 to the end, in Bright Aqua at 7pt, right-aligned on the existing footer baseline. Coverage went from 3% to 42% of the deck against a proven median of 12% and RGT’s 40%. It uses the deck’s own existing CTA wording, so nothing was invented.

This was not optional once the mid-deck closes went in

Slide 103 says out loud that there is a booking link in the footer of every slide from here on. Adding that sentence without adding the footer would have been a defect, so both went in together.

One thing needs you

The QR code is still [ QR CODE ] on three slides and the footer text is a domain rather than a booking URL. When the real link exists it has to replace both, everywhere, in one pass.

Still open

WhatStatus
1Verify the headcount. WHAT IT COST US TO WORK THIS OUT says over a hundred people on payroll. It is the one claim in the close a sceptic can check on LinkedIn in ten seconds, so it has to be right and it has to be said flatly.Needs you
2Four placeholder numbers. The price range, the retail figure for the audit, the capacity cap and the closing date. None of the four slides can be presented until they exist.Needs you
3Reconcile $2,500 against $3,000. Your sales-ops pricing work sets a $3,000 recurring minimum with no currency stated. If that is USD, the price slide contradicts it.Needs you
4Confirm the guarantee name. Earn It Every Month is a working title. Once set, it has to be identical on the slide, on the call and in the proposal.Needs you
5The 46 pillar slides. Still titles with no body, still blocked on the export question. The largest remaining content gap in the deck.Blocked
6Verbatim close repetition. Your most-repeated slide appears twice against a proven median of four. Four different closes is defensible, but it is not the same mechanic as one close shown four times.Judgement call