Turn grades into a conversation
Outcomes
A grade only sells when someone reads it aloud
A Snapshot Report reads like a school report card on purpose: letter grades are a language every owner already speaks. Two things make the grades land. First, the report grades hard by design; it is built to find every gap it can, so a rough first page is the report working, not the business failing. Second, the criteria are not your opinion: they mirror what search engines reward, so you and the owner sit on the same side of the table, reading what Google sees together.
Northside Dental's report came back the way most do: a strong grade worth celebrating, a weak one worth fixing, and six others in between. What happens next depends entirely on how it is read.
Read it alone first
Before an owner ever sees the report, you shape it. Details carry the grades: a wrong address or a stale primary category grades the business against the wrong industry, and every section inherits the mistake.
You are going to your prospect's account in Partner Center.
Turning a section off for every report at once happens at the template level, and the customization guide covers every option.
Two gaps and a strength
Eight grades recited in a row is an audit, and nobody buys an audit. Pick two gaps and one strength, and give each one a consequence a customer would feel:
- The gap chain. Grade, then what a customer experiences, then what that costs. For Northside Dental: patients love this clinic, 4.8 stars across sixty reviews, and the top directories disagree about its address. Search engines read disagreement as doubt, and doubt ranks below the clinic down the street.
- The sites nobody has heard of. The listings section names directories the owner will not recognize. Neither will their customers, and it does not matter: the search engines and AI tools deciding who to recommend check them anyway.
- The strength is also an opening. A section the business aces is worth naming out loud, then asking what it takes to keep it there. What that effort costs each month is a conversation many partners find more productive than any failing grade.
- Only raise what you can fix. Every gap on your shortlist should map to work you can actually turn on. The report is not a diagnosis to hand over; it is the menu for everything the rest of this path delivers.
When the owner pushes back
- "This grade is harsh." It is, by design, and the bar is the top of their industry rather than average. A 4.8-star clinic can still grade a B when the industry's leaders hold straight fives. The grade is the gap to first place, and first place is the goal.
- "This grade is wrong." Check the business details together, starting with the primary category. A stale category grades the business against the wrong rivals, and correcting the profile is itself the first improvement you deliver, before anything is bought.
- "What does this technical section mean?" The detailed findings are for whoever maintains their website; you are there to sell the outcome, and the outcome is customers who find them first.
Present it, do not send it
A report that arrives alone in an inbox is a page of numbers. Walked through live, it is a conversation that starts where you choose. When you do send it, Edit Report mode drafts AI-suggested email copy around the sections you picked, and the AI Chat on the report itself answers the owner's follow-up questions and can book the meeting for you.
The report keeps enriching for seven days after you run it. Partners present anywhere from the first day on, and the fullest read comes at the end of that week.
Open your report from the last step and write your opening sentence: one gap, its consequence, one line. Say it out loud. If it sounds like a chart, rewrite it until it sounds like a conversation.
Knowledge Check
Three quick questions on preparing the report, picking the gaps, and handling pushback.