How to Ask a Prospect for Their Ad Export Before They Sign

Why a report beats a login

Pitching an agency on a prospect's ad account usually starts with a request for access. Access is a lot to ask of someone who has not hired you yet. It involves permissions, a security question and sometimes a conversation with whoever owns the account. A report is different. The prospect's marketing manager can download it themselves, it holds spend and results rather than customer lists, and it does not give you any ability to change their campaigns.

That makes it an easy yes, and it gives you the one thing you need to open the pitch with something specific: their own numbers, read before the call.

The two-line request email

Copy this, change the name, and send it:

Two sentences do the job. The first says exactly what to send and removes the worry about access. The second says what they get back, which is the reason to do it.

If you want a subject line, "A quick favor before our call" works. Keep the email short, because every extra line lowers the chance of a reply.

How the prospect downloads the report

Menus change, so check the platform's help page for the current steps. In general, this is what the prospect will do.

In Meta Ads Manager. Open the account, set the date range, and choose the view that lists campaigns with spend, results and purchase value. Then look for an export or reports option that downloads the table as a CSV or Excel file. Ask for the campaign level, since an account total hides the campaigns that matter.

In Google Ads. Open the campaigns view, set the date range, and look for a download option in the toolbar above the table. It offers file formats, and CSV is the one to ask for. Again, campaign level is what you want.

What the file should contain. Spend, impressions, clicks, conversions and conversion value for each campaign. Ask for at least eight weeks, with a weekly or daily breakdown if the platform offers one, so that the latest four weeks can be compared with the four before. The sample audit later in this post was built from a 48-row export covering four channels.

If the prospect advertises on TikTok or Pinterest as well, ask for the same report from those platforms. Most ad platforms offer a similar download.

What comes back

The sample audit for Alder & Pike Supply, a sample client, shows what one export becomes. Four channels went in, and the audit came back with:

From that, the audit names the first fix. Pinterest returned $18,352 on $29,600 of spend, which is under the 1.0x line where a channel earns back what it costs, while Google Ads returned 4.30x. It prices two issues: moving Pinterest budget toward Google Ads, about $28,064 a month, and a cost per acquisition that rose 14%, about $24,992 a month. Together that is about $53,056 a month, modeled from the export and not a guarantee.

You can open the sample audit and read it the way a prospect would. It is the same document you would send back after the call.

What to say when the file arrives

Reply promptly, and say what you found in one line, such as "One channel is spending more than it returns, and I would like to walk you through it." Send the audit before the call or share your screen on it. Let the prospect react to a number before you talk about your fee.

If they sign, the audit does not go in a drawer. It becomes the before-picture for every report that follows, so month one has something to be compared with. The report structure guide shows how to lay those reports out.

Handling their data

Tell the prospect what you will do with the file. A short sentence is enough: you will use it only for the audit and delete it if you do not work together. Agree the same on your side of the table, and keep prospect files out of shared folders. A campaign report is not a customer list, and treating it with care costs nothing and builds trust early.

Common objections

"I would rather not share data before we work together." The report is their own spend and results, with no logins and nothing about their customers. Offer to delete it after the call.

"We use a different platform." Ask for the same fields from it. Spend, clicks, conversions and conversion value are available from most ad platforms.

"Can you just look at the account?" You can, but a report lets you prepare without waiting for permissions, and it leaves them in control of what you see.

Turn it into a repeatable step

Put the two-line email in your outreach template, keep one folder per prospect, and run each file the same way. ClientFalcon builds the priced audit from the export, with a 30-day plan, and its channel reporting page shows the channel view. To see how this differs from dashboard tools that need account connections, read the AgencyAnalytics comparison.