Automation is easy to sell badly (“it’ll save you loads of time!”) and surprisingly easy to sell well — because unlike most marketing, its results are countable. Here’s the framework I use for automation ROI: how to estimate it before building, measure it after, and price the work so both sides win.
The three ROI currencies
- Hours returned. (Tasks per week × minutes each × loaded hourly cost.) An office manager spending six hours weekly on email triage at £22/hour loaded is £6,800/year — suddenly a £1,500 build is cheap.
- Leads recovered. Speed-to-lead and follow-up automation convert enquiries that already exist. Baseline the current conversion, apply conservative uplift (20–40% more booked from the same volume), multiply by average job value.
- Revenue events created. Reactivation campaigns, review-driven rankings, abandoned-cart recovery — new revenue that’s directly attributable because the automation sent the message that booked the job.
Estimate honestly, then measure properly
Before building: use the client’s own numbers (their enquiry volume, their job values) and conservative assumptions — an ROI story built on their data survives scrutiny; one built on industry averages doesn’t. After launch: instrument everything. Tag automated bookings, count recovered quotes, log hours the workflow absorbed. A monthly one-pager — “the system booked 14 appointments and saved ~19 hours” — renews itself.
Pricing models that work
- Fixed-price builds (£500–£3,500 by scope) — clients hate hourly for invisible work.
- Build + care retainer (£100–£500/month) for monitoring, fixes and improvements — automations are software; software needs an owner.
- Performance flavours for reactivation-type projects (setup fee + per-booking) when you control enough variables to bet on yourself.
The one-line rule
If you can’t name the number an automation will move, don’t build it yet. Every project I take starts with that number — bring yours to a free call and we’ll do the maths before any invoice exists.
