Onboarding That Works | Predictable Revenue Through Systems

speaker-0: ⁓ Clients quickly determine whether they'll stay, expand or leave. Seamless and easy onboarding streamlines delivering value and reduces growth risks. Hi, we're Nate and Simone and we talk all things marketing and today our topic is about how to orchestrate the onboarding process for clients and why it's a good idea. to streamline that process. Hey Nate, how are you?

speaker-1: ⁓ doing just fine, doing just fine. Got a question for you. Would your last five clients agree on what ⁓ your first value was and when it was reached? Meaning that the time when they experienced the value of working with you. Would they all agree on that?

speaker-0: No, they wouldn't. ⁓ because the onboarding has been different for each of my clients, over the last few months. And that's because, ⁓ yeah, my niche, I've decided my niche is coaching, coaching and consulting, you know, established coaches and consultants. However, they're not the only people that have been coming to me for my services. And so, ⁓ And so the onboarding has been different for each of those clients. Yeah. What about you?

speaker-1: ⁓ would say, yeah, somewhat similar, somewhat similar. I have been really trying to hone down on the steps that I'm taking with the people that I'm talking to. And, ⁓ a lot of that revolves around making sure that everybody's taking the same initial steps at least. And really like narrowing that down as much as possible. to make it easier on me, you know, when it comes to that. But then once those first, you know, two or three steps are taken, ⁓ depending on the outcome of the ⁓ gap analysis that I do, that determines the next steps after that. So, but I'm saying like, I think I've been doing a pretty decent job of keeping the first, you know, two or three steps the same. as much as possible. But I can't say that it's been universal, no.

speaker-0: Yeah, I feel like because I have all these different types of clients ⁓ that yes, there should be part of it ⁓ that is standardized and then the other parts tend to go ⁓ tend to be determined by like what type of client they want or client they are and what they need. So, but yeah, as far as onboarding goes, I think there are a couple of steps in there that can be the same across the board.

speaker-1: Yeah. So that is what we're going to talk about today. How and why we would want to orchestrate the onboarding process for our clients. And I guess a good place to start is figuring out what we mean here by these terms, So for example, onboarding. In your mind, anyway, what would you consider to be onboarding?

speaker-0: That's that transition between ⁓ the them being a prospect and them being a client. So after they pay you, they either made a payment, they made a deposit, you know, they put their money down on the table and said, okay, yes, I'm, I'm, I'm in, you know, based on your sales pitch or your, your webinar or your, whatever it was that, that made them decide, okay, yes, you're the one for me. ⁓ Then it's what happens next. What happens after that? They plunk down their money. Now, do you do you schedule a call with them for for an onboarding call? Do you send them an email with a lot of instructions or do you ⁓ do you send them to a form page for them to fill out more information? Like, what do you do? What what is what does that onboarding look like? How do you bring them into? or transition them from being a prospect who's still thinking about it to now like, well, I'm a customer now. And so now the conversation is different.

speaker-1: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I, I am a firm believer that the onboarding process begins at your first meeting with, with the, ⁓ the prospect, even before they're paying customer, because that first meeting is still probably like, you know, you get, you get one chance to make a good first impression, as I say, right. And so. It's like extremely crucial to the whole process without having that first meeting be ⁓ an experience that they'll remember. ⁓ Nothing else much really matters, right? Because the chances are low that you're gonna actually convert into a paying customer. So it's really crucial to think of that first. meeting as actually part of the onboarding process, even though onboarding technically is after they've paid you, right? But ⁓ it's all part of the customer experience, right? And you want every aspect of the customer experience to be something that you have planned for. And ⁓

speaker-0: Yeah, like nothing is left to chance. They didn't have a good experience or bad experience by accident. It was something that was orchestrated.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And, ⁓ and, a lot of it, you know, being able to consistently provide or, yeah, provide a consistent experience when it comes to onboarding is making sure that you have it figured out what it is that you're offering your clients. So you need to nail down your offer, right? ⁓ You're doing one, one thing really well, you know, ideally. ⁓ yeah. So that helps make it easy on you, right? Because you know exactly what it is that you have to offer. And so it makes it easier to kind of figure out, well, what, what steps do I need them to take along this path so that they're getting the best experience possible, you know, built around what does I have to offer? Right. So it makes sense, right?

speaker-0: And I think to some of that, ⁓ depending on well, depending on what kind of business you have, ⁓ I think part of that is you want to you want them to have a quick win as well. So that they feel like, ⁓ this is the right decision.

speaker-1: Yeah, yes. I think that the technical term is ⁓ you want them to get, have a faster time to first value. This is, this is the jargon, right? That's the quick win, right? ⁓ And if you can provide that in a free initial call, you know, know, all they did was, you know, they gave you something. They probably exchanged their email to sign up on your calendar.

speaker-0: Absolutely.

speaker-1: They gave you something there. And so you're providing some value back in return in that case. And that starts the relationship right off the bat. faster time to first value. It increases the likelihood that you're going to activate them and keep them interested. They're going to remember that, right? And so on and so forth. It kind of snowballs from there.

speaker-0: Right? than when we talk about like say their first seven to 14 days. We want that to happen in that time period.

speaker-1: Yeah, well, what should they see? Hear, see, and feel. That's the question, right? In those first seven to 14 days. And I think it's interesting to think about it from that perspective. Because we're people, we sometimes forget about that, right? In the online world. Because we're separated by miles and communicating over the internet and whatnot. It's easy to forget that we're all people and we all ⁓ see things, hear things, feel things in different ways. assuming that you're, you have functioning faculties, I guess, but that's another conversation. But this is like, goes back, it takes me back to ⁓ freshmen creative writing, know, thinking about. the five senses, right? Appealing to the five senses to make your writing more interesting. ⁓ What does the character see, hear, feel, taste, touch, smell ⁓ in the scene that they're in, right? And so.

speaker-0: That's a good exercise to go through. Yeah. I love reading books and reading like good stories and the best ones are the ones that like pull you into wherever the character is. Well, you know, they're all their different senses. Like what's what's happening.

speaker-1: Yeah, some of my favorite writers, believe it or not, ⁓ Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. I have read them, the way. It's incredible the amount of detail that these guys get. And it's translated into English from Russian, obviously, wow. Like anytime they could paint a vivid picture in my mind where it's just like, whoa, I'm, I can, I am.

speaker-0: BAM!

speaker-1: That is some

speaker-0: You know who else was really good at that Tom Clancy. Like hunt for red October.

speaker-1: Yeah! I've never seen the movie

speaker-0: I the book. Yeah, I read the whole series, that whole series. And just the amount of detail, describing what it's like in that submarine and the pins and needles that they're on when they're hearing the different pings and, know, okay, let's dive deeper. We to make sure that we're out of the... It's really incredible.

speaker-1: It's just... Yeah. So keeping that in mind when you are thinking about how am I going to orchestrate this experience for my client? ⁓ What are they going to hear from me? What are they going to see when they first encounter me? How am going to make them feel? These are very important. ⁓ What impression do I want to leave them with, in other words, ⁓ Extremely, extremely important. In your mind, ⁓ Simone, I think you talked about ⁓ having a sequence built around onboarding. Do you have any ⁓ messages that could be considered pre-onboarding? Have you ever?

speaker-0: I can't say I've ever done a sequence that's pre-onboarding except for like, say if you're thinking about ⁓ the conversion experience ⁓ or say, I used to do this with my music clients. had a sequence that, say they would pay for something, pay for a masterclass or pay for a training or something or, you know, pay to get a package. And then the very next step ⁓ I had, I had, yeah, I guess I kind of an onboarding say, ⁓ I built a page that had a video on it that says, okay, you're in, ⁓

speaker-1: it.

speaker-0: You know, welcome, congratulations, you've made a great decision. And now there's a video that gives them an overview of say the dashboard or, ⁓ you know, and shows them like what their email inbox should look like when the email lands in their inbox, right? You know, look for an email that looks like this. And ⁓ then I would also have say a calendar on that page where they can book their ⁓ onboarding call. So I guess you could say that that's kind of a pre ⁓ onboarding sequence that we can do.

speaker-1: I have gone through the process of figuring out ⁓ what exactly goes into what I call the growth clarity call, which is my initial call that is specifically geared around someone who has a problem that they feel that I can help them solve, So potential prospects, in other words. Networking meetings, that's another thing, right? or kind of like a one-to-one that kind of develops into that, that's a little bit different. So we won't go into that one, but ⁓ I've tried really hard to kind of, you know, this is what I mean when I say growth clarity call, what exactly that means, what steps are going to be taken, the types of things, the types of questions that I'm going to be asking to the point where like the the, ⁓ the, when they're booking it on their calendar, like the calendar booking entry form requires them to add answer six questions, right? Which is going to tell me a lot about where they are already upfront. And, ⁓ from that, I, ⁓ build out the, the outline of the conversation that we're going to have. And it's going to be different for different people based on where they are. Right. But the main structure is going to be. They're gonna be essentially the same.

speaker-0: same. ⁓

speaker-1: Yeah, so I think I think messaging here is kind of like in quotes like there's a lot of things that go into messaging, right? It's it's not just words. It's it's it's how you're making them feel the process that you're taking them through making them feel that you know what you're doing, right? And making them feel at ease. ⁓ Which is going to translate into, you know, faster time to ⁓ to convert basically.

speaker-0: Yeah, you know, this discussion makes me think of the discussion we had ⁓ earlier, maybe a couple weeks ago on on branding and how all of it, every every interaction with the customer, everything they see, they hear ⁓ is is part of your branding. How how are you making them feel that that impression that you're giving that you're giving to them? So it that branding message. doesn't necessarily stop when the person becomes a client. Now it, you have to reinforce it even more and it becomes, it becomes a thing that, that they need to, they need to keep seeing, right? There's that external and, and internal ⁓ messaging, but they both have to come together and, and make sense.

speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think that messaging is an apt term here because it's sort of like a discrete package. You know what saying? Like that's how I kind of think of messaging, right? Messaging is different from a scramble of words, right? Like it's something that you have thought through. This is the thing, right? And by the same token, like this process and branding, right? This process. is branded like that. That is part of your branding. You know, like you could say this is the GHG unlimited way of onboarding. you know, this is what we you could even like build like this is how we want the client to feel during this process, et cetera. And so on and so forth. Like you can really go into some serious detail on that and you probably should. So but you don't you do run the risk of potentially over-complicating things. You don't want to do that either. So what should we standardize first? What do you think?

speaker-0: Standardize, I would say, ⁓ maybe the very next thing that happens after the prospect becomes a client, and that would be their welcome message. Or maybe part of the welcome message, because if you have different clients that are ⁓ purchasing different things, maybe some are high ticket, some are low ticket. Everybody gets a welcome message. Welcome aboard. We're here to help. ⁓ This is where you can find resources for for support that kind of thing. And then maybe then maybe it branches off depending on the type of client it is. If it's a high ticket client. ⁓ OK, schedule your onboarding call here. A low ticket client. You know you will find your download here. That kind of thing.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's an easy, quick win when it comes to building your onboarding process, I would say, because you can use AI very easily to help you build this quickly. you know, I highly recommend getting a human in there to making sure that it's really customized to the experience that you want to ⁓ impress on your clients, right? Don't just leave it completely to AI to do for you, in other words.

speaker-0: Yeah, that goes back to our previous discussion about AI having that human oversight. If the AI is, if you're allowing the AI to make all of the decisions, it can make wrong decisions. ⁓ I feel like we as the humans should be the ones to design our onboarding process. Like this is what I want. to have happen. ⁓ I want my client to experience this first and then this thing and then that thing. ⁓ And then you have the AI help you to put together maybe the messaging for each of those steps or help you to determine ⁓ exactly how those steps are implemented. But you as the human, you decide, okay, this is how I want it to flow. And then let the AI help you. to manage that flow.

speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. So let's get into how thinking about this in terms of the V3 pillars, know, visibility, viability and value. So for the visibility portion, remember visibility applies not just to the audience that you're trying to attract. That's very important for visibility, obviously, but visibility is also important for the team internally in your organization. And making sure that everybody's on the same page is crucial ⁓ for that customer experience, for everybody's experience really across the board, which is going back to our conversation with Rachel again about branding. We touched on that too, right? How important it is. Everybody in the organization is on board with ⁓ the way things are done and is communicating that experience in everything they do. And one of the best ways to be able to do that obviously is keeping your team informed, giving them the information that they need, not leaving it up to chance, know, making sure that everybody has everything that they need so that they can do their part to make sure that the customer has a great experience, right? All right. So some of those things we talked about pre-onboarding. So, you know, what the heck is that, right? And you had mentioned that welcome sequence. I think that is a pre-onboarding ⁓ before you actually have the onboarding call, right? Maybe we can think about it that way. And ⁓ some suggestions might be ⁓ going along with that, know, what setting the expectations, what happens this week, ⁓ how to prepare for the actual onboarding call itself. if that's required. And again, this all depends on the industry that you're in and whatnot and kind of information that you're going to need from them. And knowing this beforehand, knowing what your offer is, is going to, again, make this a lot easier on you. ⁓ And then ⁓ maybe there's an intake form that they fill out beforehand, which can help get things going. more smoothly if there's information that you need from them. Like if you're designing a website, then maybe you need their logos, their brand colors, their URL. Maybe you're helping out with their social media and so you would need access to their social media channels. Maybe you have a document that shows them how to give you access, something like that. which you could go over that in the onboarding call if need be, but if they want to get a head start, then there's the option. ⁓ But also I think is important, what are their goals? What are the constraints around whatever it is that you're doing for them? ⁓ The systems that are going to be involved, and that could be a lot of different things. And then who are the stakeholders? Who's going to be impacted by this and who has the final say around it? One of the things that one of my clients was having trouble with was he would work with lead generators for his ⁓ business. He would get the leads, he would set the appointment, go out there, have a conversation. And at the end of the conversation, they would say something like, well, I'll I'm going to have to talk this over with my wife because they weren't there, you know? And every time is like my client just didn't remember to ask about this, you know? And so what ends up happening there is, you know, it causes a lot of friction and slows the process down when you don't have everybody there at the same time for the same meeting, right? There's lots of people.

speaker-0: The decision makers right? Yeah, get the decision makers on the call rather than You know, maybe the guy's not gonna be making the decision. He's he's collecting he's collecting ⁓ information But he's not the one to make the decision

speaker-1: Yeah, there's that whole game of telephone, right? I'm sure everybody's played that. ⁓ You tell one thing to one person and by the time it gets to the end of the line, it's a completely different

speaker-0: It's a completely different message.

speaker-1: It's much easier, much faster if you have everybody there at the beginning with so think that through. Having a snapshot of the client beforehand to share with the team and then make, know, having the CRM central location for this information is extremely helpful, let's just say. Giving everybody access to that, you know, so that they know what's coming up, who this person is and all the and all the details.

speaker-0: So it makes sense, it makes a difference what types of tools you're using.

speaker-1: Yeah, for sure.

speaker-0: sure everybody gets that visibility.

speaker-1: Yep. Yep. All right. So we talked about what an effective day zero, day one message might look like. We talked about the welcome message anyway. What about the first full sequence? What goes into an effective sequence, would you say, Simone?

speaker-0: First full sequence, ⁓ I would say, yeah, the welcome message. ⁓ Tell them what to expect and what their responsibility is and what your responsibility is.

speaker-1: I think I'll interject real quick and say, think with telling them what to expect, guiding them on ⁓ what your intended first value is, you know, maybe, maybe telling them, you know, this is what we're intending as far as like the value that we're going to provide here. this, and, in other words, like, even if it's like the initial call, doesn't necessarily have to be the sequence, but it can be and it should be. But even on the initial call, setting it up from the start and saying, this is what I want you to get out of this conversation from the start at the end, highlighting that so that they're paying attention to it can be crucial. ⁓ so. It's psychological trick, right? It's not really a trick, but basically, like, what is it? Like, you have to tell them what's going on. Guide them along the path, right? Otherwise, they're just going to go to get their own conclusions, potentially.

speaker-0: And I've told several clients, is myself is to, you know, what is that path to success for your client to get them from where they are now to where they want to be? What is that? What does that path look like? ⁓ and I believe like every, every founder, every company owner needs to decide that for themselves. Like, you know, what's it, what does it look like for, for your client to have success?

speaker-1: Yeah. And what at the end of working with you on the other side of that, what is that going to look like? Paint the picture, get everybody on board with that too. What is going to be considered acceptable when it comes to the final deliverable? ⁓ Who's going to be doing what? What's the schedule involved? Are there any risks we need to consider? All of this is

speaker-0: and how they keep track of all the steps. Absolutely.

speaker-1: I would definitely include that in my first sequence, you said, setting expectations. I think that's all kind of part of setting expectations. ⁓ All right. So you had mentioned having different buyer types, clients with different needs. So how do we go about tailoring that situation?

speaker-0: Maybe the thing to do is to fit them into broad categories. Like say, you know, you may have some clients that are service based and some that are more local, brick and mortar type businesses. And maybe their onboarding messages are going to be different. ⁓ Or maybe you have some ⁓ clients that are in the real estate ⁓ arena and then others that are in. That are in, ⁓ you know, manufacturing or or home services. And so you would put them into broader categories and have have different messages going out for for each. ⁓ and of course it makes sense to have a system where you can, you can tag those clients and segment them into these different groups so that when you're putting together and I'm assuming we're going to talk about automating this whole thing. that when yeah, because it could be a lot. ⁓ that when you get the system knows what type of client they are and we'll send them the correct message.

speaker-1: Yeah, this is why having one ideal customer avatar, client avatar, makes it a heck of a lot easier on you.

speaker-0: Yeah, it's very helpful. It's very helpful. I haven't found it. I haven't found it or found it within myself to hand off a client to somebody else though. I think it's not yet.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

speaker-0: It's the

speaker-1: Yeah, it's the whole, what do you call it? ⁓ it's kind of like a, by creating an exclusion, it makes people want to work with you. I know you work with real estate agents, you know, can you work with ⁓ home services too? You ⁓ it actually is like this counterintuitive thing, right? Where you think you're by excluding people that you're, you're shrinking your

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: available market, but it actually has the opposite effect.

speaker-0: Expanding it. Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting that it that it happens that way. ⁓ I had I had a coach who her niche was black women. That's all she that's that's her company name. That's who she wants to work with. But And she's out on social media and she's giving her talks and doing her free master classes and webinars and different things. And she creates a community. You know, you go through the members list and you'll see other people in, that list. And I'm thinking, now this is very interesting because she is just very open and very clear. This is for black women, but you'll see other people showing up. Why? Because they like her message. They feel, they feel an affinity with her. And they decide, you know, this is the community for me. This is where I want to be. Yeah. It's really great. Just saying.

speaker-1: I know. I know someone who, you know, her whole business is I help female entrepreneurs buy businesses. But I've talked to her, you know, like, hey, you know, and be curious about what she has to offer. And she could definitely help me out, even though I'm not a female, but you know. ⁓

speaker-0: Yeah

speaker-1: A lot of it comes down to do you know the individual and the fact that you know that they understand how important it is to kind of set up the parameters around what they have to offer and who they're going after. That in and of itself says a lot. And so you're like, you know, they know what they're doing. I want to talk to them, you know. Anyway. Another thing, going back to expectations ⁓ real quick. ⁓ Have you ever heard of RACI? ⁓

speaker-0: No, I haven't.

speaker-1: The acronym. So this is something that comes up in ⁓ I like ⁓ puzzle app to help map out my processes and whatnot. And they use this. But ⁓ it stands for responsible. So that's the person who's doing the actual work involved with whatever it is. being part of, again, part of that onboarding process. Knowing who's responsible, who's accountable. Accountable is the person who is going to have the final sign off or ⁓ the authority to say, know, job well done. You know, let's let's get this to the client. The other one C stands for consulted. So this is the subject matter expert who has needed or required input. They're not necessarily responsible. They're not accountable, but we need to consult with them to find out, you know, the information that we need in order to give an effective outcome. Right. And then the final one, I, is informed. So these are the people that are updated on the progress, and they may be stakeholders, for example, but they're not maybe the ones who are responsible for the actual outcome, accountable, et cetera. And it's very useful and helpful to think that through. Who are the people that fit those categories? If you have one fitted in those slots, at least one, chances are you're going to have your basses covered, right? But the process of thinking that through is extremely, extremely useful, especially in that initial stage, just to make sure that you don't let things fall to the cracks. ⁓ All right. So let's get into that. That kind of leads nicely into the next segment here. viability. And the point here is we want to align our sales and delivery so that, you know, hopefully our business growth isn't creating more chaos than we really intended. And ⁓ I guess, speaking of automations, so which automations would help here to reduce the amount of chaos and overwhelm that a client may feel in the early days? What examples would be like, know, status nudges, access checklists, scheduling, all that kind of stuff? What do you think,

speaker-0: Yeah, I think about like, say, ⁓ automating documents that need to be signed, such as ⁓ contracts and contracts and estimates, things like that that need to be signed off on your, your buyers pipeline where you are, you're walking them through through set steps and you can see, you can see where everybody is along the steps. And each of those steps doesn't necessarily need to be, ⁓ but doesn't need to be a manual process. So like the project that I'm working on right now, it's almost completely automated. There's like one step in there where a human has to step in to eyeball all the documents that have been uploaded from the client. And then they'll move the person into a status in the pipeline. and then the automation takes over again from there. ⁓ But each step of the way, it's automated based on the actions that the client takes. their first action is to, like say, they choose, I'm working on a car rental app, the first step is to choose their car, choose what day that they wanna pick it up and the time that they wanna pick it up. ⁓ and then they put down a deposit. Once that happens, the system will make sure it has everything it needs and then moves them to the next step automatically. So yeah, having a system like that that just kind of moves your client through the steps automatically without a human necessarily having to oversee every single step is very ⁓ It's very handy and helpful.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: It saves a lot of time and allows you to scale too, because ⁓ you're going to want having a system in place like that. It allows you to be able to manage a lot of clients at once without a human being bogged down in all of the day-to-day minutia.

speaker-1: . Yeah, I've said this before, but there's a reason why nurses and pilots use checklists. Let's make the world go round, you know? Every time, it doesn't matter how many years or how many hours a pilot has, they always go through the same checklist just to make sure.

speaker-0: So.

speaker-1: before taking off, making sure that they have done everything, And the same goes with nurses in hospitals and whatnot, making sure, hey, have we checked this, have we checked this, have we done this, blah, blah, blah. Very, very important to do that. Yeah, why couldn't we use a similar situation with our clients to make sure that we're leaving nothing to chance when it comes to their onboarding experience, right? That's the idea. And ⁓ by golly, if we can automate that, wow, even better. But ⁓ we were talking earlier about a tool called Process Street that I'm a big fan of where you know, you can automate the handoffs between people. So let's say this person A is responsible for blah, blah, blah, blah. Once they're done and they've uploaded their information, then they get kicked over automatically to the next person who is maybe the accountable person, right? So like thinking about that RACI process. So the responsible person checks the checklist, all the things that they have to do. And then they kick it over to the... the person who's accountable, who's going to sign off on it, in other words. And that process gets automated. They are automatically updated on where the situation is. They get a notification in their program, and it has access links to all the documentation that they can look through. They don't have to go asking for it, know, all this kind of stuff. And if it looks good, can sign off, check, check, check their boxes, whatever, and sign off on it. And it's good to go to the next ⁓ stage. ⁓ And during that process, of course, there may be some way that you need to consult with. And so that could be part of that process too. Or inform, right? We need to update the client or the stakeholders, whoever that may be on the progress. And maybe those could be like weekly meetings, ⁓ having that there in a checklist format and then having the whole thing automated, ⁓ great. ⁓ Okay. Yeah.

speaker-0: of time.

speaker-1: Um, okay. And let's see here. Let's go. Let's get into value. Um, so at the risk of sounding like we're creating, helping create, um, know, franchises, the idea here is that you're productizing the experience essentially, which leads to scalability and course, sellability, you know, who doesn't, who wouldn't want to buy a business that has all of this already sorted out. Like that is exponentially more valuable ⁓ for the potential buyer looking, looking out there, looking for a business to buy into, you know, unless they really like to get in and roll their sleeves up and, know, all that nitty gritty. Yeah.

speaker-0: I'm sorry. All right.

speaker-1: If they're buying a business, there's a reason why they're buying it instead of building one their own.

speaker-0: They want to a system that is that's already working already bringing in money without without them and without the founder having to be to be in it on a daily basis.

speaker-1: Yeah. So the onboarding process itself in that case is an asset internally to the business and can't be stressed enough how vital it becomes, right? ⁓ You've taken the time and the energy and the effort to think through all of this. That is a valuable asset to the business. There's no question. ⁓ And so we talked a little bit about early wins, low hanging fruit. How do you go about ⁓ getting those early wins?

speaker-0: Well, I guess like you said, pick the low hanging fruit and do that first. Do that quickly. Are you get it out of the way and and show the and show some show the client some action and some get them some quick feedback and and then go go through the the harder the harder things. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah. There's the core path that you take them on, right? We talked about this a little bit earlier. There's always going to be tangentials, right? ⁓ Some offshoots. Maybe this client doesn't want this thing, but they want this other thing over here. Okay, well, we can figure that out. But everybody gets the same initial treatment upfront. think... ⁓ is a crucial part of that productizing, ⁓ that onboarding process. And then, ⁓ Hmm. Do you use like portals or hubs or anything like that for your clients?

speaker-0: For some of them, yes. Some of them, do have, we do have a portal, like say for my real estate client, we do have a portal for the real estate agents to go in and be able to see each other and interact with each other. So we built a portal separate from the one that's actually, that comes with our CRM. But then other clients, they don't necessarily have a portal. You know, they get interaction with. With the owner with the system, ⁓ just in their emails and text messages.

speaker-1: Do you, for those clients that are using portals, do you find that there's a certain layout of the portal that tends to be ⁓ better than others when it comes to making it as least confusing as possible?

speaker-0: Yeah, does help to not have too many menu items where where people can get lost. ⁓ And then I've also been especially like for the real estate client. I've also been intentional about what page do they land on when they log in. So that they are they landing on a directory where they're seeing the other other agents in the system. Do they land on their own dashboard where it shows them. like an inbox of messages that they've gotten and shows them their own stats, that kind of thing. it all depends on, it depends on the client and like what, what kind of experience they want their clients to have.

speaker-1: Yeah, I have, ⁓ I'm kind of like shifting my client hub experience off of one platform onto another. And so I'm kind of in between to a certain extent, but one of the clients that I'm building out the new ⁓ portal for, you know, we're primarily using it to track a project that we're working on together. And so I'm just wanting them to be up to date. there's a Kanban, these are the different things that we're working on. These are the different stages that it's in. And you can follow along here as we go and have access to all the pertinent information regarding each of those individual things that we're working on, all in one spot. Makes it super, super simple. And there's the folder structure on the side, but everything is as easy as possible. You you click here and it's a drop down and you know, just trying to keep it as clean and uncluttered I think is crucial. The first page that they go to is the actual ⁓ Kanban project board. So that's all that's on there basically. And then some links into some folders, but that's it. ⁓ All right, good deal. So, ⁓ Trying to think here. Okay, so another thing going along with this and creating value and having that onboarding process be a valuable tool in the business is that you are incorporating training into it so that your team is 100 % onboard with it and... there's a process revolved that involves training new team members as they come on to the actual process itself, right? It's like this meta process you have to have. incorporating training, making sure that everybody's on the same page, up to speed. ⁓ Maybe there's like, have you ever seen, ⁓ my wife has been watching The Pit on ⁓ HBO. And it's this because she's studying to be a nurse now. ⁓ it's all about working in a hospital in, I guess, Pittsburgh. But ⁓ there's a lot of trainees, a lot of ⁓ new ⁓ doctors and nurses and the process that they're going through with shadowing and seeing how things are done, you know, that kind of stuff. So similar in this case, you know. there may be a need for shadowing. I know one ⁓ of my clients, ⁓ he said that that's one of the main ways that they onboard new salespeople. They throw them in a truck with the other salespeople, they go on the routes, they go meet the people. And that's the extent of the training. Like, okay, I guess that could work to some extent. There's probably some finer details in there that could be hashed out and systematized.

speaker-0: them to learning by experience rather than sitting in a classroom and just being electric too.

speaker-1: Yeah, don't discount the actual experience of doing the thing, right? ⁓ But again, you could also have a checklist involved for Q &A, which is also something that's very simple to do, relatively speaking. ⁓ All right. What else?

speaker-0: So here's a question. Where do you draw the line between customization and standardization? Right? We talked about productizing a process, but what if that process doesn't work for every single client that you have? Because, you know, we tend to have different clients and especially if we're working in different niches.

speaker-1: Exactly. that's we talked about that. I talked about earlier a little bit ago about the core path. Like there's a everyone follows the standard, you know, three or four step process. But then from there, depending on the outcome of one of them could determine what extra path or diverting path they may take there. And I guess it's just, you know, thinking that through. I guess what a experience that you to take your clients on? ⁓ In other words, everybody needs to experience this about.

speaker-0: of say like everybody gets the gets an initial welcome message that says, you know, congratulations. Welcome aboard. This is how you get into the portal.

speaker-1: I used to have a three email welcome sequence set up for my clients and it would be welcome aboard. The first one would be like welcome aboard. This is who I am. I'm happy to work with you. This is the information I need initially and asking a question about what does success look like to you going forward or something like that. I can't remember now precisely what it was. And told them that I was going to check back with them in about a week or so. And so the next one came up a week later and it said, okay, we're back here. So what's the answer to my question from the previous one? And then gave them maybe some additional information ⁓ and gave them the opportunity to to let me know some feedback, right? Give me your feedback. Let me know how it's going. ⁓ What can be improved? And then 30 days down the road was the last one. Okay, now we've worked together for a month, right? You should be experiencing this, this and this. Where are you? Are you experiencing these? If not, why not? That kind of a question. ⁓ So a lot of it was built around feedback and just letting them know that I'm there, I'm open to hearing their feedback and interacting with them, know, and I'm available, right? I think that's crucial. ⁓ But everybody would get those. So I'm currently in the process of refining that, but yeah. Um, but then from there, obviously, like all bets are off, right? So like, kind of depends. But again, going back to what I said earlier, if, if you have one offer, it makes it a heck of a lot easier for you to figure that out.

speaker-0: It does. It does. If you have a lot of different offers, the onboarding has got to look different depending on the offer.

speaker-1: You're going to have to have a sequence built around each of the offers. I mean, it just makes sense,

speaker-0: Yeah, so you'll have to so in your automation path, you'll have to be you have to determine like what did they buy and depending on what they bought what happens next.

speaker-1: Yeah. And there may be, it may be where the customization becomes standardized. You know, maybe you have, you found that you've had enough clients asking for this, that you should probably make it part of the process, right?

speaker-0: Yeah. Don't they say like if you've done something three times, document it and automate it or delegate it.

speaker-1: document Exactly. So it's a fine line. And I would say it's going to take time to figure that out. You're really going to have to think it through. But first step would be, what does everybody need to experience? That's the ⁓ crucial bit. All right. Good deal. So. ⁓ what else we got here? We've got some, ⁓ metrics. Should we talk a little bit about metrics? We talked about that, ⁓ did a whole series on them. I kind of, I kind of touched on this already with, NPS, like how are they feeling along the way is, is important, I think for that onboarding, ⁓ giving them opportunity to fill out. a ⁓ survey, know, say, hey, just take a few minutes of your time, let us know how it's going, how you're feeling. Not always perfect, so not everybody's gonna be doing it. Obviously, the more clients that you have, the more effective that's gonna be numbers-wise, you know, ⁓ because you're gonna have a better picture, I guess, like from a bigger aggregate pool. ⁓ And I don't know, maybe there's something to be said for people feeling shy about being direct and sharing how they're actually feeling. A lot of people may not necessarily do that. It helps.

speaker-0: ask for anonymous feedback as well or make the contact information, ⁓ make it optional, not mandatory.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. And you can also incorporate third parties who are involved with that, you know, to help you. So maybe a neutral third party to gather the information, you know. All right. Good deal. Do you, Simone, are you ⁓ collecting information like that on your clients or?

speaker-0: it depends on what they purchase. So yes. So say they, they were to purchase like my, my top level package. ⁓ I'm going to do a full two, two and a half, three hour mapping session with them because I want to know everything top to bottom of their client journey and, and also make suggestions on What it can look like what what needs to be improved. If they purchase say just a 1 hour coaching session with me. I'm not going to ask them a whole lot. I'm going to ask them what's not working. What do you want to work better? And then we focus our session around that question. Yeah. So, yeah, it depends on what it is they purchase.

speaker-1: ⁓ Yeah, yeah, I have ⁓ a survey that goes out, especially for the ones that have been with me for more than a year. ⁓ I send out a special ⁓ automated email ⁓ asking them specifically to fill out a form, let me know how we're doing, what we can change. So far, actually, nobody's taken me up on it. ⁓

speaker-0: Right here. I have a hard time getting people to take me up on it too, because I have a feedback forum. asked them, hey, give me your feedback. And I sent multiple reminders. So I finally did get one the other day, actually. ⁓ They gave me five stars and they gave me some great feedback, but I don't know who it was. They didn't give me their name and email address. It was completely anonymous.

speaker-1: Yeah. Well, I guess that's an anonymous pat on the back. That's good.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. So I can't go back and thank the person.

speaker-1: Yeah, asking them questions, asking them, you know, when did they feel that they first experienced that first time to first value, right, that we talked about earlier. Knowing that information is a good metric. So asking questions around that somehow, figuring that out, getting them on a call, perhaps. How long does it take them to ⁓ access things like the dashboard that you have set up for them, et cetera? Keeping tabs on that. If you are giving them something, there's a project that you're involved with, ⁓ making sure that you are sticking to the milestones that have been set up, right, and you're delivering on time. And then... ⁓ scoring their clients as far as the efforts that's involved ⁓ with making them happy, I guess, or generally speaking. That's an interesting idea, right? Like keeping tabs. ⁓ It's sort of like an arbitrary number, one through 10, how hard or how relatively easy it is to work with this client. That might be actually a good number to keep track of.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, it should be.

speaker-1: Or how much effort they felt. Maybe that's another take on it too, right?

speaker-0: Yeah, I actually have to do ⁓ a performance score in my real estate app. And I was thinking, well, these numbers actually have to show up on the profile, but I don't want a number, you know, for some people, the number is 10,000 and for another person, the number is two. So I'm like, okay, let's keep it in a specific range. ⁓ I went to both Claude and chat GPT to ask, to help me come up with an algorithm for this number. How do I do the scoring so that when I'm displaying it, it's not just this giant large number. And some people have like next to nothing and other people have hundreds of thousands. And yeah, so it helped me come up with an algorithm that would work. I think that's something to maybe ask AI about. How do I score this?

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah.

speaker-0: That's a good way of doing it, yeah. ⁓

speaker-1: Handy uses for AI, say. Yeah. All right, so let's get into some pitfalls and how to maybe fix it here. ⁓ One thing we touched on earlier, ⁓ maybe you have too many offers and there's too much customization. ⁓ And so an easy way, well, not an easy way, but a good way to fix that is to have that core path plus those optional tangents. But keeping it so that you know what those tangents are helps keep that over-customization problem at bay. ⁓ If you are working on something with a team and there's no clear owner, that's a problem. So incorporating something like RACI and then having a path for escalation. where if something's going wrong, the client can escalate it and let you know, et cetera, is gonna be key. And then ⁓ maybe it's not clear what that first value is. We talked about earlier, right? Like making sure that you're letting them know what it is, what value you're trying to deliver, and then asking them later on, how did we do on that? ⁓

speaker-0: Good. That first value. I think that first value is a really, really good, really good idea. ⁓ There is a, there's a community that I joined that, that helps, that helps people to build communities and their, their first value is, and it's, it's stated kind of everywhere. It's kind of a part of their brand, you know, being a part of this free community. we're going to help you get to your first 100 members in your community within like the first 90 days or something like that. You know, it's how they help you. And it's very, it's quantifiable and there's a time limit on it. It's, it's, you know, it's a really solid first value. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah. Nice. So the other other problem here is tool sprawl. You got too many things happening. So if you have if you can consolidate things and put it into one spot, all the better for everybody involved, right? That's where you know if you can put everything into the one Holy Grail of does everything hub, right? ⁓ Fantastic. Standardizing. Naming and all that kind stuff is useful using the same things across the board. ⁓ Maybe the other problem could be where you're under communicating. You're not giving enough information. There you setting up a weekly weekly meeting is is key. Having some type of a visual dashboard where they can, especially when it comes to a project, if they can follow along visually. That means that they don't necessarily have to ask you all the time, right? Where things are at. So great. Just make sure you're updating it. OK. ⁓

speaker-0: I said to someone the other day that you could put systems in place, but if the humans aren't using the system, then the system doesn't work.

speaker-1: All right. And let's see here. Okay, let's, ⁓ I think I'm gonna have to wrap it up here, but. ⁓ Okay. So we talked about ⁓ orchestrating your onboarding process because it's accelerating the value of the business. It's ⁓ accelerating the experience of value that your clients have. ⁓ It's reducing the friction that they feel and doing so, doing both of those things together, makes them trust you more. So win, win, win all around, right?

speaker-0: Yeah, we like those.

speaker-1: Yeah. And if we're looking at it through v3, if it helps you to remember visibility, you're setting clear expectations. You're helping guide decision-making and you're empowering your team if you have one, ⁓ because everybody has the information they need. Viability, right? You're clean. The handoffs are clean. Everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing. The process is automated ideally, you know. ⁓ You have a single source of truth, even better. And then that creates predictability around the whole experience and flow, right? And then value, right? All of that together creates a business that's heck of a lot more valuable because it's standardized, the systems are documented, that helps the business to actually scale and increases the durability of the business in the long run when things, times get tough as they inevitably will. All right. So. Find your first value for your top offer. Hopefully it's just one offer, but if you have more than one offer, you know what path each of those are gonna, you want them to go down. Draft these things that you can do to find your first value for your top offer. Draft a four stage ⁓ path and maybe a three email pre-onboarding sequence that everybody experiences. This is your universal. This is we were talking about the difference between standardization and customization, right? So this is that standard experience that you're having. And then stand up a, maybe you just think of one central location, single source of truth, a hub of some kind, you know, get that going for your clients and start, establish a weekly status update ritual. So those are the things you can do right now this week to, help with your onboarding process.

speaker-0: Fantastic. So, um, if this has helped you subscribe to this channel and we're going to be giving you more clarity and growth conversations as, as we continue. Um, and also if you feel like your company is, has hit a plateau, you're a bit stuck, take that growth ceiling assessment. We'll put the link in the show notes to see if maybe it's onboarding that's capping your growth. and where to fix it first. So we thank you so much for being here with us. And ⁓ if you've learned something today, put the put it into the comments. Let us know what your biggest takeaway was. What's your greatest aha, what you learned and you know, what are you going to do to make the onboarding a bit more smooth? And to orchestrate that onboarding for for your clients, even if you have different types of clients. Right. So we thank you so much for being here with us today and we'll see you next time.