New client onboarding

What the fortnight has to achieve

Three things, in order. The client has to hand over what you need to work, which is documents, access and answers. Your side has to be set up, which is accounts, folders, permissions and whoever is doing the work knowing what they are doing. And both sides have to agree what happens first, because the single most common onboarding failure is a client who thinks work has started and a team that thinks it is still waiting.

What the client is experiencing

Silence, mostly, punctuated by requests. They have just committed money and the first thing that happens is homework. Every day of quiet after a signature costs you goodwill you spent months earning, which is why a short status note on a fixed day beats a perfect process that communicates nothing until it is finished.

Sizing it so it repeats

Count the steps, count the documents, multiply by the clients you take a month, and you have the workload in hours rather than in impressions. The free worksheet on this site does it and also returns the onboardings in flight at any moment, which is the number that tells you when one person stops being enough.

The handover from sales

Whatever was promised during the sale is now an onboarding obligation, and it is rarely written down. A one page handover, what was sold, what was promised beyond it, who the contact is, removes most of the surprises that turn a fortnight into a month.