Client onboarding is what happens between when someone agrees to hire you and when work actually starts. Documenting and systematizing this phase makes you look professional and saves time on repetitive tasks.
If there's one thing I really dislike, it's being made to feel stupid by not understanding words people are using. Nonetheless, I recognize that I probably use some words that are jargony and don't make sense, and one of those is client onboarding. So if you have had this word thrown at you or if you've read it somewhere and you're like, what the heck does this mean? Stay tuned for this video. I'm going to explain it in super layman's terms so that way everyone can understand why client onboarding is, while a weird word, very long for what it actually means, is a useful term to just have in your vocabulary when talking about your client processes or your policies and procedures. So. So client onboarding is the stuff that happens in between two goalposts. First, the client says, yes, I would love to work with you, but you haven't yet started the actual work. When you are between those two goal posts, you are in the onboarding zone. I feel like I should have like, meow, meow, meow, foghorns or something. Anyway, so client onboarding is that middle area. And the stuff that normally happens in client onboarding is going to be different by business type. Now here we focus on small service businesses. So there's usually some normal things that happen between these two goalposts. I'll run through a few of them. It might be things like scheduling a kickoff call. It might be a contract, it might be an invoice, it might be a deposit. It might be a welcome kit. It might be a like a thank you or getting excited to work with you card. It might be scheduling the first session. It might be visiting the property and mapping out the timeline. It might be picking out your finishing details. It might be meeting with your team. It might be, okay, no, I think that's good. That's a good might be list if you're with me still. Now, you basically got the, you got it down here. So client onboarding is the stuff that happens between those two goal posts. And when we give it that fancy title of client onboarding, it's basically just implying that we have reflected on it, we've actually thought about what happens and maybe we've written it down somewhere. Whether that's a checklist, whether that's a flowchart, we know what's happening between those, those goal posts. And once we've done that, we graduate to being able to call it client onboarding. That's pretty much it. But if you are a newer business and you're like, oh, that Sounds kind of nice. I would encourage you to watch some of the process mapping videos. I have to just talk about how to map this out because especially when you're newer, writing these things down and getting them really worked out and giving them that name for the phase, the onboarding process, it makes you feel legit, it helps you feel professional, and it helps you answer the question that comes on the fly during the consultation of well, what's my next steps? And you can actually eloquently answer or maybe even throw a PDF at your client explaining exactly what the next steps are. So, you know, fancy terms aside, it's a nice idea to have all of this stuff written down. So especially if you're growing a team, you're delegating. That way it's all there and you can optimize, streamline and improve it once it's a documented system. So that is it for this video. If you'd like to learn more about automations, workflows and all things technology for small businesses, definitely subscribe. Like comment do the things so we can stay engaged. This channel is new, so your love is extra appreciated. And if you have any questions that you'd like to see answered, or terms that you'd like to see broken down in this very casual way, feel free to again leave a comment below or shoot me an email. I read every single email and I reply to every single email. So with that, have a great rest of your day.
