Onboard Clients + Automating Your Systems | Business How To Uplevel | Val Nichols Business Coach

What's up everybody? Val Nichols here coming at you live today. And we are in our business training series, which is Grow with Val. So when you hop on, let me know that you can hear and let me know all the things. What are you guys up to? What are you up to? So today we are going to be diving into the world of client onboarding system. I'm going to teach you guys how to onboard your clients. With confidence and how to come across professional and polished so that you can get more referrals and make more money. If you're looking to streamline your workflow and automate it so you can stop having all the different things, then this training is absolutely for you. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Val Nichols. I am a business coach for heart-centered entrepreneurs just like you who are not only wanting to make great money, doing what they love, but they also have a deep desire to live out their passion and their purpose to help others and to make an impact in the world. So in this training, I will be guiding you through setting up your client onboarding system that ensures a seamless experience for both you and your clients, which is going to save you a ton of time. It is going to help you gather all of your processes, or let's be honest, maybe you guys have a lack of process like I did in the beginning of my business. And I'm ADHD, so let me just show you guys what my process usually looks like, is like a stack of random notes and Post-it notes and things all over the place, right? So if you have a lack of system, just know that this is going to be for you as well. And if you're looking to save time, to automate your process and to make things a lot easier for you and your clients, and it's going to leave a lasting impression on them, then this is absolutely for you. I'm going to cover the steps to get you started, the tools you'll need, and how to automate your process so that you can take on more clients, you can make more money, and create a lasting impression on the clients that you serve. This is going to help you to create more time, more freedom, more confidence, and a heck of a lot more referrals from your existing clients. Creating a beautiful, seamless client experience is one of the biggest keys into getting more referrals. 80% of your business is coming from 20% of your clients. 80% of your business comes from 20%. When you create beautiful, seamless client experience, that is going to give you more cash, more time, and more referrals. For all of you who are joining in live, or if you're on replay, put hashtag replay. If you are the person, if you want more cash, more time, and more referrals, put me in the comments. Say me, I want more cash, more time, and more referrals. So put me in the comments if that's you. Let's begin with the basics, setting up a client onboarding system. And when I say client onboarding system, do you guys know what I'm talking about? And if you don't, that's totally okay because, you know, we were not taught business in our school days unless you went to business school like I did, which it was so stale and boring. And like none of my clients were asking for this stuff. We didn't learn about client onboarding. This is the process that happens when you are taking a client. They have decided that they want to work with you, and that's where I'm assuming you guys are at. Okay? So if you want to know how to get more clients, how to create your marketing system, how to do sales, any of those topics, I can absolutely cover with you. However, right now, this training, I'm assuming you've already done the sales call. If you do that, you've already done the pre-qualifying, and this person has said, Yes, they want to work with you. They've already given that big, beautiful, bold, full-body hell yes, and they're ready to rock. When you're taking your client from they say yes to now you're working with them, there's a whole process in between. You want to know how to set expectations. You want to know how to create boundaries, put boundaries in place that are going to help ensure that you are protecting your energy. And if you guys missed my training on boundaries, put boundaries in the comments. Or you can head on over to my website at valnickels.com/grow, and you can get the replay for that training as well. So when you set up your client onboarding system, it all starts with understanding your workflow and utilizing the tools that are available. If you are an existing business owner, you may have your files all over the place. They might be scratches on graph paper like I have, and that's how I start a lot of my process, when I brainstorm, I really start with pen and paper or pencil and paper because that's just how my brain works. I've got to get it all out where I can see it. But if you're an existing business owner, you may have files all over the place, right? This is something that drove me absolutely insane when I first started my business was that my contracts were over here on this system. And then I had to log into this program and this thing to send that and to do the invoices and all of that. And it just became, Honestly, really overwhelming and caused me burnout in my own business. I have found that it saved me a ton of time, a ton of hassle to have it in one place so that I'm not constantly having to reinvent the wheel, send them 15 different documents. It's like set it, forget it, send it. It's ready to go. I take on a new client, they're onboarded and doing all the things automatically within 5, 10 minutes of them saying yes, everything's in place, the invoices go out, the payment expectations, my commitment to them. Because I do, as a business coach, I take that relationship, the business coach-coachee relationship, so seriously because someone is inviting me. You're inviting me into your company, and that's a very intimate experience. I want to make sure that the process is as streamlined as possible. And you know that I'm going to show up for you in the same way that you are showing up for your company. Well, this is something that I take very serious in my company. In order to be a successful entrepreneur, I'm going to give you guys a little secret here. In order to be a successful entrepreneur and to scale your company in a way that is Sustainable, you must be. I'm not saying do, right? We have a lot of box checkers out there. I myself am a box checker. I love checking the boxes, completing a task. But you have got to be two things. Someone write that in the comment. Say be. We've got to be two things if we want to be able to grow and scale our business in a way that is sustainable. Sustainable and that is profitable, we've got to be 2 things. So number one is we get to be— notice how I say get to— our language, the way we speak to ourselves, the way we speak to our companies is so important. So we get to be someone who works smarter. When you automate your process and you work smarter You now have more time, more capacity, more bandwidth to be able to take on more clients to serve and create a bigger impact in the world. So number one is you get to be someone who works smarter. Number 2 is you get to be someone who makes decisions quickly and is willing to say yes to their next level in order to be a successful entrepreneur. You've got to know how to make decisions quickly and then be willing to say yes to your next level. Are you willing to step up to the challenges, to face the unknown? If that's you, I want you to put step up in the comments. Step up. Yes, you must step up if you want to experience the level of success That buys you more time freedom so you can spend the time doing things that you love with your family, traveling the world. But if you want the time freedom and the security for you, for your future, and for your family's future, you've got to be the person who makes decisions quickly and is willing to step up to create the future. that you truly desire. For the most effective onboarding strategies that you can have, I am going to share these with you guys and know that, you know, for myself, I have found the most effective is to create consistency, have it on one platform. And for me, that has been HoneyBook. It's a company called HoneyBook. So I'm going to put a link in the comments. If you guys want to join, you get a free trial and then you get 50% off for the year if you choose to do that. And it is so stinking affordable. This has literally changed my life. So look for the code, put a code in the comments where you guys can go try it out, get 50% off. This has literally created such a beautiful, consistent system for me that I wanna share it with you guys as well. So first off, make sure that your brand assets, your logo, your fonts, all of those things really integrate what your business is about. And if you guys aren't there yet, you know, if you don't have your consistency, I would recommend creating consistency, create a brand because creating a brand is going to help you stand out among your competition in ways that you will never believe. So you want to make sure that with your onboarding system, everything is very streamlined. It looks the same. This is again why I love HoneyBook because you can just upload all of it one time in one place and it is all over your contracts, your invoices, everything. It does it for you. So make sure that you upload logo, set your brand colors, your fonts, and you want to integrate your business email accounts. So you want to make sure that when you send the contract, when you send the invoice, the reminders of invoice, reminders of unpaid invoices, which is why again, I love HoneyBook because it sends me reminders when I have unpaid clients, Because we were doing it on another system. These invoices were unpaid, and it kind of like caught up to us in a way of like crap. And so I love that it sends reminders. And you know again, building a brand is absolutely essential in today's economy. So if you want to know more about building a brand, I'm your girl. Come talk to me. Brand consistency not only builds trust. But it helps you bring more people from your cold market into your warm market or even your hot market. And the difference between that is cold market is the world, a networking event, social media. A warm market are people who like you, know you, maybe they'll buy from you. The hot market is the one who says, heck yes, we're ready to purchase, to buy. And I've taken people from relatively not knowing who I was seeing me on a training like this, or I was actually on a Zoom call to consult with a client. And the woman who was pitching my client ended up hiring me. We had never met before, total complete strangers into— she hired me as a one-on-one client. So it absolutely can happen quickly if you want it to. And so next you want to add your business account. You want to make sure that you are getting all of your invoices, your payments, everything set up. Very streamlined on your platform. If you want to organize all of your files, again, something like HoneyBook is a great way to really organize everything and customize them to fit your brand and your clients' needs. So what I like to do is with my contract, I set it out and then I actually set up and say, hey, welcome so-and-so. We have a beautiful banner that we have that's customized. It welcomes them into our world. It welcomes us into the beautiful brand. And it also customizes certain things like here's your package that you purchased, whether if it's a 3-month, a 6-month, a 12-month package. Here's your dates that your payments are due. Here's the ways to pay and the different options. And then it'll also say, hey, the invoices are going to go out on this day. Here's how you book a call. So that's another important thing if you guys are a service provider. How do they book a call with you? What are the calls? And again, you guys can go back and watch my business boundaries training that I did, and that is absolutely going to help you cover all of those things. Once you set up your initial automation process, you want to make sure that you are sending out reminders to clients for tasks that are due. We actually have reminders that go out for days that they have scheduled because we are wearing a million hats. And you never know. So we have reminders for calls, even if they're set up weekly calls. We have reminders for deadlines that we set. You can actually create like a timeline and timeframe for different projects that you're working on. I've noticed that with my clients, it's better to chunk it down into like a timeline rather than a task list, like a checklist, because if we have a to-do list, And that one item is several different things. What we want to do is break that down into easy, easily managed, time-sensitive tasks. Like instead of time or to-do lists, we want to create task lists. And then you want to look at, do you have a pipeline set up? That's what's going to help you keep organized. It's going to help you integrate your entire client process. You want to have your professional documents. You want to be able to collect your signatures electronically. You want to be able to set up a welcome email with your client scheduler. And again, if you guys need some of these tools in place, I do have templates that you guys can use, but you want to create clear expectations. If you are not clear on these things, I want you guys to go back and look at my Boundaries in Business training that I did. You can go to valnichols.com/grow. And I'm going to give you an entire comprehensive look at all of that. So if you want to be able to track your leads, make sure that you jump on my training that is Tracking Your Leads Like a Pro. Again, valnichols.com/grow. I'll put the link here in the comments as soon as we are off here. From invoicing to scheduling, you want to make sure your process is streamlined, that you create a beautiful client experience and a beautiful client onboarding system. You guys let me know, what did you hear? What else do you want to learn? Because we have a whole bunch of new trainings coming up here in the future. I would love to meet with you. What is your client onboarding system? Because I'd love to go deeper into this. I'd love to do a deep dive into some of the systems that I use. If you guys are interested in that, put systems in the comments and I will get on that training right away. I love you guys. Hope you have a great day. And happy onboarding. Bye!