Zach Oldham breaks down how his team retains 47 clients monthly using eight steps: automated onboarding that provisions folders and drives instantly, a critical first seven days with SOPs and checklists, assigning two people per client (one for strategy, one for execution), automated reporting to cut communication overhead, and a structured feedback loop. Strategy paired with strong relationships keeps clients for 18 months or longer.
Chapters
So we gotta explain service delivery and how we do it whilst playing a game of pool. Let's get into it. The first thing that we use is system overviews. They're essentially high-level steps, high-level documents that explain the entire process that we follow during service delivery. The more important part is where— what actually happens after a sales call once someone pays for a service and they're trying to onboard with you. I'll have to explain I'll explain that after taking my next shot, but there was a straight ball that went in, right? When you're onboarding a client, the most important thing is the first 7 days. That is what makes them decide whether they'll work with you for a long time or not. Most of the time, we have an automated handoff the second the payment is made by the client, by the prospect on the sales call. And that preps everything. It creates all of our folders, our documents, links to all of the drives, video walkthroughs explaining how to interact with all of that. Essentially kicks off everything. That essentially allows for us to get about 24 hours as a team to decide who is running service for a client. And that I am making a step before onboarding because onboarding is almost like a manual process that involves people. That is something that happens before human even looks at it. And then we go on to the next step, which is onboarding itself. Onboarding is mostly just a call, and that call is really to set expectations and dictate what's going to happen in the relationship, perhaps finalize a couple of things that we might need access to. We have like step-by-step guides, SOPs, checklists, whatever you want to call them, for running onboarding calls, as well as everything that needs to happen.
What do you do? What do you guys do? What is that hat that you're wearing? It looks so good.
Really?
Yeah, I love it.
No, it's my new, um, it's my new thing. Oh, I love it.
It's so great. Yeah, here.
Oh, thank you. This optimal? No, it is.
Yeah, I made sure that they optimally did check on it before I ordered it. Okay, so it's good. Yeah.
Okay, it's verified. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, cool.
I think with every service that is being delivered. You need 2 people if you can leading strategy and creating optimizations and broader recommendations for clients outside of just doing the work that they're paying for. So that's something that I'm going to talk about as a later step. But strategy is a key element of service delivery and it's something that most people overlook. It's where most of the value actually lies. Not another good, good shot. That leads us to communication. If you don't have communication, there is no point running service delivery. So communication is the only thing that really matters. Without it, service doesn't exist. And when I say communication, this is mostly just keeping people informed and getting feedback from them. Those are again later steps, but reporting and feedback are some of the easiest ways to ensure longevity of client relationships. It's what allows us to keep clients on for 18 months plus. I'm gonna have to get some lessons in pool. I'll still beat him, but it shouldn't be this close. So we have lots of, uh, statistics we track. We do most of it, in fact all of it, automatically now through our own spreadsheets, essentially glorified spreadsheets that we automated. Reporting saves you on communication, takes way less time. To actually communicate with clients if you can automatically update them and even better create something that allows them to refer back to certain data at any point. The better your reporting, the less communication that needs to be done. And as a result, you can focus and spend more time on service delivery itself. Getting feedback from clients, it's technically a subcategory of communication. Most of the time, clients, especially when they're hiring you to work on their business, want to feel like they're somewhat involved in the strategy of what's happening itself. Super advanced clients actually get less involved in strategy and have less feedback to give you because they're always direct with it. But less experienced people won't necessarily share feedback as openly as someone more experienced. For those people, you have to prompt feedback from them, and it's super important because it helps you discover if there's any issues, if there are any other solutions you can solve. And I lost my train of thought, so I'm going to take a shot. Feedback is also important to get from the team working on the account itself because sometimes the team doesn't feel like they can openly share their thoughts as well. So you want to almost ideally create this feedback system where the team and the client are giving feedback to each other and solving it together. And that way you have almost like an autonomous service delivery experience. That's a big goal. It's getting it from team members as well as clients because they're essentially working together as a team. I alluded to this earlier, but strategy is the most valuable part of service delivery, and it's often technically the cheapest because most of strategy is just thought and ideation. That is where oftentimes you can get the highest leverage, new ideas or discover things that perhaps you're looking at something with a slightly different lens or an angle, and it helps you get much more growth than you expected from it. So really what you're selling and what the leads are ideally responsible for is the strategy for the client itself, whether that's through content creation, website development, advertising strategy, software engineering, whatever that may be. If you can have someone that can provide strategy outside of the service you are delivering, a strategy that is like more valuable for the business's growth in revenue or profit, then you have a service that is more likely to retain people long-term and also overall more valuable. And it doesn't really take much more apart from better data and better understanding and smarter people working together. Ideally, you already work with clients or in a niche or in an environment that allows you to have almost like a friendship with them. And want to work with them more closely and collaboratively. And if you have that, then you're more likely to A, work with that person for a long time because you actually enjoy it, but also B, and probably the reason why you work with them longer is feedback is more open with somebody that you're closer with. People are more comfortable telling you exactly how they feel because they feel heard and because you get the work done, they trust you and they want to work with you more. They'll give you more referrals and they'll be a promoter for the business, for the service itself. Up with all of our clients, the better our relationship. Longer term, the more valuable they become as well. And that's how it's done. That is how it's done. Maybe we just end the video there. That is how service delivery is done. That's how we retain clients for more than 18 months.
