Nailing your OnBoard call will determine your retention

I just wanted to come on with this quick Facebook Live video because in our digital marketing agency, we work so hard to land clients, right we do cold outreach, we sit in webinars, or we put out information to get prospects to raise their hand to hire our services. And we know we want retainer based clients, we know that we need those clients to stick around with this long term. But sometimes we put so much effort on the front end, but we drop the ball out of the gates, we don’t have a really smooth onboard process. We don’t have a great kickoff call, which really is going to set the pace for the relationship. There’s a statistic that says a client’s likelihood to stick with you for a year is really dictated by what happens in the first really within the first 30 days, right. So what happens once they sign up the experience that they have with you with your team with the collection of the information you need to deliver for them, will determine whether they’re going to stay with you three months, six months, 12 months down the road. And so I was just I just signed up for a new service provider that I’m working very closely with. Not a small investment, but not a massive investment either. And I’ve tried a couple different companies to help me out in this vein. And, you know, I’ve had I’ve had a couple different experiences. So one experience was I signed up, they sent me a webform that said, hey, go fill this out, give me all the assets we need in order to you know, implement this for you. And then they they kind of went radio silent. I filled out that form. I kind of sat back waiting, crickets. So let’s see what happens. No expectations set. No, here’s what’s gonna happen next. Just eventually, hopefully, they’re going to deliver on what they said and this thing will be off to the races. And a couple good 3060 days later, they did what they said. What’s up Richard touchwood great to see what’s up, right. They did what they said. And I got the I got like what I had paid for. It was Right on onpoint. But the experience that I had in the first 30 days whether it was exceptional or not the experience that I had in the first 30 days, where I just felt like I, I figured they might be working on something, but he didn’t know exactly. There was no kickoff call, there was no, you know, communication, any at any point, literally, it just kind of went radio silence. And I wonder if you’re maybe doing that with your clients, right? Do you have great processes in place where they get the collection form, where they get a kickoff call, where they are communicated with every step of the way, especially as it relates the first 90 days. So we go deep in this at the seven figure agency and a seven figure agency training program, really on how to have a real class onboarding experience, but I just want to share a couple of the keys on the kickoff call specifically. So it’s imperative, right? You need to you need to walk them with the bang, right? Send them an appreciation email, let them know that you know they’ve signed up and you’re excited about working with them. I think dropping something in the mail. Like a welcome basket or Thank you basket is just such a class and play unexpected. Most people don’t do it. But you need to have a choreographed initial call, right? Whether it’s you as the owner or an account manager. Ideally, as you grow in scale, you’re not doing these calls yourself, but choreographed in that you kind of set the pace for the relationship. And so there’s lots of things we do in our call in order to get the usernames and passwords, everything but there was a couple things that this company did that I thought were really cool and I want to share with you. The first the first thing is to, you know, just set the pace, right, don’t wait for the person to fill in all of the details. A lot of times as agencies, we we need a website address, we need, you know, their logos, we need logins to their domains, maybe we need access to their, you know, marketing automation platform. And a lot of times we want that stuff just to be sent out or for them to fill it in and call it a day look until they fill it in. We’re not doing anything. With this company there was there were certain things I didn’t have. And I needed them to help connect the dots. And so jumping on a call and helping to extract that information with shared screens, hey, look, let’s get into the domain, right as an example. This happened in our business all the time, we were waiting for the domain access. They didn’t know what it was the previous provider had it. And it was a stuck point. We couldn’t watch the website, we couldn’t get the ball rolling without it. So just having screen share with them, let’s call GoDaddy together, let’s get this taken care of. So we get things off the ground. That was one thing I would highly suggest. The other is to let them know, listen, at the end of 30 days, you’re going to get a message from us requesting feedback, and it’s going to ask you for a rating from one to 10.

And we want 10s right, but anything less than a seven to us is like and this is the analogy that they use that was pretty powerful, is like a submarine that the alarms are going off. Right? If you’re less than And seven in the first 30 days, just know for Austin, our company, we take that extremely seriously. And it’s going to be all hands on deck to figure out the issue to solve and and get things pointed back in the right direction. So let them know in advance, you’re going to be soliciting the feedback, you need the feedback, and you’re going to take that feedback extremely seriously. In the event that that’s not great. And if it’s good, that’s great, you know, especially early on the first 3060 days, you need that feedback. Do they like the account manager? Do they like the experience? Are they getting what they need from you as a business? So setting the expectation that you’re going to ask for that feedback, mission critical? schedule the next meeting right then in there. So oftentimes, we finished the call, okay, great. We’re going to do monthly review calls with you. We’ll keep things going in the right direction. But we don’t schedule it right then. And so you know, what I have our team do is they put their candle we pull up our calendar, we schedule the next appointment. What this company did i thought was interesting was the guy said, hey, look, here’s my Calendar, you know, go pick a time, a month from now, and then a time three months from now. And so it’s booked in the calendar, it’s set. And they kind of put me at ease that look, they had an onboard call, I know what’s gonna happen next. And I know that there’s follow up, that’s going to help me kind of keep plodding along and see what’s happening. I really encourage you guys to do that with your clients scheduled the next call right then and there. And then set the expectation. I like this set the expectation that people that blow off those calls, versus people that show up for those calls and really show up and engage with the process. There’s a correlation of the results that they get in the program. So you think about in your agency, if you’re telling them look, we’re going to we’re going to ask for feedback on a scale from one to 10. And this could just be an email that says, hey, it’s been 30 days you trigger it, really appreciate your business. We need to check in with you and get feedback. How are we doing on a scale from one to 10? Right and whenever they reply back, you said expectation you need that feedback, and that you’re going to take that feedback seriously, that tells them that you’re professional that you’ve thought this through, and that you care about the result that you’re going to deliver for them. The other thing is to, to watch them, schedule the next meeting that puts them at ease, that there’s something going to happen, and that the onus is on them to actually show up for those calls. Because what inevitably happens in our agency, your agency, the client gets busy, they see something that was scheduled out a month ago, and they’re like, I’m gonna, I might not do it. Like, this isn’t important to me. But when they signed up, it was important to them, they took out their credit card, they made a commitment to this, you know, to do these agency services with you. And so if you plant that seed when they’re in that emotional state, look, it’s important that you’d be on these calls, right? This is how we’re going to move things forward and our clients, they get the best results. Don’t blow this off. So you should neither, I thought that was just something really important. Just little things you can weave into your onboard process. to, you know, plant those feelings of positivity, and to really kick things off in a positive light. So I’d love to hear what else you’re doing from an onboarding experience to create a great experience. And if you’d like some additional tips, we go really deep on this in our seven figure agency membership, especially in our mastery program, you know how to really create an amazing onboarding experience and map out the first 90 days. So they’ve got quick wins so that they’re getting communicated with every step of the way. Just click, you know, typing, comments, onboarding, if you’d like to talk about that. And really how you can dial that in better because I promise you, if you’ve got a world class, onboard experience, it impacts your retention significantly. Again, what happens the first 30 days dictates what’s going to happen, you know, 12 months from now, really, I mean, it really has that big of an impact. So posting comments If you’d like more information on that. Let me know if this is helpful, maybe some some good insights that you took away from this quick video and all the talking with you soon.