I've closed thousands of high ticket clients and this here is the onboarding process that I've refined over the past eight years and today I'm going to teach it to you cuz if you sign up a client their first impression on working with your business is so important if you want to increase retention if you want to increase reviews and referrals and honestly if you just want an easier life because 90% of this process can be automated I'm going to run through that today it took me a long time to figure this out it's going to take you 30 45 minutes depending on how long this video goes on for and this will apply to you if you're a service-based business owner regardless of what service you sell and who to even if you're own a software and frankly any business for that matter so pay attention and let's get stuck into it so the first step of this process is of course getting a yes okay so this is the process that we follow to take a prospect and onboard them as a client into the business so we've got that verbal yes on the call okay regardless of whether or not we've collected a payment we are going to start the onboarding process the key is we want to go for a presumptive close Okay we want to presum ass that this person is 100% going to go ahead regardless of whether or not they have already paid now what's important about this process is it achieves the free sees as I call them the first being convenience it must be a convenient process for the prospect to go through there can't be much friction at all and whilst this might look a little bit complicated to you for now it's like the graceful Swan you're kicking underwater doing all of the work and on the surface you're just gliding along okay this is the prospect just gliding through this process it's got to be nice and convenient and it's got a lack friction okay the next C is Clarity it must be Crystal Clear what the next step is at every stage of this process okay you can't have your client second guessing what they need to do next it needs to be crystal clear and very simple and then finally confidence you've sold someone on a specific result through a service okay that you are implementing on their behalf they must feel confident at the start of this process that you can achieve that result and even more confident at at the end of the process that you can achieve that result as well and so we're going to overd deliver straight from the start and we're going to wow them throughout this okay and there's a couple of little tricks here that I'm going to highlight to you that's just really going to change the game if you got any kind of onboarding process so far so we get the yes and then the first thing we're going to do is we're going to book the onboarding call okay so we can just call that the on hopefully you can see this okay so we're going to book the onboarding this is a manual step okay you are going to do this on the sales call itself you do not want to book an onboarding call away from a sales call this has to be booked when you've got that yes before you leave the call we're not instilling that Clarity in front of people if we're like okay here's a link find a time that works for you they get distracted into their day-to-day life we've got to book that call before we leave the sales call that's a non-negotiable now the next stage is what I call the trigger form okay it's not going to be the easiest to write on okay and just imagine this for now like a Google form which you're going to fill in after you book The onboarding call that's going to trigger this entire automation now I'm going to run through this process first of all and explain it and then we're going to go through the whole thing again and I'll will talk about how you can actually automate this but the trigger form is the first step to the automation it's where you're going to fill in all of the relevant data points the company's name the email address maybe an actual address as well what the price is and the package and the service that they signed up three to six questions that's going to feed data into the rest of this entire automation okay so this is really the final manual step of this entire flow okay now that trigger form is then going to instantaneously send over the contract okay you might call this an agreement okay this is just simply the terms of working with your business it's going to outline U not just the terms but the service that you're going to be fulfilling and any terms relating to that of course the price and the payment terms attached and of course you're going to get a a signature from the prospect as well and from your end okay now let's not get into the technicalities of what that contract needs to look like okay broadly speaking if you're a service based business owner it's going to be from a 30-day term to a thre Monon term if you're just starting out i' Pro recommend doing monthly rolling um and so we're going to trigger that contract straight away and then at the same time as well we're going to send over the invoice okay so the invoice as it sounds is just a request to get money okay what we don't want to do is send over just a payment link We want to make sure that we're sending over an invoice so all of the accounting is done properly and you don't have to go back and send over invoices for years we used to send over payment links and people would ask for invoices and we had to go back and do it all you want to make sure you send an invoice from the start so then what we're going to do for our automations we're going to find out have they paid or have they not paid okay so we're going to give them 24 hours and we're going to check to see have they actually paid this invoice yes or no if they haven't and then what we're going to do is we're going to trigger a follow-up okay and this is going to be a tri a follow-up sequence typically a freep sequence so this is going to feed back into this point here okay and so this is a fre step followup typically via email now there is another optional Step Beyond this beyond the 3day follow-up SE quence then what we can do is add an additional step underneath this where we send like a slack notification or an SMS to yourself as the founder or to your account manager or to someone in the finance team or to operations whoever is relevant in the company to then manually follow up with the Prospect and give them a call okay let's say we do get that payment nice and simply with the majority of the time this is going to be the case what we are then going to do so we're going to add a tag and that tag is going to be action typically speaking it's going to be action hyphen invoice paid or invoice one paid okay just to to highlight this is the first time this client has paid an invoice with you okay it's your choice what your tagging system looks like okay now once we have got that tag this tag is crucial because this tag is then going to fire the next step which is you got to see I've got a star there because this is a huge step in actually increasing client satisfaction and overd delivering we're going to send over a gift okay we're going to automate the process of sending over gift to the client again I'm going to highlight how you can actually automate this in a moment but what we're going to do is we're going to send them ideally a hamper Okay so we've played around with a lot of different gifts over the years we've sent over bottle of champagne but then sometimes people don't drink we've sent over um we've even had Mont Blanc pens for high very very high ticket clients um we've settled on hampers now so we've got a supplier in the UK have a look for a supply yourself there's going to be all sort hamper companies all over the world uh and we send them over a non-alcoholic hamper which has things like biscuits crisps and very other little goodies and so on and so forth it costs you under $100 or100 it is well worth it leaves a massive Lasting Impression also generally speaking you want to have some kind of a note that is delivered as that is sent as well and most companies will be able to facilitate that on your behalf and you can automate the process of sending this over it is so worth doing this because it sets the relationship off on a high I mean when was the last time you worked with a service provider and they sent you over a gift okay you probably haven't had it before and if you have had it before you know exactly what I'm talking about it makes you feel really damn good and so this is like a non-negotiable step send over a gift to the clients that you work with it's going to start you off on the right foot now next step I'm actually going to come back to okay this is an optional step but something that we implemented that really changed again just in expedited the the speed to win with the client and just really elevated the perception of the business that we run and how professional that we are okay so skipping this for now the next step is group chat okay and this is going to be if you're a solo founder you're just starting off this is just going to be you and the client that's absolutely fine if you're more established then this is going to be a group chat with anyone from your business who's going to be working on this account now our preference is WhatsApp we like using Whatsapp groups okay and we put as a paid ad paid advertising agency we put media buyers in there account managers graphic designers you know whoever is working on that account is going to be in there and of course the person that Clos them as well this is all still happening instantaneously at this point all of this stuff is happening instantaneously so at the same time the contract the invoice is being sent the group chat is also being triggered this is really important that you trigger the group chat and you get them in a chat straight away from getting the yes even if they haven't paid the invoice many people will wait until this step here when they've got an invoice paid to get them in the onboarding group chat okay and the problem with that is they are waiting for the client to get over the line before they take any action okay and actually this is a huge amount of Leverage in order for you to get the client to convert in the first place cuz I'll be honest with you some people say yes when they don't actually want to say yes they kind of like I'm ining an arring they just they say yes but they want to come away from the core they want to think about it a little bit and dwell on it when you go for the assumptive clothes as it's called and you Chuck them in the group chat and you introduce them to everyone in the team you share in the excitement you you're acting okay they're 100% going ahead with this we got your on boarding call booked in this is everyone else in the com like we're so excited and everyone else in the team this is very important everyone else in the team is responding immediately they're sending over the fire emojis they're sending over the rocket can't wait to help you scale can't wait to help you grow that creates an immense amount of pressure in order to go ahead and proceed okay and most people need that push let's be honest if you're on the fence you're like yeah yes let's do this let's 100% let's let's get into it but you're kind of on the fence it's likely that you need the push and the reason why you're not successful the reason why you're not getting the result you're trying to buy in the first place is because you got a problem with your relationship on making decisions okay and this this allows them to make the right decision and uh yeah this has just mopped up so many clients for us over the time so get that group chat set up regardless of whether or not the contract has been signed and the payment has been made and at the same time as that as I just highlighted uh we're going to do the welcome message okay okay so that welcome message okay so this welcome message has about four key components I'll highlight them to you right now the first thing that we want to do is hype okay we want to Hype up the prospect we want to reaffirm the result that we have just sold them on and what we're going to achieve for them step two is we are going to intro the team so we're going to introduce them to everybody else inside the business and then when they react they respond they know who they're speaking to we are going to confirm the call and by this I'm referring to the onboarding call okay so great your onboarding call is at this time on this day with me or with whoever else in the company so we're confirming that time so they've got that information and then finally what we are going to do is we're going to send the onboarding page okay uh or an on boarding form depending on your current process okay and this is something that I'm going to go into in this step so what we want to do is we want to have an onboarding form set up for every client we like to do an onboarding dashboard which I'm going to run through for you and what that actually looks like um and the on boarding form in its simplest in its simplest form is simply a series of questions that you need the client to fill in in order for you to fulfill the service to the highest level okay now some of you watching this won't actually need that onboarding form some of you will have a service which is super simple you got all the information that you needed from the sales process itself the majority of you if you're let's say an advertising agency or an AI lead gen agency you're going to run an onboarding form to find out information like the client's biggest competitors as they perceive it to be um their best products and services any offers that they've run in the past that have performed particularly well okay and so you and then also any assets as well so any content assets and so on that they can start uploading in the interim ahead of your on boarding call so you're got all of this information you can come to that call uh with a head start now the reality is not all prospects will actually get to that form before the onboarding call itself sometimes the onboarding call becomes uh your opportunity to just make sure you collect that information um but good clients will go ahead and do that and it's going to give you a head start mean you can get started as soon as possible and that's all going to just increase ultimately the customer experience retention referrals reviews easy life and all those positive benefits okay so these are all the main things you want to have and you're welcome message make sure it's a small message you don't want it to be any longer than what you can see on just like one screenshot on your phone anything bigger than that and it's way too long it's going to be overwhelming so keep it nice and short keep it brief but make sure you include each of these elements okay regardless of whether or not they've done all of this yet regardless of whether or not they're paid again we're going to automate that immediately when the group chat has been set up okay so this is a wobbly old thing so the next thing that we are going to do once we have sent that that welcome message is we're going to jump on the onboarding call okay so we're going to jump on the onboarding call and this call wants to be booked okay a maximum of 72 hours after the closing call okay sometimes that's not going to be possible because the client they going on holiday on so on and so forth it wants to be a maximum ideally 72 hours before uh afterwards ideally 20 4 hours or even 48 Hours afterwards just as soon as possible cuz we want to strike whilst the iron is hot whilst the motivation is there whilst they're still really excited about you know working with you jumping on that call and so on and so forth okay so what do we go through on the on boarding call itself now the first step is expectations what we are trying to do here is we are outlining the process a road map for what it's going to look like on working with you as an agency and the key is we are not over promising we're doing the exact opposite we are under promising to the prospect this is a realistic journey and even if you've signed them up on a monthly rolling contract we're going to outline this journey and extrapolate it over 3 months 6 months 12 months okay we're going to create that future we're going to plant the seed of them working with us for a very long time but the most important thing that we're doing here is we're making it clear what's actually going to happen so the client doesn't come to us in 7 Days time and says hang on a second we haven't made any money yet where's our return on investment okay cuz you oversold them or worse you just failed to set clear expectations which is a very simple part of the process that many people miss out okay so if it's going to take you two weeks to launch your first campaigns for a client that's absolutely fine let them know that okay people are only disappointed and annoyed with the service they get from agencies when they have the wrong expectations okay when they're misaligned with what they thought was actually going to be happening so make sure you start off with expectations okay number two we're are going to finish on boarding okay Finish OB okay now this is going to be going through and just checking the onboarding form I'm going to put form up here for now even though we're going to change this I'm going to put form up here and actually some of you will just have an onboarding form that's absolutely fine others of you will want to create what we do which is a little bit more detailed but what we're going to do at this stages we're going to check the onboarding form see have they filled it in properly are there any missing missing pieces of the puzzle is there any further information that we need to collect okay if you're an ad agency you might need to get access to their ad account and so on which you can instruct them on you know during that onboarding page during that onboarding form and broadly speaking these kind of things where there's technicalities that have to come into play they're normally better off just finished on the onboarding course so there's no friction again remember we're trying to make this convenient for the client and so if they're not techsavvy just because it's simple to you don't presume that it's simple to the client okay and if there's any kind kind of annoyance when going through that process if they've wasted a couple of hours trying to do something and had to give up okay it's not going to feed into a positive lasting impression of the onboarding process and so you're better off leaving those things to the onboarding call and you can just get them sorted there and then Okay the third step is something I'm going to skip for now I'm going to come on to in a moment this is kind of a unique step to us inside the business the fourth step is next steps okay so in um in a theme of clarity they need to understand what the next step is in the process okay this is what's going to happen next we're going to come away from this on boarding form we're going to look at the information we're going to build out your first ad strategy and then we're going to create some creatives and then what we're going to do is we're going to jump on a kickoff call together where we're going to present those to you and then we're going to get started and launch on this date so next steps needs to be Crystal Clear what is happening next they must have Clarity coming off this call and then the fifth and final step is you're going to book that kickoff call okay so the kickoff is not to be mistaken with the onboarding the kickoff call is after we've gathered all of our on boarding information after we have everything we need after we've built out an initial strategy or a proposal then we're going to jump on this call we're going to say are you happy with everything okay and then we're going to go ahead and launch even if you know and you've got a wealth of experience in an industry even if you know we've generated literally millions over 150 million for e-commerce Brands all over the world world and info businesses in our agency we know what works we still consult the client on the first round of iteration just to give them the opportunity to get their feedback okay do they like the creative do they like The Branding are they happy with the offers and so on that we are running we get them involved in the process so there are no nasty surprises no awkward conversations after we have launched we again are using this as an opportunity to make sure we're aligned and this step here this kickoff call is instilling that confidence that we are adopting the right strategy in order to get the result that they bought from working with us in the first place okay so this is the onboarding process you know it's probably a good time actually to go and Skip ahead somewhat to go into what this part here is what we do instead of an on boarding form and I'll preface this by saying we used to use onboarding forms as a solo thing um but what we found was clients always would come back to us with questions they would want to come back and refer to information when we would jump on calls with them whether it be reports or whether it be just catchup calls they would want to go back and look at that information so then we started sending them over fireflies link and things just got really messy really quickly and so what we now do insid the business is and I'll see if I can throw this up on screen right now so you can see an example is we use notion to create a customer dashboard so this is a simple dashboard that we have templatized that each and every one of our clients gets access to they don't need a notion account they simply click a link link and they can access this dashboard okay now there are a number of things that this dashboard needs to include okay this dashboard has to include the following number one it's going to have the road map okay so this is going to be a very simple table which is just going to outline what is going to happen over the next few months this is so we always have one place that's instilled in the client's brain which is outlining what this process is going to look like so again we are always aligned with each other this has saved so many convers refer back to the road map anytime we're Miss aligned look look at the road map this is what we're working on right now okay step two is the form okay this is what most people only have so this is where we're asking the questions we actually do also include instructions on getting access to their Facebook ad account in our advertising agency so any access details that you need you can add there as well step three is going to be a file storage okay and in our instance this is just simply a link to a Google drive folder where they're going to upload images and videos and so on that we're going to use for ads and then step four is going to be call recordings okay and we automate this process as well so this is all completely automated any call recording from let's say Google meets that we use is being automatically imported into a database on notion so they can go back and they can refer to those call recordings at any time and they can see the information and the outline summary and everything as well that is happening there so this is a customized dashboard which is branded to them it's got their logo go in a cover image it's got their name at the top of the page we automate the process of creating this on make.com and notion okay and this is something that we give to the client straight away immediately so they say yes to work with us and literally within minutes they have access to a form which is seemingly bespoke made to them they click a link and they can see it all there this creates a huge Lasting Impression inside of the business we've had so many clients over the years comment on the professionalism that this instills okay cuz just imagine the customer experience for a moment imagine the experience of working with an agency or a service based business where 99% of people who work with you booking an onboarding call that's pretty standard Okay jump on an onboarding call this is the stuff we're going to go through they might get you in a WhatsApp group or a slack group and all welcome you to the team okay and then just send you over a Google form okay a Google form fill in this information that's all we need think about the the the subjective experience if you were on the receiving end of receiving a completely customized dashboard to you with your brand in with the road map with access to anything that you could possibly need so all of your objections and questions are already answered ahead of time and you've got one place to go and access everything that you could need in working with the business okay this is well worth setting up I cannot recommend this enough so at this point we can get rid of what we got up the top here and we can add that in okay so that's called it's the dash it's what we call it the client Dash and it's notion that we use to build that out you can go ahead and you can replicate what we've built for all I care that's all good uh and people in our community have access to that dashboard it's all templatized inside of something that we call agency OS which is a big notion a project management system that we use for the business we use it for everything um stage number three is so it's going to be uh the dash okay so in this welcome message what we're not doing is we're not sending over the entire dashboard right away we're only sending them a link to the onboarding form page that's on the dashboard okay so the second page on the dashboard is the onboarding form okay they're going to access that now if they want to they can click the back button they can figure out and they can go look at the dashboard and for the clients of the tech savvy they see that they're like wow this is amazing but for most of them they'll just fill in the onboarding information when they jump on the onboarding call we then reveal the greater Dash and that's what really um yeah gets the wow okay from the clients and they're like okay these guys are serious I made the right decision this is not like every other agency that I've ever worked with that have burnt me in the past okay no one gave me this and first impressions are everything in this instance okay until you start working with people think that it nothing really matters until you start getting results for the client and that's what separates you from everyone else they're wrong the first impression the way that you're perceived the way that you talk okay your professionalism the relationship with your with the team and so on these are all the things that are immediately going to make the client not know that they've made the right decision and working with you okay so 24 hours 48 hours 72 hours of pass we're jumping on the on boarding call we've just hosted that we've booked in the kickoff call in the interim what is happening you're delivering the first service okay so first delivery okay so this is regardless of what business you're in this is this is going to be different for each of you for if you're an ad agency it might be creating the first ads building out the strategy of your web agency it might be building a figma you know the deal during that process you're going to be coming up with something tangible that you're then going to present to the client on the kickoff call which can happen up to 5 days after the onboarding call depends on the service ideally it wants to be as soon as possible after the onboarding call but if you're really busy you've got a backup that isn't always possible okay and then we're going to have that kickoff okay so we're going that kickoff call and this is where we're actually going to get started with the service itself let me outline what we do so it's really simple the first thing is we're going to answer questions we find that things are nice and clear throughout this entire process okay after we've implemented the dash after we've spoken about the initial strategy people start to have some questions so we want to start off the call by saying just before we get into this like do you have any questions since we last spoke go through those questions first you don't want to start going into your strategy and outlining what's going to happen next and all these things if the prospect or if the client already had questions before you got even into the process okay so answer their questions first make sure that they have Clarity before you then proceed the second thing that you're going to do and the important part of the kickoff call is you have the rest of the team on the onboarding call wants to be one to one okay you don't want to do group on boardings it can get really complicated and get overwhelming on boarding is one to one kickoff is one to many okay or if the prospect the client has a couple of people in the team they can jump on it's there's a lot of people on this call okay so what we want to do is want to reintroduce team we want to reintroduce team for the core reason that not everyone is going to be in that group chat and so and also this is a physical introduction you're on the call you can see their face go through and introduce everyone let them know this is Tom he is our job title this is what he's going to be doing on your account specifically so they know exactly who they're speaking to they know what they do inside of your business and what they're going to do on their account okay to help deliver the service and help get that end result result a really important step and then the third and final step is just present first stage okay you're going to present that first stage strategy okay so this is what we're going to be working on this is what we've created we're planning on launching on this date what do you think any thoughts feedback and so on and so forth okay so you're just going to present the first stage of your service and it's going to be different for each and every one of you and then that's our on boarding process done okay so that is US ready to go to start working with the client we've covered the free sees and of course it goes about saying that this kickoff call recording is going to automatically feed into the dash okay and same with this onboarding call that's going to feed into the dash as well these call recordings will automatically be there the prospect can go back they can look at the summary they can look at the action points okay and they can refer to them so they have the clarity at any point just by clicking a link that they've got on their phone okay um and it's nice and simple now I haven't highlighted the reason why we like to do WhatsApp on our end over slack we've used slack and many other communicational tools over the years and we still use slack for our team okay we love slack slack is awesome for internal Communications we find that what when hits the fan with clients and will hit the fan things won't always be simple they just message you where you are okay they message you like they message their friends or their family they're going to Whatsapp you or they're going to SMS you or they're going to call you now WhatsApp is the closest thing to personal communication as an SMS or a call okay so we like to put people in a WhatsApp group we find that's where clients communicate the best we've had feedback and we've done surveys people like being in a WhatsApp okay but it's completely your choice depending on your service depending on your niece if you're in a much more professional service business where they're already using slack if your clients already use slack on a daily basis by all means get them in a slack group to be completely honest I would probably prefer them to be in slack because it would be easier because we're already communicating there with our team but at least for our clients for our business we found that WhatsApp seems to be where things AR most responsive so this is the onboarding process outlined to you how we going to automate this thing okay because 90% of this is automated okay let me just get the blue and I'll will highlight the parts that are automated okay so or maybe it's easier to highlight the parts that are not automated so this part here I'm going to ruin this beautiful diagram now is not automated getting the client yes is pretty obvious we' got the over line the call booking on boarding call that's a process you're going to go onto your calendar toour maybe that's calendly maybe it's go high level whatever it is might even just be Google Calendar that's fine filling in the trigger form is also going to be a manual action that trigger form uh we use go high level for our trigger form okay and that's where we we get all the information go high level is an all-in-one agency management system it also has got it inbuilt automation tools as well okay and so um I recommend using that if if you're looking for a place to host this you could also use Google forms that's absolutely fine this is all automated again in our instance on go high level okay so this is actually a series of two different automations we have one automation which is triggering this part here okay which is actually is is this part okay so that's automation two and this is automation one okay and this for us is ghl so when that form is filled in it sends over the contract with the relevant information it sends over the invoice then we'll automatically check have they paid within 24 hours if not then it will send followup one have they paid if not then it will send follow-up two have they paid if not then it will send follow-up free if not then what it will do is it will do the manual action there okay it will say message someone on slack and so on for us it's slack it will send a notification to Jess from our team um and sorry Sarah and she then knows she's our sales admin to then go ahead and get in contact and collect that payment from the prospect okay so that's on ghl if the invoice is paid then it adds the tag and then it automatically sends an email again we use ghl to send an email to our supplier to order the gift so what you don't need to do is find a supplier that has some kind of web portal that you can integrate with make or zapia and so on all you need to do is have a supplier that knows what your order is and you know which information you need to gather so for us it's just the address of the Prospect and then what we do is we take that address field and we automatically import it on go high level into an email send it over to the supplier they then know to send the gift but we only do that when we've received the tag that they've actually made the payment we don't want to accidentally send a gift to prospects that aren't actually going to move ahead with the service okay so that's the ghl automation this here for us is make okay make.com and it just doesn't have to be make make is a great automation tool you you can do this on n8n okay but for us it's make um it's completely your choice which of these you use if you want me to create a detailed video on like make.com and how to use it and so on let me know in the comments if enough of you want that then that's something I can create in the future uh so we create the dashboard with notion there's a little bit of notion automation going on to create that even if you didn't automate the creation of the dashboard you could do that manually okay and that will only take you like literally 5 minutes to do that set but we automate that we automate the group chat we automate the welcome message okay and so that part is then done but then of course the auto the onboarding call first delivery kickoff call are manual processes okay for now okay one day maybe we'll be able to automate all of that as well so that's the onboarding process go and implement it subscribe for more and I'll see you soon cheers