Client onboarding
The first thirty days, designed.
The most expensive part of winning a new client is the gap between signing them and giving them something to read. A scrambled kick-off costs weeks of goodwill and weeks of revenue. This service designs a deliberate, lightly branded first month — documents gathered before they are asked for, expectations set in writing, the first deliverable shipped before anyone has to chase.
How it shows up
Signs the work is needed.
- 01 A signed contract arrives and then a silence of several days while the team works out who starts what.
- 02 Three different people from your side asking the client for the same document — and a fourth asking for something that was already in the contract.
- 03 A first invoice going out before the first deliverable has been scoped, which makes the invoice feel like a demand rather than a receipt.
- 04 The client ending month one unsure of what you have actually done for them.
- 05 New-starter staff on your team losing their first two weeks learning how onboarding works by doing it wrong.
How we design it
The shape of the setup.
-
a.
We design one onboarding per client type.
Most businesses need two or three onboarding shapes — not one, not twenty. A retainer client is not onboarded the same way as a project client; a small client is not onboarded the same way as an enterprise one. We define each shape end-to-end: what happens on day 1, day 3, day 7, day 30, who owns each beat, and what the client experiences.
-
b.
We automate the paperwork gather.
Brand assets, logins, contacts, billing details, access to shared drives — everything the client has to provide goes into a single structured form with clear explanations of why each item is needed. Uploads land where they should land; nothing lives in an email thread. When items are missing, the system reminds the client (kindly) rather than your team having to.
-
c.
We write the welcome, once.
A branded welcome note, an explainer of how the engagement will run, a link to your booking calendar, and — where it fits — an introductory video you record once. All sent automatically the moment the contract is signed. Not a template the client will recognise; a sequence that reads like it was personally prepared because it effectively was.
-
d.
We schedule the first 30 days up front.
Kick-off call, check-in call, first deliverable, first invoice, first feedback prompt — all calendared and committed to the client in advance. Nothing is in your head. If a member of your team is ill, the sequence continues without them.
What “done” looks like
Outcomes we hold ourselves to.
These are the benchmarks we aim for on a typical engagement. Your specifics will vary — the diagnosis document names the ones that apply to your business, in writing, before work starts.
- Signed contract to first value in 5 working days
- A concrete deliverable — even a small one — in the client’s hands within a week of signing.
- All onboarding documents in by day 7
- No more chasing at day 14 for a logo you needed on day 3. If the client is slow, the reminders are polite and predictable.
- Kick-off call on the calendar before the contract is signed
- Proposed slots go out with the contract, so the client commits to both at once. Simple, but the gain in momentum is disproportionate.
- A standardised first 30-day experience
- Every new client gets the same quality of beginning regardless of how busy you are that week. Your first impression becomes repeatable.
A representative engagement
What an average client looks like.
The context
A six-person fractional-CFO practice taking on roughly three new clients a month. Each client required the same dozen documents to start; each client was onboarded slightly differently by whichever CFO won the engagement. Two clients had churned in a year citing "chaotic start" — the engagements themselves had been fine.
What we built
- Two onboarding sequences (retainer CFO, fractional project) in n8n, triggered from their CRM when a deal flips to "signed".
- A Tally form for the client to supply the dozen standard documents, with per-item guidance and automatic reminders at day 2, day 5, day 9.
- A templated welcome email pack — firm overview, what the first month looks like, meet-your-CFO video, booking link for kick-off — sent within an hour of contract signing.
- A Notion page per client, auto-created on signing and pre-populated with engagement-specific sections, shared with the client as their single source of truth.
Six months on
Time from signing to first call dropped from 9 days to 2. Documents-to-kickoff dropped from 14 days to 6. Client NPS on the onboarding question moved from 6.8 to 8.9 over a quarter. The firm stopped winning clients they then embarrassed themselves to.
This is a composite drawn from the pattern we see most commonly in this area of work. The shape holds; the specifics change.
When this isn’t the right fit
Times we say no.
- Each client engagement is genuinely unique — the work is such that onboarding is indistinguishable from the engagement itself. Some strategy consulting falls into this category. Systematising would hurt.
- You are onboarding fewer than one client a month. At that volume, building a system is more expensive than running it by hand carefully.
- Your team is small enough that one person owns every onboarding end-to-end. If they are already good at it, keep them doing it.
- You do not yet have two or three stable service types. Designing a flow around a service that changes every month is optimising too early.
If this describes the shape of your week, write to us.
Book a discovery call