Transcription
Did you know most MSPs have a really hard time keeping customers that don't have a fantastic onboarding experience? Remember, we were taught as kids impressions matter, especially that first impression. You've done the hard work already. You've gone through, you've gotten the person to sign the paper, to sign the document that says, "Hey, I am ready to move forward." And you get them through, you start the onboarding process, and you drop the ball. It's the worst thing in the world.
But today, I'm going to show you how to build a correct onboarding system that saves you time, improves the client experience, and also sets you up for long-term success. Because remember, this is the first impression. This is the first time that they get to work with you as a client, and it is a major, major transition.
How are you doing? My name is Harrison Barrett from growth-generators.com. We help MSPs grow by teaching you how to sell your services, by teaching you how to generate an unlimited amount of leads into your business, and also as business grows, helping guide you along the way through some operations. If you want to learn more, head over to growth-generators.com. There's a ton of stuff there. Our programs, our services, our resources from a full resource library. I'm going to go into that in a little bit. Vendor perks that you get just from watching this. Hey, I've been doing the hard work. I'm trying to get as many vendors to give you guys the viewers discounts through here, blogs, a completely free Discord with almost 1,400, we might even be over 1,400 members, and so much more. Head over to growth-generators.com, or I will leave a link in the description down below.
So, let's talk about why onboarding matters because I think you probably get the gist of why it matters now, but there's a difference between an ad hoc onboarding where you're like, "I just have to do all these things and hope that we get the right results," or a structured process. Now, we as people like structure, if you didn't know by now, it's just how we are. Now, there are probably some of you watching this that are absolute children of chaos, myself being one of them. However, the vast majority of people enjoy some kind of structure. Now, that structure can vary, but I encourage you because most people want that structure to adopt a great onboarding process. And an onboarding process is going to lead to that longer-term client, thus increasing the lifetime value of that customer. And by having a bad process, it's going to typically lead to higher churn. They might get that bad taste in their mouth in the beginning. And unfortunately, it doesn't matter how much gum they chew, they're still going to have that bad taste in their mouth. And a great process builds trust. It builds loyalty and makes them feel at ease. Remember, they're giving you the keys to the castle. You could take down the entire system at any moment and stop their pay their mortgage payments, their car payments, them paying for things that they enjoy. Right? These are all things that you can do as an MSP. It's kind of crazy, right? So, we have to make sure that we have an amazing, amazing process.
And I want to give you a couple quick steps I would say to allow you to have an amazing, amazing process. And by the way, if you're like, "Harrison, just give me the secret sauce," I'm giving it to you. Um, I actually, I've made a free onboarding checklist here. You can go through, grab the free onboarding checklist. It's at growth-generators.com/resources. I will leave a link down below as well if you want to grab mine. Now, mine is kind of like a mega onboarding checklist. You got to take and remove some things from there. And this video is great to accompany that onboarding checklist as well.
But the first thing that we want to do is we want to map the client journey. Now, you're probably like, "Well, that's kind of weird, right?" Hear me out, please. You have to make sure that we can that we have an idea of what the touch points that we want the customer to engage in in the first 30, 60, and 90 days, maybe even up to 120 days. I'll give you a quick little example. Welcome email. They sign, they should get a welcome email immediately. Kickoff call, system setup, check-in, that kind of process, right? You scheduling your on-site visit. If you're going on site to deploy agents, this is what matters. If you're a more established MSP, making sure the account executive sits down, has the kickoff call and introduces them who they are, why it's, you know, what they're going to do, why this communication is important. And also, I cannot stress it enough, throughout the onboarding process, you need to document. This is one of the few times that you have carte blanche to do whatever you want in that business. You can go in the business, you can see everything, all of that. Now, down the road, you're probably going to be able to do that, too. But you don't want the customer saying like, "Why don't you have this information already, right?" It is important to document and get as much information as you possibly can right off the bat.
Now, part two of this is we have to standardize the communication because we don't want every customer to have a different experience. That is the worst thing. We want to make sure that it's a fantastic onboarding sequence or onboarding process. We actually just fixed this in my own business in growth generators for MSP heroes. We have a new onboarding sequence. It's incredible and people are absolutely loving it. And it's something that I've dealt with in the past with MSPs, something that you guys call me up to help with, but it's important to have some kind of a general idea of a template or a welcome packet or even bullet points for a meeting agenda. What should be covered in that meeting? Now, in many cases, you're meeting a new client, you're going to have some laughs, all that. But you have to have some points and things that you need to cover so that way you can go back to the system and put all of that in. And hopefully you're using some kind of a CRM, a customer relationship manager to automate reminders and check-ins. That way, the customer doesn't feel like, "Where are we at in the process? I know I paid them a bunch of money, but I'm not sure." That's what we don't want. We want to make sure that they get updates about what's going on as regularly as possible, not an overabundance of information, but enough to where they feel, "Hey, I'm not being left out to dry here."
Now, step three is as you build your MSP, because if you're a new, if you're a brand new MSP and you're one person, it doesn't matter so much, but you want to make sure that you plan for the future and you want to have roles and responsibilities. Who owns the onboarding? Who owns the sales handoff? Obviously, usually the salesperson, but maybe you have a sales manager, sales director, right? Who how does that process go to the project manager, an account manager, and then that process from the account manager over to the support team. These are important things to have laid out throughout that process. It avoids confusion. It gives clients confidence and it really just stops the chaos. Remember, if you're a child of chaos like myself, I get it. However, we have to make sure that we service our customers. Make it as simple as you possibly can. Our onboarding sheet is a lot of stuff. I won't lie there. But it's designed to have you trim the fat instead of you sit there and say, "I wish he gave me more." I want you to succeed, truthfully. But I also want you to hit that like button, subscribe button, and that notification bell.
Now, step four, we got to, we got to automate as much as we can the repetitive stuff. Now, in some RMM and PSA tools, you can build out projects in there. You might be using a project management tool, but we want to automate as much as we can. That way, an email goes out, tasks are triggered, if they fill out forms or forms are filled out internally, the right things go out, scheduling gets done. In some cases, you might have to build out a project that you can replicate and finish those tickets potentially in order, but we don't want it to be too automated. Hear me out. They're buying from people. They want the human touch. Kickoff call is great. Getting that bonding and rapport, that relationship building is huge all the way through because you're going to consistently build that relationship with the person. Hopefully, you're there in person. If you're not, make a great video for them. Just introduce yourself. "Hey, my name is so and so. This is what I my role. I'm this is how I'm going to be interacting with you. I'm looking forward to our first call. Book a meeting with the links down below." Something like that helps tremendously because that brings us to the next step.
Step five, build in early wins. Now, you might be thinking, "What does that actually mean?" Hear me out. We want to make sure that we can give our clients a quick success in 30 days, right? You want to see some kind of progress in those 30 days. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. It's not like you're rebuilding the whole system, unless you are in your onboarding process, which God bless you if you are. But you want to, "Hey, this printer is driving me absolutely crazy. Get it done first 30 days. Get it done. Make sure it's fixed." And then anything else that they're complaining about, the more you can do in that 30 days, the better. We want to figure out what those thorns in the side are. Pull them out and remove them so they don't have to deal with it. And the reason this is important is because it gives them an early win, but it more importantly gives them confidence in you and your MSP. And that's super, super important because they're not sure. Remember, they're giving you the keys to the castle and they're paying you a bunch of money. This is a real dollar. This is a real $100 bill, by the way. All the fake money is at my office. So, these are things that we have to take into consideration, but they, we want them to have confidence. We never want them, because we are the trusted advisor, we never want them second-guessing what we're recommending, why we're recommending those things. Those are the worst feelings in the world.
And then after we do all of that, those five steps, I'm a big fan of just improvement, improvement, improvement. And you can measure some of these things. We can collect feedback with surveys, NPS net promoter scores, check-in questions, and just asking, "Hey, what do you like? What do you not like?" They will give you the feedback. I promise you they will give you the feedback. But we want to track the onboarding timelines. How fast did our team get things done? How good did they do? Did they get everything done in a timely manner? Was the client happy? Was the client upset? That client satisfaction is tremendous. And look at it objectively. What can we do through the process to make it better? You want to keep iterating. Maybe you're like, "Oh, you know what? We should have added this," or maybe this step wasn't necessary, we should get rid of it until you refine down to your process, the process that works best for your MSP. This is just an onboarding checklist that you can grab on our website. But you have to take it and whittle it down to where it's perfect for you. That way, you can have the most success when it comes to your business. If you don't do that process where you go through a great onboarding process and then keep iterating to make it amazing, you're not going to get any better and it's going to make it actually harder for your MSP to grow. You want more customers. Guess what? You have to make your existing customers raving fans to get more referrals. By them having a fantastic onboarding experience is the best way to nail your first impression when they become a brand new client.
So, I hope this video helps you. I hope you guys enjoyed or learned something from this video. If you did, hit that like button, subscribe button, notification bell. But those are the five steps. And just please work on getting better. If you learned something, leave a comment down below. If you have a different process, I would be very curious to hear about it. Leave a comment down below. Send me a message in Discord, whatever it is, but I'd be very curious to know what you're doing a little differently than everybody else is. Love the heck out of you guys as always, and I'll see you guys on the next one. Bye.