Customer Onboarding For The Win - or How to Secure Revenue Through Customer Onboarding

As Will Rogers once said: 'You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.'. The same applies to what we do every day both in our personal and professional lives, and I wanted to talk about an often overlooked role of Onboarding in a Customer Lifecycle.

Buckle up, because we're about to uncover why onboarding isn't just a phase - it's your secret weapon for customer success!

Beyond 'Going Live': The Real Goals of Onboarding

If you think onboarding is just about getting your customer's account up and running, we need to talk! Getting the platform live is like the appetizer in a five-course meal - it's just the beginning.

With some of my projects, we discovered that a comprehensive onboarding process was the key to some of the most impressive Net Revenue Retention results (120%+). How did we do it? Let's break it down.

I tried to put together a simple Onboarding Checklist that you may not know you needed (we’ll keep the simple stuff like creating a project plan, managing resources, and all of that “simple” stuff aside for now) to show all the different aspects that a proper Onboarding can and should influence:

1. Get everyone on the same page - People that go through Demos, Sales Negotiations, RFPs, etc. are not always the same people that will own your product and be your primary points of contact. Even if those are the same people, things get forgotten over the long sales process. Get everyone on the same page. Doing so will also help you manage expectations and identify early signs of expectations vs reality misalignment

   1. One of the more important pieces to that process is around a streamlined internal sales to onboarding handoff process. We talked about it here

2. Connect the Stakeholder dots - Who signs the checks? Who has the final say? Who will be running that project? Who are the technical folks? Answers to these (and many other questions) will help you both set the Onboarding flow up, and create the Account Map that everyone in your company will utilize.

3. Determine True Value Drivers: Sometimes, what the client really needs isn't what sales thought they needed. Be ready to pivot but be smart about it!

   1. While you are at it, look for opportunities to Maximize Benefits: Look for use cases that weren't identified during the sales cycle, and bring them to the table.

4. Empower your Champions and work towards making them shine: Give your main contacts the tools they need to succeed. Remember, their success is your success! Help them look good in front of their bosses. How do you do that? Generate and Show value. Every step of the way.

5. Social Proof: Implement, document, share any and all wins and Secure Social Proof. Reviews, case studies, user stories - these are gold for your Champions, as well as your Marketing and Sales teams.

6. Keep an eye out for early expansion opprtunities: Keep your eyes peeled for ways the customer could benefit from additional services, features, licenses but DO NOT try to oversell just for the sake of it. That's not a recipe for success.

7. Identify Red Flags: Spot potential issues before they become real problems. Some of them, like potential go-live delays, can be addressed early on as part of your project management flow. Others might be more challenging and take more time and resources - detractors at the executive suite, for example. That is a tricky one!

8. Bonus point: being a part-time therapist is an essential part of the job. Well, this one may be a joke. Or not?

There are different ways to make things work and in some cases, AI can become your friend. However, at the end of the day, it's all about the processes.

The Customer-Vendor Relationship is Good, But Not Good Enough

Sure, a basic customer-vendor relationship will get the job done. But if you want to drive that Net Dollar Retention (or plug in your North Star Goal) through the roof (and trust me, you do), you need to invest in your people and processes.

You should not be aiming to create 'satisfied' customers - you should aim to create evangelists. This approach will help your company shape and improve their online presence, get the much-needed referrals, and bring in more business by word of mouth. And trust me when I say that people do look at what is being said about your business online – and I’m not talking just about the prospects. Think about your next financing round and ask your C-Level Executives if investors care about your company's online presence.

The Ultimate Onboarding Goal

Here's a mind-bender for you: your objective shouldn't be to get your customer live. It should be to get your champions a promotion.

Yes, you read that right. When you align your goals with your champion's career success, everything else falls into place. It's like planting a tree - focus on growing strong roots, and the branches will take care of themselves.

Onboarding isn't just a phase to get through - it's your superpower for hitting those north star goals. Don't overlook it. Embrace it. Perfect it. You can also read more about how various departments play into Customer Onboarding and why they all should care here.

If you only get one shot at a first impression, why not make it spectacular?

But if you came here for a meme, here you go!