Wowing New Clients During the Onboarding Process

You never want brand new clients to ever feel buyer’s remorse. Lera Kooper lays out her proven process for making sure this never happens.

The moment a prospect signs an engagement letter, they go from considering us to counting on us. The goal of our onboarding process is to make sure they never have a chance to regret their buying decision.

It’s All About the Handoff

This handoff doesn’t have to be grandiose. It just has to happen.

When an engagement is signed, a message goes out immediately from the salesperson who closed the deal, introducing the broader team and handing the onboarding process over to ops.

This is followed by a formal welcome email from our operations team that sets clear expectations about what’s coming next. To add a personal touch, we also send a hand-written physical postcard to every new client.

High-Touch Without Overwhelm 

Within the first week, clients receive a customized questionnaire that gathers essential information while kickstarting our relationship.

Along with financial inquiries, we ask fun or thoughtful questions, too.

What’s your favorite drink? What causes do you support? What does success look like for you this year? 

These questions give us insight into who they really are, while signaling that we see them as people, not just a new account.

Behind the scenes, we’re setting up their portal, creating task queues, and ensuring every piece of the engagement is ready to execute. This careful orchestration ensures the client’s experience over the first 30 days is never chaotic and they always know what’s coming next.

Scheduling the Kickoff Meeting

Next up is a kickoff meeting that serves as a strategic touchpoint for reviewing their engagement, making professional judgments about team assignments, and setting the stage for client action items and deadlines.

Training clients on how we operate, how we communicate, how we respond to client requests, and what it looks like to work with a team rather than a single accountant pays dividends throughout the relationship. 

Onboarding isn’t just about making clients feel welcome, it’s also an opportunity to draw a roadmap for getting the most value out of their engagement.

It’s Got to Be Documented, Repeatable, and Scalable

While no two clients are ever the same, their onboarding experience absolutely should be. You achieve this level of consistency by documenting your onboarding process and sticking to the script.

At my firm, every new client gets the same high-quality experience whether they sign with us in July or March. Yes, even during busy season. Our process is built directly into Canopy so nothing from our onboarding experience slips through the cracks, and no team member has to reinvent the wheel.

By the time we complete our first major deliverable, new clients already feel like they made the right choice. Because they did, and we proved it from day one.

Ready to learn more about Canopy?