The Best Way to Bring on New Clients

How to Save Precious Time Onboarding New Clients

You might have routines and systems to help a new employee settle in, such as payroll forms and training manuals. You might also have some procedures set up for when you start doing business with new vendors, such as asking them for their tax ID paperwork and having them submit invoices to your standards. But what about onboarding new clients? Most entrepreneurs don’t think about systematizing that process.

You will save a ton of time if you stop and put some systems in place to help you and your new client get off to an efficient start. The payoff can be extremely high. If you save a half hour per client and you have 100 new clients a year, then you just saved 50 hours a year, or an hour a week.

Here are a few tips to get you thinking about where you might be able to streamline your new “New Client Acquisition Process.”

First the Paperwork

What forms do you need from every client? These might include:
• An engagement letter or contract that describes the scope of the work to be done.
• Billing information, which might include a credit card on file and the process they want used to submit and approve invoices.
• How the client found out about you for marketing tracking purposes.

You can further systematize this by having a standard engagement letter, a form each client fills out, and/or a standard pre-written email (forever saved in your drafts folder of your email program for easy access).

The Good Old Days

Way before computers and the internet, all types of businesses used to run credit checks on new customers before opening their accounts. That might not be a bad idea to bring back! If so, you’ll need a form for that so that your clients can provide you with the information you need to run a credit check. Either that or provide them the ability to prepay their account.

Getting Started
Make a list of items you need from your clients to get started. This will vary depending on what industry you serve. Here are some common items to get you started:

• Contact information include staff names, titles, phone numbers, and email addresses
• Account names, user IDs and passwords
• Description of their problem if it’s repair-related
• Hardware and software information if it’s a computer-related service
• Any documents you need to complete your project
• Insurance information
• Licenses
Once you have your list, you can create a form asking for all of the information you need from every client. This will save you tons of time if you are asking for these things piecemeal now.

Instructions

Do you find yourself repeating the same instructions over and over again to each new client? Write your spiel down or better yet, make a recording so your client can listen in at their convenience and play it over and over again if they need to.

Here are some common implementations of this one:
• Photography studio owners can write down how clients can prepare for their portrait and what to wear.
• Grocery stores can provide recipes for items in their deli.
• Plant nurseries can have instructions on how to re-pot plants.
• Plumbers can provide instructions for how to turn off the water.
• Restaurants can offer menus that disclose ingredients and calories for those who are sensitive or on diets.
• Office supply stores can make a chart of how different products compare.
• Web hosting companies can have screen-capture videos made on how to set up email accounts.

You’ll save tons of time with this one. What can you think of to save yourself time onboarding clients?

Systems

There’s no doubt you’ll need to enter some information into your sales, order, accounting, or project system in order to set up your new client. If there’s any way your client can do this directly, then you will have saved yourself a step. Take a look at where you have duplicate data entry and explore ways to automate it or have the client enter the information directly. We can help you with some ideas if you need help in this area.

Welcome Packet

Is your business the type that could send your client a welcome packet of goodies? If so, shower your new client with bonuses and goodies so they’ll have a positive first impression that will last a long time. These items will include anything that saves your client time and money, and will NOT be a bunch of promotional items with your logo on it. (If it has your logo on it, it’s not a gift; it’s an ad.)
These items might be checklists, reports, tips, cheat sheets, candy, flowers, liquor (if your license allows it), a thank you note, a stuffed animal, and/or anything else that is a traditional gift.

Take a look at all the steps you go through to onboard your client, and see where you can streamline your systems so that both you and the client will save time. You’ll also look amazingly organized to the client, which is a good thing!

Life is too Short; Save Time with these Ideas

The Secret Sauce to Saving Time

Is finding enough time to do everything you need to do one of your top five small business challenges? If so, you’re not alone; just about every entrepreneur lists “time” as a challenge they face today in running their businesses. It’s not uncommon to feel stressed and overwhelmed at everything you need to do.

Plenty of time management books will help you use your time more productively, but who has time to read a whole book these days? Instead, here are some quick tips to help you work smarter, ease any stress, and tame the time monster.

The 4 “D”s

You might have seen a strategy that allows you to evaluate how to handle each task or e-mail as it comes across your desk. Here’s mine: 1. Do, 2. Delegate, 3. Delete, and 4. Delay.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. For each task you have, you choose one of the four. Do means drop everything and do it now. Delegate means give it to another person to do. Delete means you didn’t really need to do that task in the first place and you can cross it off the list. And delay means you’re going to do the task later and not now.

Every single thing that comes into your life can be handled using this 4D filter: do, delegate, delete, and delay. It’s a great tool, and I’d definitely recommend trying it if you don’t have a system for yourself. But there’s an even better idea.

The Secret Sauce

Once you’ve applied your formula and you’ve decided on the tasks you’re going to “do” today (the first of the “D”s), there’s another step we can add that will actually start freeing up some time. With tasks you’re going to “do,” you have two more filters to try:

1. Can I automate this task?
2. Can I systematize this task?

Go ahead and “do” the task the way you’ve always done it. Then add another step that essentially asks: “Is there a better way?”

Take Your Biz Off Automatic Pilot

It’s funny how we keep doing the same things over and over again the same way, even though our business has long outgrown the way we’re doing it! Sometimes we don’t think to question whether there are new ways of doing things faster. We might not want to tackle the learning curve, even though we could save a lot of time in the long run.

A client showed me her invoices recently, and I asked her how long she had been doing invoicing that way. “About 15 years,” she said. The second she said it, it dawned on her to change. It hadn’t occurred to her to even consider changing before! Once she got the bug to change, you couldn’t stop her. She was able to both systematize and automate her invoicing, saving several hours each week. Once her mind was turned on to asking “Is there a better way?”, she found dozens of tiny procedures she could change, freeing up even more time in her daily routine.

It can happen when you add or replace an employee, too. You’ll see what systems need tightening up, and you can create procedures and implement new software and tools with the new employee to make the job even more effective. This happened recently to an associate when he hired a personal assistant.

Workflow Improvements

Frank is a do-it-now sort of guy. When he needed something, he needed it now. He was making multiple personal errand trips several times a week to purchase groceries, make dry cleaning runs, do banking business, and mail packages. His new assistant, Beth, took over all of those tasks and she also systematized everything. She created inventories and re-order points on all his supplies and even his groceries. She set up procedures for all her new tasks. What took Frank 10 hours a week now takes Beth 3 hours a week because she eliminated the redundancy and streamlined the job. Now that’s a time management tip worth implementing.

More Important Things

The 4Ds, Do, Delegate, Delete, and Delay, are a great way to organize your time. To save even more time, take a look at automating or systematizing everything you can, and let us know how we can support you.

Won’t it be nice to have time for more important things?