Good onboarding strategy will help you win more customers, achieve higher authentic referrals, and create more sales opportunities. Although onboarding is unique for each and every type of business, essentially its only aim is to achieve one goal: sales. Through a comprehensive onboarding, you will minimise the training or customer service cost and maximise the sales result.

You would also try to persuade the random users to become a loyal customer.

According to Gartner Group, 80% of a company’s future revenue can be lodged from the 20% existing customers. Now the question is, why is it so important to provide a checklist? Checklists help you avoid making mistakes and skipped steps and get some of the workloads off your shoulder.

Every customer’s need is unique and all you have to bear in mind is that powerful onboarding comes from synchronised rhythm with your clients’ needs and queries. Your time is limited; you only have 90 days to stand out and affirm yourself. Even though you offer the best quality goods or services, customers may churn for four main reasons:

1. Bad onboarding.
2. Bad customer support.
3. Not being engaged in using the product.
4. Not knowing how to use the product.

Churns definitely wound the business. So, what steps should you take to reduce churn?

To avoid facing troubles in this path, you have to plan ahead. Set goals and prepare a checklist to reduce the risk of skipped stages and forgotten users.

Keep these general rules in mind:

• Be unique; personalise your message to each client. A little fun will not hurt. Try to make their first experience memorable for them.
• Know the customer, their goals and their main reason for using your product.
• Introduce your product and provide your customers with exclusive tutorials. But try not to limit your customers to obligatory tutorials, make sure they can skip and come back any time they want.
• Motivate users to personally experience their first win.
• Be clear about your product or services.
• Celebrate with your customer: whether it is their birthday or their first successful experience, send them a  personalise note to stand out.
• Use phone calls and try to arrange the meetings. 

Once your onboarding checklist is set up you can start setting the activities in a CRM software to make sure you don’t miss any steps. To onboard customers, you need to draw a solid scheme of what you want to go through.

1. Ask them to fill in the information. It is suggested to store them online in a CRM system. Make sure you have all the necessary information about the new user. It is better to use CRM software to include and store your files. This necessary information includes:

• User’s first name
• User’s last name
• Their join dates
• Email address
• Phone number

2. Ensure your clients that their information is safe with you and there is no need to worry about data leak. Send them a copy of your GDPR statement.
3. Prepare a contract and explain your terms and conditions precisely.
4. Show your excitement that they have joined your company via welcome emails. Send them questionnaires to get to know their goals and objectives better.
5. Schedule calls and meetings with them and support them with online and offline educational programmes.
6. Make Sure They Have Access to the Help centre. If they need to read something and understand it by themselves, let them! Make sure the link is accessible and continuously updated with the updates you apply to the software.
7. Provide high-quality sample gifts with your brand's tags on them. Personalise them to your clients’ name and send them as soon as they register to the paid account.
8. Analyse the feedbacks you get, are they willing to talk? Do they trust you when you apply minor changes in pricing? How often do they use your product? These are the facts that you can only understand and analyse before it comes to any feedbacks and all. 
9. Analyse the feedbacks, with the help of a thorough analysis, you will get to know all the challenges, pros and cons, and the weak points of your functions. Take time to qualify your customers the same way you have invested in your business.

Good luck!