Easy Steps to Fix Your Client Onboarding Today

Feeling like your client process is all over the place? You're not alone. If you manually manage every step, juggle leads in your DMs, or constantly drop the ball during onboarding, this episode is for you. 

I’m sharing what needs to happen before you plug into a CRM, so your systems support you (instead of creating more chaos). I’ll walk you through real-life examples of how my clients moved from burnout to business flow, and how you can start setting that foundation too.

Whether you’re stuck, overwhelmed, or just not sure where to start, I’ve got you.

This isn't a how-to; it’s a mindset and strategy shift to help you see what’s possible when your business is built with systems in mind.

🌿Prefer to watch the video? Check it out HERE on YouTube. 

K & D Jones Client Services LLC

🌿Work With Me: www.yoursystemspro.com

🌿Watch the video on YouTube @kenniqualewter

🌿Let's keep the conversation going. Feel free to send me DM on Instagram @kenniqua.lewter

🌿Follow me on YouTube, @KenniquaLewter

Book a Free 20-Minute Clarity Call and I’ll help you identify the #1 system or tech gap holding you back and what to do next. Go to YourSystemsPro.com/Clarity

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Client Onboarding Systems
• 1:15 Mapping Out the Client Journey
• 5:13 Creating Templates and Automating Processes
• 9:52 The Benefits of Streamlining Your Business
• 14:17 Enhancing Client Experience Through Systems
• 17:43 What is blocking you from streamlining your business?

Transcript

Kenniqua (00:00)
welcome to the behind the systems live portion of the systems rehab podcast. Today's topic where we're diving in today

if onboarding your new clients feels very chaotic to you, this is your sign that you need some type of system. My name is Kenniqua lewter I am a system strategist. I'm a HoneyBook educator and HoneyBook, specialist. And I help online service providers organize and automate their systems to help them simplify their business and their life.

So again, if you're tuning in here live, we're actually streaming live in a couple of places, YouTube, looks like Facebook, trying out Instagram. just let me know exactly where you're tuning in from. And yeah, let's go ahead and get into this chat because this is something, a segment that I'm doing on the Systems Rehab Podcast.

I take the audio from here, but I also go live on YouTube with this segment and pretty much this is our lunchtime hour. I'm going live every Tuesday at 12 PM Eastern. So again, today we're talking all about how

to go through and get your systems ready to actually start streamlining your client onboard in process. So you can stop going through and you can stop losing leads. You can stop wasting time and stop stressing over the back and forth.

So we're gonna talk about the client onboarding process and exactly what it is that you need to do to start preparing yourself to actually start to streamline your business and get some type of client relationship manager tool. Because if you are a service provider, in most cases, you're going to need some type of client management system, whether that is going to be a system or a tool like HoneyBook, or you're gonna use something like Dubsado High Level.

The software really at this point, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter until you first have a system to implement and use a tool to be able to streamline everything. So a lot of times what happens is that we kind of go and then we start to choose our software prior to us putting some type of system in place.

a lot of times what we do is we start going through and we start using, we start searching for that software because we see that everyone is using a certain software and then we want to dive into a software. And a lot of times what I hear or see is that we get a software and we choose something, but then we don't actually end up using that software with all of its capabilities. We don't end up being able to do exactly what we see other people do.

just because we're just missing a couple of key components. And so that's what we're gonna talk about in today's live is actually preparing yourself to be able to go through and streamline your business. So one of the first things is to just understand that you are going to need some type of system. It's gonna be the way that you actually do things. So when we're talking about one part of the system, which is client onboarding, you wanna start going through and just.

documenting, start documenting your processes. if you are a, let's say you are a photographer, how is it that you want to make your clients feel once they begin to, they've paid for that service or not even paid for that in service, they inquired about your services from there, how do you want them to feel? How do you want them?

and not just them feel, how do you want yourself to feel in this process? Because I know that when I first started my business, I've been in business for about seven, eight years at this point. And when I first started my business, I had everything everywhere. Like I would have stuff in Google Drive. I think I was using Acuity at the time for my scheduling.

I had contracts in different places and when I had to go through and send out an email to someone or like a contract or something, I had to shuffle through the last time I actually used it somewhere in my Gmail, right? And so it was so chaotic to try to figure out or try to onboard someone and that whole process, it took a lot of time. But when you think about how do you want your clients to feel, how do you want to feel, how do you want to start to streamline this process?

you have to first start going through and documenting your actual process. what are you currently doing now? And I think sometimes we skip this step because we have it in our head, right? We just have it sitting in our head and it's like, okay, well I know exactly what it is that I want to do, or I know exactly how it's supposed to go. But the best thing to do is to actually putting it in writing, because you would be surprised of how many steps that you actually do.

that you don't have documented that you don't realize that you're doing and you don't realize how much time it's taking you to actually do it. But then also too, you're not recognizing when you don't run it down and you just kind of have it in your head, you're unable a lot of the times to see the gaps of things that are going on and things that could actually be running a little bit more efficiently. So when you take it out of your head, write it down, you can do something as simple as just

writing it down on a piece of paper. You can even write your process down on a piece of paper. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Get it out your head and start writing it down. And what we like to do with our clients in when we're doing this process of trying to even get this little piece of the client onboarding, when you choose a client management system, right? So when you choose your CRM system, typically your CRM system, it holds.

several different systems, right? So for example, I love to use HoneyBook. We sign our clients up for HoneyBook. We do HoneyBook setups for our clients. Within HoneyBook, because it is a CRM system and not just within HoneyBook, with any CRM system that you have, it encloses several different systems because the CRM system is the software. It's the tool to help you to be able to go through and organize and streamline and automate those systems, but it's not

the it's not the actual system. It's just the tool or the software to do it. So for example, inside of you having a client management tool, it's going to be client onboarding. That's your system. You have a client onboarding system. You have client communication. You have client delivery. You have project delivery. You have client offboarding. Each one of those phases, those are all separate systems for which you want to go through and start documenting. You want to start writing those processes down.

So one of the things that I personally like to do with our clients when they go through, when we're ready to set them up, the first thing that we go through and do is that we go through and we actually map out their client journey. We map out their client journey from inquiry all the way to offboarding. And what we find is, and I like to do this in a visual way. I like to do this in a visual way because I am a visual learner. and I am, that's how I like to view things, right? But what I found is that a lot of my clients like to view things. And I think,

you all probably like to do this as well, to visually be able to see that after a client submits an inquiry to our business, what are they gonna do next? What are they gonna do after there? And actually map out the full process all the way from client inquiry to client off-boarding. Now, you don't have to do all of this, of course, because we're only talking about just like this one step, right? We're only talking about the client onboarding at this point.

But somewhere down the line, I recommend that you go through and map out the whole client journey. Because when we do this with our clients, they're able to go through and see the gaps. I can see the gaps, they can see the gaps. And then I can go through and strategically say, okay, let's go through and add this touch point. Let's go through and add this touch point. Let's remove this because actually this doesn't, this is doing double duty or something like this. Or this is so manual that we can go through and organize it. We can automate this, we can automate that. And so that's what you can see once you start going through.

and start putting your system in place. The system starts with you. The system starts with you having your goal in mind and working backwards. You have your goal in mind to say, okay, this is what I want to do. I want to be able to streamline my onboarding process where most of my steps, they're gonna be automated. And then you work your way backwards. So after you go through, you document your steps. So you document your actual current processes, no matter, and don't think about,

whether or not this is good, okay? Don't think about, don't second guess yourself and think about, okay, I wonder if I'm doing this right, I wonder if this is good enough. Don't worry about any of that. The only thing that you need to worry about is just going through your current processes and just documenting it, just documenting what you have. at each phase,

you want to actually clarify exactly what happens in this particular stage. So as you're going through, let's say for example, you're doing your client onboarding and it's like, okay, I'm gonna send out an invoice and I'm gonna send out a contract. Okay, so you've clarified that you're gonna send out an invoice and a contract. What happens after you send that invoice and contract? Is it just an email to say, you know, thank you for booking with us?

Or is there some other next steps that needs to happen? Like for example, you know, sending out a welcome packet, a welcome email. Maybe you have like an intake or like a questionnaire form, like a kickoff form, right? So you wanna clarify what you need at each step. This also allows for you to start templatizing things, right? Because once you know your process, you've taken your process at your head, you can then start to create templates for each of the stages that you have. So.

If you know that you have a contract, right? You might have your contract, of course, maybe like a template of it saved inside of your Google Drive, for example, and that's fine. And then you'll use your CRM system to house it there as well. But if there is an email that you're having to send out each and every time to go through an onboard clients, then that email needs to then become a template, right? If you know that there's a welcome email or a welcome packet,

that you have to send out to each and every client, then you know that you have to go through and create that welcome, that welcome packet. The same with any other type of, any other type of forms that you have. So any other type of questionnaire form. So once you start to think about that I need to go through and streamline my business, because ultimately, the reason why you wanna go through and streamline everything is because most of us, depending on what you're doing, you,

didn't necessarily start your business to do the admin work. Like your job is probably more likely than not, your job is not admin, right? And even if it is, it's admin for your clients. It's not for you to do everything manually, every single thing manually in your business. And once you start going through and you have a system that's in place, once you have your system in place, now it could be something that not only are you going to rinse and repeat for every single client,

But then also too, it's something that you can then hand off to have someone else do. So now someone else can replace you. So if anything happens to you, you're on vacation or God forbid you get sick or something for a few days or a few weeks, you have someone that can take this system that you have now taken out of your head and they can actually do the things, right? They can actually go through those particular steps.

And so when you go through and you're starting to, like again, doing everything manually, manually in your business is taking so much time from what it is that you really want to do. I know when I started my business, I wanted my business because I wanted to kind of do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. And now I have it where onboarding our clients, the system onboard itself inside of HoneyBook, we have it set up where they onboard themselves.

If someone inquires about my services, they will fill out a form from our website and then they will get triggered with an email for them to then be able to go through and to book their discovery call. I don't have to show up to do that. Only thing I have to do is show up for the discovery call, right? And so when you think about what do I need to do to prepare myself, because this is really what this is about. It's about preparing ourselves. And I think sometimes we think of the word systems and we think of

something that's holding us back, or we think about structure is going to hold us back, people don't think of systems and think about freedom. But systems gives you freedom. Because once you go through, and it takes time upfront,

I can honestly say that if you go through this week after you go through this live or you go through, you're listening to it on the podcast or later on YouTube. If you go through and you take a couple of hours just this week, you can literally map out your client onboard and process in a matter of hours. And then just look at the places of where, okay, if I'm going through and I'm shuffling through emails to send out this email.

I know that this email could be automated and ask yourself, how could it be automated? Is it something that I could do to automate it? Or is it something that I need support for someone to help me to be able to go through and automate it and then go from there? So like, again, when we go through and we work with our clients, this is one of the things that we work with because it's so, it's so important. It's the basis for how we're going through and being able to take our clients from using a software like HoneyBook and being able to go through.

and to maximize not just HoneyBook but to have so many different systems running for them and operating for them at peak level by implementing a tool and being able to go through and use that tool to the fullest extent.

so when you implement those systems, those systems are going to allow for you to be able to save so much time, you're going to be able to go through and stop doing the back and forth.

hate the back and forth emails. I'm gonna be honest with you. I hate the back and forth emails. That's not something that I desire to do. I dislike when I have to go and book a service with someone and they have no scheduler, There's no scheduler in place or even if you book something on their calendar, then there's no confirmation of whether or not I am I actually booked or not, And so that having that client onboarding piece is basically the kickoff.

to how this relationship that you're trying to build with your client. Whether you're doing project-based, like a lot of our projects that we do, typically a lot of them are project-based, but whether or not you're doing project-based or you're doing retainer clients, a person that has paid you once typically will pay you again if you did a good job,

And so when you create this experience through your systems, because people can feel it, they can feel it. They know that if they submitted an inquiry with you at 12 at night, they know that email or that packet that they got that you probably didn't manually send that because you're probably not up at 12 and just instantly seeing that they submitted an inquiry or that they paid something or that they, you know, did some type of questionnaire and you're responding back to them at that time. So they, they feel like they are seen.

And so that is why it's so important to not only just focus on the software and trying to figure out what software do I need, but to focus on, let me prepare myself to then get ready to implement what I have going on into this particular software. Okay? So just imagine that again, if you go through, someone goes, let's say you're a virtual assistant.

I'm just going to throw out virtual assistant. And let's say you're a virtual assistant and someone goes through, they book a client, books a call with you, right? Instead of going through and you're scrambling to send out emails or you're digging through any type of past due documents that you have, your system kicks off automatically. It kicks off automatically. That's what a system can do. They get a polished welcome email. They get a contract where they can sign it.

They get clear next steps all without you actually going through and lifting a finger. By the time you kick off call rolls around. They've already filled out everything that they need. They filled out their onboarding form. They, you got their log in information that you need and you know exactly, they know exactly how you guys are going to work together and you're not having to go through and chase for all of these details.

and them wondering what's next, you're trying to scramble to try to figure it all out. That's what having a system actually does for you. And that's how we can go through and support you in your business. Because again, a lot of us went through and we started our businesses to be able to work in our zone of genius, to do the things that we love. I've gone through and set up accounts for photographers, event decorators, for coaches, and none of them want to be stuck.

and going through and working in the admin and sending out contracts and invoicing and emails all the time. No, they want to deal with their clients and they want to do brand photography so their clients can show up online and showcase their businesses. Or they want to do events where they're doing weddings and helping people to.

to be able to celebrate the happy moments in their lives, or they're wanting to do coaching where they can help their clients take their businesses to the next level. They're not wanting to do admin work. They're not wanting to do that. And so when you go through and you put a system in place, and again, the onboarding system that we're talking about today is just one little piece, but that's it.

when we think about systems as a whole, a lot of times we get overwhelmed because there are systems for, there's literally systems for everything. Like if, like if you're trying to go through and you want to lose weight, then you're probably going to put some type of system to help you to be able to lose weight. Like the, maybe that's meal prepping. That's the system that you put together for you getting your workouts in for you being able to go to the gym. There are systems for everything. There's financial systems of how you go through and you budget out your money. There are systems for everything.

So don't think about the system as a whole. Think about the part of your business that's really causing you to do a lot of extra work. That's maybe causing you some type of overwhelm that's causing you stress. And then from there, write down that process, that process, that current process that you have and evaluated to see, okay, this is what I'm currently doing. And if you're not sure what you're doing, so like, if you're like, okay, I can't even get to the point of

me being able to go through and document the process because the process changes every single time. Like I do it different ways every single time. Then what I would encourage you to do is set aside now, let's say you were gonna say, okay, for the next two weeks, I'm going to document every single time I do it. And then I'm going to look at like the commonalities between every single time that I do it.

So like if you're doing it in different order, you're doing different steps, there's different types of processes, if the end result is still the same, like so for example, if you are a photographer and you do this photography onboarding this way this time, and the next time you do it a different type of way, and the next time you do it a different way, document each time you do it for the next two weeks or for the next month.

and then see what the commonalities are between the different times that you did it and then start to formulate your system from there. Okay. And then you, lot of times can see the gaps in what, you know, what it is that you can make improvements on. And if you can't, then that's when you hire someone like me, a system strategist, But that's what you want to go through and do.

So just to recap again, just begin to document your processes. If you want to start streamlining your business, you want to start streaming your business because you're like, I'm, I I'm tired of being overwhelmed. I'm tired of doing all the work. I'm tired of going through.

and not being able to give the client the best top experience that they have. Cause let me tell you one thing about this before we do the recap is that client experience and client customer service is at an all time low. Customer service is at all time low. if you know that you already provide a good service,

If you can provide good customer service, you are going to stand out. Because customer service is at a low. It's at a low. are not valuing, providers are not valuing customer service like they used to. I've always been a customer service person, always. So if you can go through and you can provide good customer service, you are going to stand out. If you actually put forth the effort,

to make sure that your clients have a really good experience, you are going to stand out in the market. No matter what you do, no matter what type of service that you do provide, you are going to be able to stand out in the market if you could provide good customer service, period. So again, start thinking about your client onboarding process or any type of system. So begin documenting your processes. And again,

just understanding that you need a strong client onboarding system, Because how you start your relationship is going to set the tone. This is gonna set the tone for everything else that follows with you working with your client.

And if you're onboarding process, if you're onboarding process is slow, it's inconsistent, doesn't just stress you out, it creates confusion, it erodes the trust of your client. They don't trust you if everything just seems like they're wondering, like, okay, how's this project actually gonna turn out? And it lowers the perceived value of the service of the product that you're actually giving you, that you're actually going through and providing, okay? So definitely make sure that, again, you document that process.

You understand why? Because you want that client to be able to feel confident. You want them to feel confident in the service that you went through and you sold them on. They know that you're in control of what it is that got going on, right? The project is also gonna be able to go through and run smoother. And this is gonna help you to be able to get referrals. Not only is that person gonna wanna come back to work with you

and then they're gonna be friends. They're gonna go through and refer people to you. go ahead and start documenting your processes now. Now is the time. The time was actually yesterday, but the next best time is going to be today.

So go through, start process, start writing and documenting your processes down. It's not going to take you that long. I promise you, set a sudden alarm for an hour. If you could sit down for an hour and just really just jot down out of your head about what it is, what do you do to onboard your clients, you will be good. I promise you, okay? All right, so we did good. We did right here at.

Almost 30 minutes. So I appreciate you guys joining me live. Again, if you turn into the live and if you have questions, you could definitely always drop your questions inside of the chat. If you are watching, if you do watch a replay, most people watch the replay, just hashtag replay, and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Again, tune into the Systems Rehab Podcast. And if you want to know what is actually blocking you.

from streamlining your business, you can go to yoursystemspro.com forward slash quiz and you can take our quiz. Okay. And this is going to give you some insight. Do I have that quiz link? This is going to give you some insight on what exactly is blocking you from going through and streamlining your business. So again, that website is going to be yoursystemspro.com forward slash quiz.

I appreciate you guys tuning in. And again, thank you for tuning in the systems rehab podcast. You can go through and subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're listening to podcasts. And I will see you in the next video.

Bye!