The Onboarding Questionnaire That Saves A Month

The first month with a new client is usually slow for one reason. The work cannot start until you have things you do not have, and you ask for them one at a time.

Logos on Monday. Then you need the brand font. Then account access. Then somebody to approve the first draft. Each request is a day or three of waiting, and they happen in sequence instead of at once.

One document at the start removes almost all of it.

Ask for everything on day one

Not everything you might ever need. Everything required for the first thirty days.

The assets. Logo files in a real format, brand fonts, colour codes, existing photography and video, product information, any existing brand guidelines.

The access. Website admin, hosting, domain registrar, analytics, ad accounts, social accounts, email platform, CRM. Each with the right permission level, requested properly rather than by sharing a password.

The people. Who approves what, how fast, and who to go to when that person is away. One name per decision.

The facts. Services, prices, service area, what they do not do, the names and spellings of products, any claim they cannot make for legal or contractual reasons.

The history. What has been tried, what worked, what failed, and what they are not willing to do again.

The numbers. Current enquiry volume, average job size, close rate, what a lead is worth. Without these you cannot set a target, and the whole of how to set a realistic cost per lead is guesswork.

The questions that actually change the work

Assets and access are logistics. These are the ones worth real thought.

Who is the best client you have ever had, and why? Tells you more about targeting than any demographic question.

Which enquiry do you wish you got more of? The answer is usually narrower and more profitable than what they advertise.

What do you say on a sales call that always lands? This is free copy. It is already tested, on real buyers, which is the point of how to turn sales calls into content.

What do people get wrong about your industry? The best content angles live here.

What is the one thing we must not do? Saves the single worst mistake you could make in month one.

What does success look like in ninety days? If their answer and yours are different, you need to know that before you start, not in the first review.

Make it answerable

A thirty question form with open text boxes gets abandoned. The way to get it filled is to make it small and specific.

Multiple choice wherever possible. One screen per section. Pre-filled with anything you can find yourself, so they are confirming rather than typing. And an obvious place to upload files rather than an instruction to email them.

Then do it with them. The best version of this is a forty five minute call where you fill it in together while screen sharing. You get better answers, you get them immediately, and you hear the way they talk about their own business, which is worth as much as the answers.

Then publish the answers back

Once it is filled, turn it into one short reference document that both sides work from.

That document is the thing the whole team reads before they touch anything. It stops the same question being asked three times by three people, which is the most common reason a new client loses confidence in the first fortnight.

It is also what makes the first month productive instead of administrative, which is really what the first week of onboarding sets everything and the first 90 days with a new agency are both about.

Keep it as a living document

Prices change. Services change. The person who approves things leaves.

So it gets reviewed at every quarterly session, which is the natural place for it in how to run a quarterly marketing review. A document that is right on day one and wrong by month four causes more problems than it solved.