Have you ever thought about reversing your onboarding?

Hear me out…

Do your customers struggle to utilise your solution effectively 12-18 months after onboarding?

It’s because initial goals can become outdated. Very quickly.

There is a proactive strategy to take a step further in onboarding to maximise customer lifetime value.

If you have enterprise clients on annual contracts, then this week’s 4-step project is for you.

Have a read and get thinking about how you can implement it this week. ↓

🧪 The Project: Reverse Onboarding Plan

This will be most relevant to hands on onboarding with larger clients who think a year or two ahead with their business strategy.

You can take elements of this for clients who don’t and see what the results are, but just be aware that smaller clients are much more fluid with goals due to how fast they can shift during growth.

Step 1: Future state discovery

Take your existing kickoff document template and add in additional questions to cater for future state goals.

Don’t forget that I have a library of projects that can be of use - check out this article about kickoffs. ↓

Use questions that specifically look forward and get the customer thinking longer term.

Here are some examples but make them specific to your solution:

• What is your expected user growth over the next 18 months?

• Which additional systems might you need to integrate with as you scale?

• How do you expect your use cases to evolve as your team matures with the platform?

If they provide vague answers, then dig deeper on the call.

If they say “In 18 months we want to be at X ARR”.

That doesn’t give you much to work with.

Ask them:

• Why is that specific number and time frame important?

• What plans are already in place for you to reach that?

• How do you see our solution helping you reach that goal?

This is where the “5 Whys” technique is perfect. I talk about it often because it is my most effective technique to get to the root cause of issues and opinions.

To understand more about how to use it, check out this previous project. ↓

Step 2: Assess the scalability

Create a simple document and include these sections:

1. Configuration Area

2. Current Requirements

3. Potential Year 2 Requirements

4. Implementation Decision

5. Future Impact

Here are some examples to give you some context and get you thinking:

Step 3: Scalability timeline & benefits

Stakeholders want an overview. They want easy access and don’t want a 10-page deck to sift through.

Here's how you can structure a one pager to highlight the benefit of onboarding for a scalable setup.

This format clearly shows how a slightly larger initial investment prevents significant issues and costs down the line. (Go a step further and design it beautifully!)

Get leadership buy in. It helps with change management from the top down.

Step 4: Document decisions for lifecycle

When onboarding comes to a close there will likely be a handover to another team.

Add a dedicated section to your handover document to highlight growth considerations.

Highlight:

• The current configuration

• Why it was chosen

• How it supports future scaling

• When to review for potential updates

This ensures the Customer Success team understands the strategic decisions made during onboarding.

It will also inform their strategy for working with the customer going forward.

🤓 The Analysis

Most customer onboarding programs focus only on immediate goals.

To create world-class experiences, we need to launch a customer on a growth trajectory by creating a partnership built for long-term success.

To know how to do this, we need to look ahead to long term goals with the customer and work in reverse to give them the best chance of achieving that success.

This is strategic customer onboarding in action.

What to expect if you implement this project:

• Stronger buy in across stakeholders

• Increased customer lifetime value

• Hours saved in maintenance and re-strategising