155. Stop Losing Clients Over THIS (CFO Onboarding Secrets)

If you have ever been frustrated by your client, During onboarding, this is going to fix the problem right here. How many of you have ever had a client call you from their iPhone while they're driving down the interstate? Yeah. Crazy. It happens. We will get on calls with you. We will do forecasts. We will do projections. We will do this. We will do this. We will do this. Here's what we don't do. Be very clear. In order to get the goal behind the goal, they've got to trust you.

They gotta trust that you're not the lady or the guy that's gonna judge them because their wife wants them to take home another fifteen grand. All right. Onboarding. Oh man. Onboarding, if if I could just describe onboarding in one word. It is that onboarding is Frustrating. Why is onboarding so frustrating? Well, it kind of starts on the sales call in a lot of ways because If you have been doing CFO work and you've got more than let's say one client.

then you know that good onboarding, like really good onboarding, it takes a lot of time, like to really get in and do the analysis and be really, really thorough. It's, I would say it's probably the most time intensive period that you're going to have with a client. Through their entire life cycle, barring any crazy projects that might come up. Well, why is that frustrating? Well, it's frustrating because it's hard to price it.

Where it should be. We know that onboarding is really important and there's a lot that goes on and we want to price it here. But when we get on the sales call and we're telling our clients what the price is, they they're used to onboarding being kind of down here, relatively speaking. And they're like, well. Well what am I why is onboarding so expensive? What am I what am I really paying for? And it's frustrating because we don't really have the tools in our toolbox to articulate that.

Don't worry, I'm gonna help you with that today. But for me, that's why I was frustrated with onboarding for a lot of years in the sales process. Once you get into the process of onboarding itself, it becomes more frustrating a lot of times because what happens? We close a client.

The dopamine is pumping. The adrenaline is pumping. We're feeling great. We've got a new client. All the great things are coming. And then it ends up taking days or weeks. And I'll tell from firsthand experience, sometimes it takes months. To get a client through the onboarding process. Sometimes it takes weeks just to get them to add you in QuickBooks.

The right way. And so it's so frustrating because we're we want to get to work with the client. We want to add the value. And we can't even get into QuickBooks. And what ends up happening when onboarding ends up taking days, weeks, and months longer than it should? That means the first CFO call happens weeks or months.

after it should. And a lot of times if you're like me, where I bill automatically at the beginning of the of the cycle, we're still screwing around with onboarding. The client gets that first bill or that first invoice. And now they got a bad taste in their mouth, even if it's their fault.

Normally it feels like onboarding, the delays are the client's fault. They didn't get us what we needed. And now they're bitching and moaning because they got the first bill and you haven't even finished onboarding yet. So everybody, you know, we've got this exciting thing, new client. Well, I'm I'm the new new CFO. I'm excited to get all the answers. What comes out of the end of that? Bad taste in everybody's mouth. And God forbid, if you get access to QuickBooks.

And they have bad books. That can blow the whole thing up too. What do you do then? We're gonna address that later today. We are gonna talk about that on the call. Over the last eight years.

I have onboarded roughly 100 clients. I was looking in QuickBooks, all the clients I've worked with, it's around 100 clients. Over the last eight years, I have run into all of these issues. All of the issues that we just talked about, I run into them more times than I care to share. I have screwed up onboarding. More times than I want to admit, but through all of that, I have learned four really important lessons.

About onboarding. The first one is that the time to value, as the time to value decreases, the lifetime value of the client increases. Let me say that again. Time to value decreases, lifetime value increases. Let me explain what that means. The amount of time that it takes for you to get to what I call. The aha moment where you that's that moment that you first add value and the client goes, oh shit, that's why I hired Tiffany. That's the insight that I was looking for. Amazing.

Time to value. When you bring that time, the time that it takes to get to value down, the lifetime or the amount of time that a client stays with you goes up. I've seen it time and time again. The quicker you can get to value. The longer the client sticks around. It is so important that you add value as quickly as possible so that the lifetime of that client is longer. It's hard enough to get leads. It's even harder to close sales. We've got to keep the client.

with us as long as possible. We've got to find reasons to add value as long as possible. First and most important step in that is getting the time to value down. We're going to talk about how to do that here in just a minute. Number two is you've got to learn how to sell the onboarding process. Otherwise they're going to balk at the price. We focus a lot on selling our CFO services, the forecast, the projections, the executive level presence.

We're gonna help you navigate. Maybe we're gonna do the books for you as well or tax strategies, whatever your scope is. We we've spend a lot of time and energy. Learning how to sell that during the marketing and the prospecting and the sales process. But when was the last time you really stepped back and said, I got this huge?

thousands of dollars onboarding process that I'm gonna slide in there during the sales call. When was the last time you really put some thought into how to sell that and to really show the value that they're gonna get out of it? It's something I I I under index. for a long time. And then it was just kind of awkward on the sales call. And then we're back to the price nagging. Number three, goals alignment during onboarding.

is like everything. I'm going to give you a story here in just a minute about a client where this is like in the last year. Our firm didn't get a line during the onboarding process on what their goals were and they left. They left it. So you've got to get really intentional. I would say more intentional than anything else during onboarding is get to the the goal behind the goal. Like what's the for real, real goal? that the client has for their business.

You got to identify that quick during onboarding. And number four, onboarding is the single most important point in the entire customer lifecycle. I'm going to beat that dead horse multiple times today. I'm not even going to apologize about it. This is so important.

So important. I have started thinking about onboarding like a pyramid, a layered approach. And as we go through this, I want you to keep something in mind. As you go up the pyramid, as your firm does more and more of these things, it's going to increase the value that you deliver to the client. Which will allow you to increase the price.

that you charge to your clients for onboarding. It's money we leave on the table a lot of times. And in terms of, you know, cost of goods, cost of services, it's high margin work. But the trick is you got to figure out how to add more value. You can't just increase the price. You got to add more value. And you have to learn how to sell it. So here's where most of us start in this process.

Most of us start right here on the second level of this pyramid. What do we do during onboarding? We ask for access and we ask for information, right? This is where we say, hey, can I get access? I need accountant access to your QuickBook. I need to see your last three years of tax returns. I need to have view-only access to your bank, maybe. I need to look at your.

you know, EIN documents, whatever it is that's in your onboarding process. We need access and information. Now, if you're like me, this is where I stopped. This was my onboarding for like Three years. This was it. I had a a checklist of of things that I needed access to. We sent it off and the list was like way too long. I'm gonna talk about that here in just a minute too. But I had this long list of shit. And I would say that the number one factor

In onboarding dragging out too long is this part right here. Because what do we do? We send this long list of things. Clients don't know, they look at the list, they immediately identify one thing, they don't know where it is. I don't know where my EIN is. And what do they do? They stop with the whole rest of the list.

Like they use that as the excuse to just stop dead in their tracks. You know like, hey, I still don't have QuickBook access. And like, yeah, I looked at your list. I don't know where my EIN is. Well, uh, you don't need the EIN to get me QuickBooks. Well, I guess that's true. We'll we'll get we'll get you the QuickBooks here in just a little bit. And you're like, Oh my gosh, it took you two weeks to tell me you don't know where your EIN is, and that's why you don't.

we haven't got QuickBooks access yet. It's so frustrating. So for those of you that don't have it, if you look in the academy, the CFO Academy and Playbook Four, we've provided a list of all the things that are on our list that that we need. to get started and we've prioritized them by high and low. You know, but what are we what are we looking at on here? You know, QuickBooks access, bank credentials, introductions to key people on the team like bookkeepers and CPAs, auditors, tax accountants.

Whoever those people might be. CRMs are another important one. That we need to get access to. What are some other ones? You know, if you're working with companies that are looking for investors or have investors, cap tables might be important. If they've done any work before on like bo forecast and projections, it's great if you base your work off of their stuff.

Org charts, another important one. Who are the key players on their team? A lot of times people will say, well, what should I have on my checklist? I'm like, well, I don't know, because it it a lot depends on your scope of work. Your client in what industry they're in. You know, we don't work with many companies that have investors or are looking for investors, so we don't ask for the cap tape.

Because our clients don't just don't have them. They don't need them. That might be really important for you. There might be some things that aren't on here that are really important for you and your scope and the and the clients you work with. But what I think is important is having the scope of work and then prioritize it for your clients.

And then if you notice up here on the QuickBooks one, this is a free hack. This is worth your time today, if nothing else. And it's so simple. QuickBooks has a video on their website with step-by-step directions on how to add someone with accountant access. I don't know how many times we have had clients that just add us as a user and then I can't do anything with that. Like, no, we need accountant access.

So we just include the link that walks them step by step through it. I love video. We don't even have to record the video. So that might be worth it to you just to know that you can if you Google how to grant QuickBooks. Accountant access, the number one thing is the video, the link, the step-by-step link from QuickBooks. There you go. You're welcome. Now I want you to keep one key thing in mind here. The more you ask for on this list, the longer it will take your clients to respond.

And the more overwhelmed they will get. Less is more. Essentials only. Like ours right now from my firm. I think what's it down to, Lauren? Like three or four things, two or three things, maybe four things at the most, because we just found the fewer things like The fewer things that we ask them for, the more likely they're to get them in a timely manner so we can get started. Number one is we need access to the book.

So we can get geocons set up. So we can start getting the CFO report built out. So we can start doing our analysis. We can start asking questions. I would say if your list is more than five or six out of the gate, I'd really encourage you to try to trim it down. And not to say that you won't get the rest of the things, but just ask for those things that are required for you to get to the to the aha moment, time to value. You know, so

A schedule of prepaid expenses with supporting invoices. Probably not gonna get them to value any quicker. Let's ask for that later. If you find content like this helpful, then I'd like to invite you to join my inner circle program. Inside the inner circle, you'll find a highly engaged and highly supportive community of 300 other fractional CFOs. Many of them are just getting started, but many of them have been in the industry for years. You'll find a great mix.

Of all experience levels. It's super collaborative and super supportive. I also go live on Zoom every month and share the latest lessons, insights, and best practices that I've learned over the last nine years of running my own fractional CFO firm. KFE solutions. Just click the link below to try the inner circle 100% risk free for 30 days. I hope to see you inside. Access and information is where most firms start and stop, but there's a lot more to a good premium.

onboarding experience than just access information. And I think and I know that there's actually an even more fundamental level than just access and information. And that is... expectation setting. And I'm gonna go through some stuff here, but before I do, I wanna give just a huge

amount of credit and thanks to both Pam Jordan and David Richter. They shared some really good stuff during our last mastermind meeting around how they do this. And I was like mind blown. I'm like, God, I've been doing this eight and a half years and I haven't thought about this stuff yet. And so we've already started incorporating it into our onboarding process, the stuff I'm going to share with you. So

Thank you, David, and the team at Simple CFO. Thank you, Pam Jordan, for sharing some of these things. No hyperbole, it's really changed the way that I think about and approach onboarding with what they've they've shared. Because if you have ever been frustrated by your clients.

During onboarding, this is this is going to fix the problem right here. So if you've been checked out, come back, get your pen and paper out, and let's pay attention. Cause this expectation setting thing is the key to getting rid of all of those frustrations. If you've ever had clients, that don't show up on time for your CFO calls, that don't show up prepared for your CFO calls.

The clients that push boundaries, they're always pushing, asking for a little bit more. The ones that have crazy expectations, this is step one to fixing that problem before it even begins. So what do we include in the expectations portion of onboarding? Number one, introduce them to your team if you've got a team. Who are the major players on your team?

Maybe you've just got an executive assistant. So hey, you know, my name is Alfraz. I'm going to be your fractional CFO. I want to make sure you know, you know, Ben. Ben is my executive assistant. Then explain to them. who they should be reaching out to and for what on your team. So look if you've ever got questions, if you ever need to reschedule one of our calls.

Reach reach out to Ben. Ben's going to take care of you. But if you've got questions about X, Y, or Z, I'm your guy. You can reach out to me directly and then tell them. what those modalities of communication are that are okay. Look, I know you don't text me if you've got questions about your CFO report because I don't even look at my text. I've got like 39 unread texts right now. If you have questions about CFO stuff, Slack me or email me or message me on team.

Or maybe you're okay with text. I don't know, whatever your thing is, but this is the point to talk about who's on the team. what to reach out to them about and what the proper method of communication is for that. And I would really encourage you to say what's not okay. If they have your cell phone number and you don't want them texting or calling. This is another great time to tell them that. And you can make it humorous, like I did.

Don't don't text me. Gosh, I don't even want to see all the unread text. And I know that your questions are important. So make sure you email me at XYZ email address. Next thing for setting expectations. Let's review the scope again. A lot of times people get hyped up during the sales process and they go and they're not paying attention to the details.

Because they just want some of the forecast swag that you're about to lay down on them. And sometimes they forget some of the details of exactly what's going on. So go over the scope again. Lakeisa asks, is this during the kickoff call? Once we go through this pyramid, great question. I should have probably said this earlier, Lakeisha. Once we go through the pyramid, I'm going to show you a timeline with the different calls that you might have and what's covered on which call.

Right now we're just going over the theory of all the things like the overall onboarding experience. Here in a couple of minutes, we're going to go over the call by call timeline. I think that's going to serve you well, Lakeisha. Great question. But to answer your question directly, this is a specific call. Yes, you might call it the kickoff call. This would all be done on one call. Next, go through the timeline for what's coming up.

So through the lens of this is like a kickoff call or a first call, an expectation setting call, or David Richter calls it an orientation, which I think is great. Go through the timeline. And just let them know, like, okay, right now we've got our orientation call. Once we have access to X, Y, and Z, maybe it's QuickBooks, uh, CRM, whatever, my team is gonna get to work and then we're gonna schedule your next call.

About a week from today. And then we're gonna do this and do this and do this. But lay out that timeline. Because here's what you don't want. You don't want somebody that just paid you, you know, maybe five, six, seven thousand dollars for onboarding, which is what we charge by the way. It's not crazy. You can do it too.

If you do it right, if you get the value there, and the first month's payment, maybe. So you you might have just had a client pay you eleven thousand dollars or more and they're like, okay, now what? That's a horrible feeling. Have you ever worked with a vendor and you pay them and you're like,

Well, what now? It's a horrible feeling. This is the time for you to lay out that timeline so that they know and they're not messaging you and saying, okay, now what, boss? What's next? Lay out the timeline. Next, go through meeting expectations. print i think the way pam does this is brilliant i want you is you're talking about expectations Out loud, so verbally, and also on the screen. Like Pam has some slides. It's actually a PDF that she uses.

On that slide, in out loud, Pam's talking about, and that this is what we do now too. How will your calls be delivered? So probably via Zoom. How long are your CFO calls gonna be? Should they have their camera on? What kind of environment should they be in? You should be in a quiet place. How many of you have ever had a client call you from their iPhone while they're driving down the interstate? Yeah, crazy. It happens. And I mean, that is so... For me, it's frustrating.

And it feels like my what I'm giving them is devalued because they're not present, they're not paying attention. But the truth is that they are also actually devaluing it in their mind. They're not gonna get value out of it because they're trying to make sure that the Ford F-250 in front of them that just cut them off. doesn't get to that exit ramp before they do. Screw them. I'm getting back in front.

So set those expectations right here on this, on this orientation call, this kickoff call, whatever you want to call it. Tell them on that expectation uh portion, what do you need from them so that they're prepared for the call? Look, when you show up to your bi weekly check-in call, when you show up for your monthly CFO call.

I need you to sh come with qu a couple of questions written down. I need you to come with any concerns that you have. I want you to come written down with any hiring decisions that you're thinking about making. firing decisions you're thinking about making, investments over$5,000 that you're thinking about spending, really get detailed here and let them know how to be prepared. A lot of times we get frustrated when clients They tell us about the big spins after the fact. Hey, girl.

Just wanna let you know that we hired a new whatever two months ago in That's eight grand a month. And you're like, well shit, that just blows up the entire set of projections that I made and all the recommendations that I was gonna make. And now you gotta go back and fix it. And then heaven forbid, if it was a bad decision that they can't afford, now we're just Looking in the rearview mirror saying, Wouldn't it have been great if they had told us? So set those expectations right here.

Right now. One of the things that David talks about, Richter, is he uses this. Time to set the tone. And specifically, the thing that he talks about that resonated with me was letting his clients know. That they need to be ready to have hard conversations. Just know that when you get on with my team, there are going to be hard conversations that come up. We're going to push back, we're going to challenge you, we're going to ask you hard questions. And I think that that's such an awesome.

points to make because we should be doing that from time to time as a as a CFO. We don't want to shock him. I talk about it during the sales call. I was on a sales call last week and I was like, look, just go ahead and be ready because we're gonna push back on on some of the things that I've heard you say. We're gonna push back.

And he was like, great, that's what I want. I need somebody to push back. No one else on my team pushes back. They just tell me my poo-poo doesn't stink. I think it's a great thing here to point out that you're going to push back or that the CFO that you're going to assign is going to push back so that they're not surprised. Here's a great one that would have saved me so much stress.

Tell them again, this is related to scope, but be really clear on what we do and what we don't do. Hit on those common things. That the clients ask you to do that are clearly out of scope. I've been so frustrated so many times when people.

The things that clients have asked before. Hey, um, Mike, would it be okay if the big one, the the one that was like the straw that broke the camel's back when I fired all my clients, would you call our merchant processor and deal with their risk management department and fit?

See if you can get our credit card processing turned back on. Okay. Okie dokie. Hey, our bookkeeper hasn't got the books updated. Could your team just get the books updated one time for me? Well, how far behind are they? Just like six months. Six months, maybe eight. Could you guys could you guys just update, get the books updated? We don't do books. Under no conditions are we gonna do your books.

We've got a great partner at Decimal that's good at doing books. They're world class at doing books. Here's what we will do. We will get on calls with you. We will do forecasts. We will do projections. We will do this. We will do this. We will do this. Here's what we don't do. Be very clear.

To what does Dave Ramsey say? To be unclear is to be unkind. Lay it out here in this call, what you do and you don't do. What kind of common questions come up? Address them right here. You guys have all been around long enough, most of you to know what the the common asks are. Set those expectations right now. Here's another great one. Let them know what to ask of their CFO. These are the things that I want you to ask your CFO.

So that you can get the most value out of the relationship, hiring decisions, firing decisions, marketing spins. spins over X dollars. Maybe you your CFOs are great on taxes. You can ask them about tax strategies. You can ask them about sales tax. You can ask them about You know, whatever. S-corp elections. We've got some people in here that also have law firms. You can ask XYZ legal questions, but there's so often that

We get the the frustration because they didn't come to us. They didn't ask us ahead of time. And I'm like, look in the mirror and I'm like, gosh, I never really told them what to ask. And one of the things that that's not on here that I would I would be remiss if I if I didn't include. is make sure that you communicate what you expect of them as well, beyond just how they show up. You expect them to update the the income lines, the revenue lines on the projection. Do you expect them

to manage the the day-to-day of the whip report. You expect them to have budgets updated in a timely manner. You expect them to update expenses. You expect them to work with the bookkeeper for transaction.

classification. So if there's questions about, hey, was this meals and entertainment or travel? I'm not going to interface with your bookkeeper to answer those questions. You need to do that. Whatever your things are. And so I I think the rule of thumb here is if you're ever frustrated by clients, Doing things they shouldn't, not doing things that they should, put those into your expectations setting briefing. And then the last one I think is great too is just talk about what mistakes clients

have made in the past that you wish they wouldn't have made. You know, what are those things that You know, th this is what the mistakes that I see our clients make. And just be really clear about this because we all want our clients to be successful. So why not point out the obvious mistakes that they might make? This is a great opportunity to do that. Scaling a fractional CFO firm is hard work.

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today. So we've got expectation setting, fundamental. If you do nothing different about your onboarding process as a result of this, my ask is that you go back and you really look at how you can set better expectations. Expectations, access and information, that that's the minimum to do like a mediocre onboarding experience. So next.

That third tier value up, price up. This is where you get into reporting in the aha moment. That's the time to value. Oh my gosh, this is what they uh they hired me for. You might present the first draft of your of your report, right? Like your CFO report based on the data you pulled from access and information. You got access to the QuickBooks, you got access to their budgets, you got access to their CRM.

Now you're delivering some kind of a report. I think that before you can call onboarding like done, I don't know what done is for you, but before onboarding is quote unquote done, you've got to deliver them. Some sort of a tangible thing. And that thing is the milestone that Mark's onboarding is complete. For us, for a long time, that thing was the CFO report. But we still do that, but now it's a little bit different.

We've we've turned it into a product. Well, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. But I think you've got to have that thing. You know, on here, we're going to deliver your CFO report. We're going to go over the rough draft. That's when we're done with onboarding is after after that call. With that though, you've got to be really intentional about finding a way.

To deliver the first aha moment. Again, what's the aha moment? Oh my gosh, this is why I hired him. This is why me and Daf Daniel, this is why I'm paying Daniel the big bucks, right? They're looking, they are eagerly seeking a reason that will validate their decision. to have hired you. They're looking for it. You don't have to pull a rabbit out of a hat. They're just looking for something to feel better about their decision. They're looking for that confirmation bias. Tee it up for them.

on a silver platter. The sooner you can do this, the better. Because it avoid again, like avoids that uncertainty that will come around the time that that first month's invoice hits.

Gosh, when is this thing gonna pay off? Did I make the right decision? And when you have clients that are pulling those strings and asking those questions on month one, it's hard to recover. That's why the lifetime value goes down. Bad onboarding, you might only have a client three, four months because You have a bad onboarding, a b onboarding that goes too long, the whole time they're gonna be nitpicking. Looking for crap. You hit him with that aha though right out of the gate that validates.

Now they're looking for reasons to obviously I'm the smartest guy ever for hiring Jennifer. Oh look, there's another reason. Oh look, there's another reason. It just changes the whole mindset. They stick around. Jay and and Cameron at Prosper. You guys probably saw my YouTube interview with Jay. They do a a vendor expense evaluation during this process that I think they pulled pretty much right out of profit first and then just made some

trademark tweaks to it. But basically they're looking at every vendor and every expense in the books during onboarding and they're categorizing them or are these expenses profitable? replaceable or unnecessary altogether. Is their whole goal is to uncover enough cash during onboarding to pay for them. Like that's their whole goal during onboarding. My goal is to pay for our existence.

During onboarding. EOS has a tool called uh the seven cash flow drivers. You can go find YouTube videos on the seven cash flow drivers, walk through that exercise with your clients. Maybe you do that during onboarding. We're talking about doing doing it twice a year with our clients now because it's So easy, and there's so much benefit to it, but it's basically like the circle, and then you've got

uh seven different kinds of things that drive cash and you just go through one by one asking questions. How can we improve in this area? We did it during uh for the CFO accelerator company. a couple weeks ago and what Gretchen we came up with like 38 grand or something like that. It was like we do this stuff for a living and we found 38 grand a year in additional cash.

And so you think about a client that doesn't think about this stuff like we do. Think about all the low hanging fruit that's just sitting there. So maybe look at that seven cash flow drivers. Change the name of it so that you don't have a trademark in front. Oh, it's the eight cash flow drivers. I suck at life. I'm not a details guy, but find those opportunities, bake them into your process to get to that aha moment. How cool would it be? If you could pay for yourself for a year.

a full year of your services during onboarding with your client. You think they're leaving in a month or two? Heck no. And then once you figure what that is for you, once you figure that out, start to sell it during the sales process. Like it's something you do. During our onboarding, I take you through the

You know, the the the crazy cash flow saver process, trademarked, you know, copyright 2024, uh, that my firm does. It's our proven process. And our goal in that is to pay for our first months. our first year's worth of service with you guys right there. Now I can't guarantee we're gonna find it because you know I haven't looked at your books yet, but our goal is to, you know, find you X amount of savings, you know, right during onboarding. Well gosh.

You know, now if you tell them onboarding's seven grand, but you're gonna adjust that you're gonna do the work during that seven thousand dollars that's gonna pay for you for a year. Do you think they're gonna bitch and moan about the seven thousand dollar onboarding fee anymore? Not as likely. So again, find that tangible product, some kind of report, some kind of an output item, and find that aha moment. I'm gonna be honest, I worked with

Probably pushing a thousand other firms now. I don't see a lot of people doing this. A lot of people are just the access to information, maybe the expectations. Most of them not. Most. It's just accessing information. This is a great differentiator for you.

It's huge. And then finally, this is really the top-tier stuff here. During onboarding, you got to get to the the goal behind the goal. And I think it's best practice to have a roadmap in place. Let me explain a little bit more on both of these. The goal behind the goal is the thing that makes them tick. A lot of clients are gonna say, you know, oh, my goal is to hit$10 million. Ten million dollars at, you know. Eleven thousand dollars eleven million dollars of expenses.

You lose a million dollars. So, really, 10 million dollars isn't the thing. What does 10 million dollars unlock for you? How does it change your life? What are you going to do with it? Are you going to reinvest it in the business's growth? Are you going to bring it home? What why do you want to bring it home? What's going on there? What are you going to spend it on? You've got to do a lot of work.

During onboarding to start figuring out the goal behind the goal. Let me give you an example of goal behind the goal gone wrong for my firm. I'm glad you guys can benefit from the$100,000 mistakes that I just keep making time and time again. We had a client about a year ago, maybe a year ago. I don't know, you're it b all blurs together. You get a kid and like all of a sudden time doesn't

Is nothing anymore. But anyway, we we have a client, things are going well. We've got a good strategy in place. We're showing really solid margin improvements. And then we get fired. Like, what the hell? What's going on? Well, it turns out all of our strategies were around building their company. They had hires that needed to be made. that were causing problems in the business. Those hires unlocked opportunities to increase revenue and decrease costs.

Awesome. Solid fractional CFO strategy, if I do say so myself. Oh, but we didn't get to the goal behind the goal. Come to find out, business owner has wife at home pregnant. They're about to have their Fifth kid, I think it was, right or wrong, wife wanted him to bring home$15,000 a month more because that's what mama wanted. Approximate or exactly zero of our strategies.

Had anything to do with him taking home more money. We had him spending more money in the business to hire more people. He's dealing with stress at home from his spouse. She's wanting to know, when are you going to bring home more money? We're giving him less money to bring home. And so that caused issues with them. And so like one of the questions that comes up is like, well, why the hell don't clients tell us that? Well, I was having a coaching call yesterday with a firm owner.

And I said, I had a kind of an epiphany. I said, you know what? I think the reason is a lot of times there is a level of guilt. that's associated with the goal behind the goal or embarrassments. And so like you take this example I just shared with you. He thought it was silly that his wife wanted him to bring home another$15,000 a month. When I talked it, I called the guy. I said, Hey, why'd you fire us? What happened? And he was like, you know, to be honest, Mike, it

I I feel greedy taking home another 15 grand a month because like I already pay myself a lot. And I probably should have told you guys, but it it just I felt greedy even saying it out loud. You know, it's kind of a stress point with me and my wife. And so he didn't tell us. So I think a lot of times there's emotional connections with the why behind the why. And clients don't want to tell us. That's why it's so important to build trust and rapport with our clients.

In order to get the goal behind the goal, they've gotta trust you. They gotta trust that you're not the lady or the guy that's gonna judge them because

Their wife wants them to take home another 15 grand. They want to trust that you're not the one that's going to be snooty with them when they say they don't understand. They want to be able to trust that you're not going to be the one that talks down to them when they ask you to explain something again. They want to trust that you're the one that's going to push back. When 15 grand doesn't work. So it's so important that we're building relationships and building trust with our clients.

To get to the goal behind the goal. That begs the question, how do we get that trust and rapport built during onboarding? Well, it depends. Depends a lot on the client. It depends a lot on you. A lot of times founders The CEOs, we've got this like swagger to us that makes us good CEOs that gets people to trust us a lot faster. A lot of times maybe people on our team don't. Maybe you don't have.

Well, one of the things that we've been testing for several months now is per we're doing two day onboarding in person because I think when you sit across the table from somebody and you have a cup of coffee or a meal, you spend a day with them, that trust and rapport gets built faster. Now I know that's not possible for everybody. It's not even possible for us with all of our clients.

The client that we just landed up in Bend, Oregon, it's it's not even on the table. We can't do that with them. But we're trying different things to try to build that trust and rapport. What does Brene Brown say the number one fastest way to get people to trust you is?

Show vulnerability. That's why I try to tell you guys all the time I don't have all the answers. I've made a lot of mistakes because I know it elevates your trust with me. And it's the same thing with you. The those of you that tell me when you need help, I trust you more. I'm more likely to lean in and help you. And so this is just this isn't a CFO thing, this is a human nature thing.

And so I would ask like, how can you show vulnerability more with your clients during onboarding? Well, a simple one is when you don't know the answer, say you don't know the answer to stuff. Gosh, I don't know. I should know. Let me find out. I've got somebody in in this community that I'm in that I can ask. I'm not a tax guy, but I know some people I can reach out to and ask. Just starting by saying you don't know things is a great way to start showing vulnerability and building trust.

And the next one here is the roadmap. This is something that we've got to work on in my firm. This is like the laying the game plan of priorities with your client for the next six to 12 months. You've gone through the access and information. You got the report. You found the goals behind the goals, a rough timeline of what your priorities are with the client over the next six to 12 months.

So that there is consensus through uh collaboration with your clients on what the focus areas are. Consensus through collaboration of what the next six to 12 months are going to look like. And that gives you and the client direction on where to focus. And a lot of times, even more importantly, that gives you the anchor point when they veer off track or when they get distracted by a shiny shit. Hey, when we

Started working together four months ago, and and correct me if I'm wrong, but XYZ were the priorities. Now I understand priorities change sometimes, but I just want to make sure. That that's what we're saying is that the priority changed. because I want to make sure that my strategies and my tactics are aligned with your actual priorities.

And a lot of times the clients will be like, oh yeah, you're right. You know, we we got to get that credit card paid off. I'm gonna hold off on investing in the new marketing campaign or whatever it might be. But lay that six to 12 month roadmap out, high level, big priorities, big goals. That gives you or your team clarity on what to focus on each month, month in and month out for the first six months to a year, and it keeps the client on track.

Now, like uh somebody had asked in the DMs earlier in the chat, how do you structure all of these things? This isn't a one call, this isn't a one-shot thing. This is part of the overall onboarding process. So I'm gonna walk you through what that looks like. So first we, you know, we get in there, the contract is is signed. And and let me say this before we get through it. I want to, I want to really challenge you to have this entire process I'm about to walk you through.

Done in less than 30 days. Impress me and figure out how to do it in under 21 days. We're striving for 21 days. That's like our internal goal. But I say you've got to know what done is for you. It's a for onboarding. If you don't know what done is for onboarding, Then that's your g that's your mission.

The fine done for your firm when it comes to onboarding. Okay, so contract gets signed. Then you're sending some sort of a welcome video or welcome email within one business day. If you can do it within half a business day or even immediately, even better. And this is simple. It's just an email or video that explains next steps and what to expect short term. Hey Bill, Mike here from KFT Solutions. We're so excited to get started with you. I want to let you know that Greg, your new CFO.

He's going to be reaching out by end of day today to introduce himself and to ask you three questions, X, Y, Z. And then he's going to schedule his first call with you right there. Boom. Short and simple. If you've got any questions about the process, hit respond to this email and I will clear them up or my EA will clear them up. Again, my team's humbled and excited to work with you. See you shortly. Boom. That's it. Send them something though right away.

So again, they just spent 11 grand or however many grand it is and they're like, all right, what now? Nothing. Have something set up. It triggers you, it notifies you automatically. And then you've got either an automated thing that goes out. I like a custom thing just to show that

You're truly excited to work with them, but that's up to you how you want to do that. Next you're going to get that intro call schedule, the orientation call, the intro call, the whatever you want to call it call. On that call, what are we doing? We're getting access to QuickBooks.

I recommend that you get access to the accounting on the call because how many times have you had issues with where, again, they give you the wrong access or they get locked out, they don't know what to do, there's two-factor authentication, all the crap that comes up.

You got to get the QuickBooks access. Make it easy for them. Get access to their CRM, all that kind of stuff right there on the call. Earlier we talked about expectation setting. Do that here. What questions do you have so far? Ask them right here. Start discussing goals here. Hey, I remember from our sales call that you had mentioned XYZ goals. Let me just, I got a couple clarifying questions I want to ask. Come up with clarifying questions.

You want them talking and thinking about goals. Hit it here, right on the intro call. Then you're going to go do the nerdy analysis and drafting the CFO report, crunching the numbers, reviewing the key documents. Setting up Geocon. If you use Giacon, you're doing all this. What's next? We got a second call. You're going to have questions from your analysis. You are going to make some assumptions in your draft.

I recommend that you have a cash flow, a working cash flow forecast and set of projections based on historicals. Both of those are going to be wrong. Get their feedback high level on the things that are coming down the pipeline and start making updates. to the projections in the cash flow forecast right there. start getting it dialed in. What else are we going to go over? We're going to go over goals again. Then you're going to go back and do some adjustments.

Some tweaking based on their feedback. You're gonna get your first CFO report ready to go. Then you're gonna have your final onboarding call, which is what you're gonna present the CFO report. You're gonna do the full song and dance. You're gonna make darn sure. You hit that aha moment. Look at me. We we just saved.

$32,000 together. Yay. Exciting. You're gonna lay out the roadmap and you're gonna get buy-in. Hey, what I'm hearing, I just wanna make sure I've got this right, Teresa. The four priorities for Acme Inc. over the next 12 months. Is boom, boom, boom, boom. We got to get you paid fifteen thousand dollars a month more. We need to hire a new dispatcher and we need to get that S Corp election done or whatever. Is that

Am I tracking okay? Is that okay? Great. Oh no, not the S Corp election. Not that. We got this other, whatever it is. Get consensus, get buy in, and then you're onto your monthly cycle. You're onto the monthly CFO cycle. Try to get this. under 21 days if you can, certainly under 30. Listen, don't be a victim of slow onboarding. You've got to be the driver. There's so many things that aren't, you know, it's not my fault.

The client, the client, the client. And I'm like, look, it cannot be your fault. And then you can still be broke. Wasn't your fault, but you're still broke because you don't have that sweet, sweet revenue coming in from that client. Now you got to go find more leads.

You know, how many leads does it take for you to get a client, to land a client? I don't know. If you close half of your sales calls, you need at least two leads. How hard is it to get two leads? Harder than I want it to be. Don't lose the client. You can use those other two leads for new revenue.

So here's some ways to increase the perceived value of your onboarding. Right. I want you to be able to charge five, six, seven thousand dollars. So the first one is have a physical thing. You don't have to do any of these. I'm just sharing with you some of the things that I've learned. Have a physical. thing that you give them if you want to charge the most. We started doing these financial health accelerator. We call our onboarding the financial health accelerator process now, right?

This book's like what Lauren? Like 50 pages. They love it. It's awesome. The feedback is stupid. I'm like, ah, should have been doing these longer. So maybe turn your thing into your onboarding. You're you're done is a physical thing. Number two is turn it into like a proven process. When you're on a sales call and you talk about I'm gonna do my uh financial health accelerator.

process, right? We don't even call it onboarding, right? We've got our proven process, which is where our sole mission in life is to pay for our full year service in the first 30 days. And we do this process, right? If you want to know what a great example is, go to EOS. Go to the EOS, search up the EOS proven process. Then do some RD.

Rip off and duplicate. Change it around. Put in your s your logos and your swag in there. Change the words. Don't talk copyright infringe. Switch it around. But when you're selling it, if you s you're selling them a process instead of just onboarding. perceived value goes up. And when you can connect that with an outcome, it goes up even more. And don't call it onboarding. Horrible name, onboarding. It's just so generic. It's so generic.

So if you can come up with something other than onboarding, five grand, right? If you put financial health accelerator, five grand, first month. CFO service five grand. It just hits a little different. I'd rather financial health, it's got some mystique to it. I want my financial health accelerated. Onboarding. Boo.

All right, my friends, I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening to this episode. In the meantime, I can't wait to see you back right here next week. I'll see you then.