Onboarding Clients: A guide For Freelancers

Onboarding clients as a freelancer is essential to having a successful business. A client is more likely to give you a glowing testimonial and refer you to other potential clients if you offer them a luxury onboarding process.

I’ve been freelancing full-time for almost a year now and have been onboarding new clients almost every month.

Over time, my process has become a lot more refined — I like to ask clients at the end of our time working together what could be improved.

When onboarding a new client, you need to pay lots of attention to detail and have a process that suits your business and your offerings.

By the end of this article, you’ll be able to finally have the streamlined process for onboarding clients that you’ve dreamed about.

Here’s everything you’ll want to know about onboarding clients as a freelancer.

Table of Contents
What Does Onboarding Mean?
10 reasons To have An Onboarding Process
New client Onboarding Checklist
My client Onboarding process (Example)
Conclusion

What Does Onboarding Mean?

Essentially, onboarding clients refers to the process that you have in place once a potential client reaches out to you. Do they book a consultation call? What happens after that? These are all part of the onboarding process.

Everyone’s onboarding process is going to look different, and that’s a good thing.

You don’t want your onboarding process to look like everyone else’s, but it probably will be relatively similar to those businesses that offer the same services as you.

While many people think that the onboarding process starts after you’ve signed a client, it actually begins the second a potential client reaches out to you. Contacting you is the first step to working with you, right?

Just like all corporate jobs have onboarding processes for new employees, it’s important for freelancers and agency owners to have a new client onboarding process. It helps both you and the client in more ways than you could imagine.

10 reasons To have An Onboarding Process

Whether you’re a new freelancer or you’ve run your business for a while now, you need to be onboarding clients in a streamlined way.

Below, learn more about the importance of onboarding and why you should make sure it’s implemented in your business.

1. It will allow you to see if a client is a good fit

One of the most complex parts of being a freelancer is screening potential clients and seeing if they will be a good fit for your business. Luckily, the onboarding allows you to see if a client is someone you will be able to work with.

For instance, if a client refuses to tell you their budget before a discovery call or they are slow at answering your emails from the very beginning, then it could be a red flag. That’s what is so great about onboarding clients.

Throughout onboarding, you’ll be able to tell how easy a client is to work with. You want a client who will answer your emails in a timely manner (for you to follow a timeline) and someone willing to provide you with all the info you need during the onboarding process.

Onboarding a new client begins with you having a discovery call, or if you have a business model like mine, filling out an application form. Often, you can quickly tell whether you want to work with someone or not from one of these two things.

Make sure to always ask a client for their website information or social media handles so you can get a feel for their brand before you even meet them.

If you have a brand that’s all about helping remote workers and focusing on the digital nomad lifestyle, it might not be best for you to help a brand that is all about the corporate workforce.

One thing to keep in mind, too, is that you should not feel bad about letting a client know you’re not a good fit. I’ve had to do it a few times. sometimes a client is aggravated by my choice, which only makes me feel like I made the right decision.

2. Your clients will know exactly what to expect working with you

When onboarding new clients, you’ll be able to let your clients know the expectations of working with you. This can save you significant headaches because you’ll be able to see if the client is up for the hard work.

Often, clients don’t realize that collaboration is needed for a successful project.

One of the top expectations that you’ll want to let clients know about is feedback. If you’re providing services like social media management or something design-based, feedback is critical to help your client have the best success possible. 

So, be sure to let your client know the expectations for getting feedback to you. Do they have a week, or do you need feedback in 48 hours? These are things your client needs to know so that they can also plan ahead.

Another vital expectation is payment. You need to be upfront during the new client onboarding process about when payments are due and how much each payment is.

Is payment due upfront? Is there a payment plan? figure all of this out to let your client know.

If you charge a late payment fee, you’ll also want to let clients know about that. Of course, all of this should also be outlined in your contract or agreement that you both sign.

My favourite way to share expectations when onboarding clients is to create a welcome packet.

I have one pre-made that I use as a template, and I just fill out the information depending on the client I’m working with. This way, the client has everything they need to know all in one place.

3. clients will become engaged more with the project process

Through onboarding a new client, you’ll be able to get a client more involved in the process. like mentioned earlier, most clients don’t realize that projects are collaborative and require just as much insight from them as it does work from you.

By letting clients know about your expectations, processes, and more, your client will feel like they are part of your business. 

One of my favourite ways to get a client involved during the new client onboarding process is to assign client homework for my design projects.

This isn’t something that takes tons of their time; in fact, it’s mostly to help me get a feel for what they like design-wise and understand their aesthetic.

As an example, for my website design and branding projects, I have my clients create a Pinterest board of elements they love from other websites and brands. This way, I know what they like and can incorporate it with their own brand’s spin.

I also like to ask lots of questions through a Trello board that they have to fill out by the time our design week starts. I ask them questions about their business goals are, what words they would use to describe their business, and who their target clients are.

4. You will be able to gather important information from your clients

The most crucial part of onboarding new clients is gathering all of the information you need from them to have a successful project. Of course, this is going to vary depending on the services that you offer.

Usually, the type of information you might be gathering would include more about their business, clients, their goals, and more. It’s best to sit and think about all of the information you will need to gather and create a checklist of sorts — this will save a lot of back and forth.

Other information you might consider getting from your client includes usernames and passwords for accounts (especially if you’re a website designer or social media manager) or brand guidelines if you need them for a graphic design project.

Ensure you grab every possible login possible, even if you are not 100% sure you will need it.

If you’re a web designer, you might want to consider getting access to your client’s email marketing platform, too, in case you have to re-integrate it into the website during your design process.

Creating a checklist for this part of the onboarding process is very helpful. You’ll learn more about checklists for onboarding later on in this post!

5. Onboarding allows you to stand out from your competition

Even though you might not realize it, your onboarding process is the perfect time to show your clients that you have your stuff together. You want everything to be as streamlined and painless as possible.

This is the perfect time to give your clients a luxury experience, even if you aren’t charging high prices.

The experience that your client has from you right from the beginning is going to dictate how the rest of your time working together goes, so you want to start on the right foot.

The best way to do this is to streamline your processes as much as possible. You want to think about every step of the onboarding process and whether it’s necessary to include it for your services.

Another thing to consider is that if you offer multiple services as I do, your onboarding process will not look the same for each one.

For instance, you aren’t going to need the login information for your client’s social media accounts if you’re just creating their branding, but you will if you are a social media manager.

If you treat your client well and stand out from the competition, it’s likely that they will leave you a glowing testimonial. This could also lead to referrals and even more excellent clients down the line.

6. You’ll save yourself time

If you don’t have an onboarding process, you’re going to spend so much time going back and forth with your client while you’re working together.

You’ll probably be messaging them all the time, asking them for more information, and they might even be confused about your processes which can make it harder to work with them.

Sometimes, you might have issues with a client because of your lack of processes in the onboarding phases, which is why having one that’s solid is so essential.

By getting all of the information from your clients the second you start working together, you’ll be able to have everything stored in one place too.

Forms are a great way to do a lot of onboarding because you can quickly put answers into an Excel sheet of some sort for organization.

So, save yourself (and your client) major headaches and time by asking the questions now. Be sure to also account for onboarding in your timeline with your client.

7. It allows you to figure out the perfect project timeline

Figuring out a project timeline is best done while onboarding clients. during the process, you’ll want to provide an in-depth timeline to the best of your ability and let your client know that extreme cases might slightly change the timeline.

I often like to send the project timeline directly inside my project proposals so that the client knows what to expect before they even sign the contract.

If they need the project even sooner, then you know to charge an extra rush fee of your choosing because you’ll most likely have to work nights and weekends to get it done on time.

The best way to supply a timeline to a client is to be as informative as possible.

I like to break it down by the week and the day and send it in a calendar format because I’m visual. This also allows the client to see how the project is going to fit into their own schedules.

During this time, you can also collaborate a bit with your client to find out when their hard deadline is for the project.

8. Your clients will feel welcomed if you have an onboarding process

By having a complete process for onboarding a new client, you’ll make your client feel welcomed by you and your business. 

While having an onboarding process shows that you have your stuff together, it also shows your client that you are eager and ready to start working with them.

Often, onboarding processes can start immediately after a client signs the contract and makes their first payment.

If you’ve ever worked an in-person job in an office, then you surely had an onboarding day.

During that day, you felt welcomed by everyone in the company and started to learn the ropes. even though you were working for that company and your client is paying for your services, it’s the same sort of idea.

Consider creating a PDF with all of the information and maybe even put together a short video to send to your client as they get acclimated with your company. This could help them feel even more welcomed.

Another possibility when welcoming a client is to consider purchasing a welcome gift.

I wouldn’t do this for small-ticket clients, but if you have a client that’s paying for a project over $1,500, then consider sending them a Starbucks gift card or another small gift to show your appreciation for their business.

9. You will better be able to understand your client’s needs

The new client onboarding process allows you to quickly understand the project’s scope and what exactly it is that the client needs. This is true from the initial application or consultation call to making a Pinterest board.