A client's offhand remark made me scrap our whole onboarding flow

Last month a prospect in Chicago told me our 14 day kickoff process felt like 'homework from a boss who doesn't trust you.' That stung because they weren't wrong. We had 8 steps, 3 sign-offs, and a strategy doc nobody read. I cut it to 3 calls: goals, assets, and a single page plan. Now I'm wondering if the vetting phase for new agency partners is too heavy on paperwork and too light on actual conversation. Has anyone else trimmed their onboarding after a blunt comment and seen better retention?

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william_jackson652mo ago

Different angle here, but cutting the paperwork might be hiding a real problem. If your vetting phase feels like homework, maybe the issue isn't the steps, it's that you're not asking the right questions out loud. Those calls take way more skill than a checklist, and most agencies lean on docs because they don't know how to have the tough talk about money, scope, or bad fits. A single page plan sounds nice, but I've seen that backfire when nobody wrote down the messy stuff like what happens when a deadline slips or who owns the blame. Did your retention actually improve, or did you just feel better about the kickoff?

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