Over time, as you serve clients, you develop methods to improve your efficiency in all aspects of your business.
A big part of maximum efficiency is having any easy way to communicate with clients (and communicating how you will communicate — follow me?).
Enter the welcome packet. (Ta-da!)
Depending on how much information you are sending, your welcome packet could be a single page PDF or more comprehensive package.
To get started, consider the following questions:
- What policies do you have around rescheduling, cancelling, and no shows?
- How do you prefer for clients to communicate with you?
- What turnaround time can your clients expect?
- Is there a way to reach out if something is urgent?
- Given your work, what constitutes truly urgent?
- What standard invites, softwares, login details, etc. should your client expect and when?
- Is there a standard schedule you will follow the client should know?
- How do you handle scheduling?
- What are your normal business hours?
Once you have considered which points are relevant for your business, write them up for your clients. You don’t have to write a novel for each of these points. Just give one to two sentences of pertinent information, links, and details to help educate your client on how you like to work.
Once you have the basics down, consider any additional materials you need to provide– like video how-to’s, support documents, or software access.
For example, one common thing my clients do when we start working together is add me as an admin to their Facebook page and their Facebook ads account. if you never done this before it can be tricky. So, I have a simple 3-minute screen share video that walks them through both step by step that I like to send after I first call. That video is something that is part of my welcome packet for my business.
I also commonly set my clients up with the project management system like Asana. Again, I have a short video I share with them that walks them through the first few set-up steps and identifying the features they will use and any preferences they like.
You don’t have to create all this at once, but start with the basics and add to it as you can. The next time you create a video, email, or document for a new client, simply ask yourself if it belongs and you’re welcome packet. If so, does it need to be generalized before you can add it?
The last step is to organize the materials in an easily deliverable form. Keep it simple, easy, and branded!
Then, start delivering!
