Offboarding: The Art of a Good Goodbye
I can admit that I am not exactly a pro when it comes to saying goodbye.
To avoid a full-on meltdown, I made my parents leave me at my U of S dorm (shout out to Ogle Hall!) approx 14 seconds after dropping me off lol.
Most of my past relationships were ended by my exes even though I knew they were long past their expiry date.
And almost all of the contracts with my first set of 7-Fig CEO clients concluded awkwardly or abruptly. I rarely hear from these women today.
SO PLEASE FRIEND: learn from my mistakes!!
Instead, let’s talk about how to say goodbye to clients in a professional, respectful way.
And pourquoi might you care about how your client relationships end?
✅ You’d probably like these clients to return one day. Repeat clients are dream clients… it’s far easier in terms of resource allocation and business-specific-knowledge to work with a returning client than a brand new client.
✅ Perhaps you’d like to get some word-of-mouth referrals from past clients because pounding the pavement for cold leads and going through the like/know/trust cycle can take over a year, but a referral from a trusted peer can short-cut that entire process to less than 2 days (yes, this happens to me from time to time).
✅ Or maybe you simply want your contracts to end as strongly as they began because you care about your clients having a great experience with you and your team, and feeling that the entire contract was an equal exchange.
Regardless of your reason, ending client contracts well (aka developing an airtight offboarding process) is an important skill for all of us service-providers to develop.
So let’s dive in. Today I’m sharing the exact 5 steps my team addresses during our very own client offboarding process.
Each of these steps/questions is designed to ensure the client has a smooth experience during the completion of their contract as well as increase our chances of creating a repeat client or developing a referral source.
Here’s what we do:
Identify who will be responsible for leading the offboarding process (as in, Offboarding Lead)
Ensure this person is in charge of drafting an external Offboarding doc for communicating the process to the client
2. Get super clear on any final deliverables required under the contract and the plan for completing these items (timeline, resources involved, etc)
3. Consider some kind of ‘Contract Deliverables’ review that helps the client see the items completed all in one spot.
We use a “Client Deliverables” folder throughout our contracts to help clients see what we’ve done at a glance, but reinforcing these items at the end of the contract can be useful too.
4. Offer post-engagement support (if desired).
This can be a tricky one and I’ll be honest and say that I don’t offer this to all clients, but if I honestly feel there is still potential for growth and we have alignment with a client, I will offer this.
5. Identify any final admin / legal wrap up items
Was there shared access to software or other forms of organizational integration during the contract? If so, when will this cease and who is in charge of administering removal of this access?
Are there any outstanding invoices?
Is an offboarding meeting desired to go over questions/comments?
Has feedback been requested recently? If not, who will coordinate this?
I’d love to hear from you if contract completion has been tricky for you to navigate in the past. It's something I talk to my 7-Fig CEO clients regularly.
It’s an area of growth for me too (obvi), but it’s my sincere hope that by sharing my team’s approach, you might have a bit of a roadmap for your next offboard.
Take care and talk soon,
Tanya