Client Onboarding and the First 90 Days: Why Retention Is Won in the First Fortnight

Paul Sonneveld
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Marketplace Masters, the series where we go past the surface and into the operating decisions that actually move an agency forward. I'm your host, Paul Sonneveld. Today, we're tackling something almost every agency owner has felt, but very few have actually systematised. Namely, the first ninety days of a client relationship. Because here's the thing, by the time a client tells you that they're leaving, they actually decided this months ago, usually in the first couple of weeks. This is a live session, so please bring your questions as we go. The best of these conversations are driven by what you're wrestling with right now. 

Now, to help me on this particular topic and joining me today is Scott Ohsman, the VP of Digital Commerce at Quickfire, a full-service agency supporting consumer brands across marketplaces, SEM, paid social, influencer marketing and creative. Scott has been in the game for over thirty years and launched more than two hundred brands on Amazon. He was also one of our most popular guests last year on agency account management. So it's an absolute delight and pleasure to have him back on the show today. Scott, welcome. It's so great to have you back today.

Scott Ohsman
I'm so happy to be here, Paul. Thank you for having me back. What a blast. What a great topic, too. 

Paul Sonneveld
And can I just say to our audience, of course, ask your questions to Scott; put them in the LinkedIn comments or YouTube comments section as well. But I can't think of a person in our industry who's more passionate about account management when it comes to an Amazon agency or marketplace agency than Scott. So I am absolutely delighted. And I can't wait. So let's just jump straight into it, Scott. I'm going to maybe start at a bit of a higher level here. So you've run account management at scale for many, many years. Maybe take us back to that moment when did you realised that the outcome of a client relationship was being set really early on in the first few weeks rather than, say, the first year? 

Scott Ohsman
Oh, my goodness. It just goes back. I mean, you know, I had my own agency for fifteen years almost. And you went when we were small. But when you get bigger, and then we merged it, once you get bigger and you have to systemise it or put a process in place- a repeatable process, which is really hard to do- you can put some boundaries and some guidelines together on the front end, which we're going to talk about how important that is. But each customer and each brand, each specific thing, there seems to be a customisation. So it's very difficult to do that. 

But one of the biggest keys is the beginning of the process. And this varies from agency to agency, all kinds of different situations where you either have the owner-operators; they're part of the sales and marketing. So they've developed the courting and the relationship to get the account. Or you have a full-blown, which we had at one time when we were at our largest. We had a full sales team. We had a full sales and marketing team. And so they were leads, and they were doing their job of getting the new accounts. 

So you first identify an ideal client profile, right? That's a big thing with everybody. Here's who we really are good for. You have all these business cases in your pitch decks, all these kinds of things. And then you go in, and the salespeople are doing their job, just trying to get the account. And that's where it really starts, Paul, is where there's this gap in communication between from that sales process to going out and meeting with the client, the RFPs, even in that process, when you hand it over, when the baton is handed over, that's when we first really realised, oh my goodness, there is a huge problem here because just way too many surprises. I had one rule after a while. I just- no surprises unless they were good, way too many surprises. 

Paul Sonneveld
So let's tackle that thing specifically, that specific problem. What actually happens inside an agency, let's say in that fortnight, or for those of you who don't know the term, the first two weeks, I think it's Australian English. I had to look it up, Paul. I had to look it up. The first two weeks, after a contract is signed, what typically or actually happens versus what should be happening in that two-week window? 

Scott Ohsman
Yeah, i mean what typically happens every situation is unique of course i keep disclaimer what typically happens is the sales process goes everybody's excited you kind of hear the the delivery team the account management team and that that it has several departments right so you have an ad team you had account management you have creative you have various different departments within the teams Everybody kind of hears what's coming on. 

Oh, I think we have a really good account coming on. But they don't really know because they're not involved in the process. And what typically happens is, boom, the kickoff call is scheduled. There's a couple of things that are really important about this. Typically on the brand or client side, there's going to be all these stakeholders and high-level people that are involved in the relationship building, the rapport building, and actually getting the account signed. 

They're going to be on that kickoff call. And they might not actually ever do want to call again. Just how it works. So you have that. Then sometimes you have the owner-operator or someone from sales who buddy buddy with them. They've already got their rapport relationship. They know what the big problems are. Typically, you're getting the account because there was a problem either other agency or what they couldn't fix. 

You have promised to fix it. And what typically happens in that first kickoff call is when there's a gap in communication, and the account manager and everybody doesn't really know what the problem they're trying to fix is. It comes up, and it's super awkward because now you have all these senior people on both sides. Everyone has these expectation levels and what really typically, unfortunately, happens so many times is there's like, " Oh, okay, great yeah, yeah and then after it there's a bunch of drama on the Slack channels of like Nobody told me that was the problem i haven't even looked into that so that's, there's just a miscommunication. There's a disconnect between the process before and once you hand out the baton. That's one particular thing. Paul, you're nodding. You've seen this. You've lived this. 

Paul Sonneveld
Too many times. Unfortunately, it's not a situation that is unique to an agency. I think it very much applies to SaaS, particularly in terms of larger accounts as well, particularly if there's maybe customisations involved and all of that. Yeah, a hundred percent. 

Scott Ohsman
So how do you fix it? 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, well, if I'm allowed to ask you the question, I'd love to ask you because I might learn something here. You know, what does good look like in terms of avoiding those issues and problems? 

Scott Ohsman
So once we had this, and once you scale it up and when you have a thirty, forty account team, you have bigger people. What we had to do is change the process. So we had to change the cadence and the timing. There's a couple of different things, and this isn't always possible. But as the account management and the sales team get together, they have to have regular cadence of communication, whether it's meetings are the best thing, obviously email and Slack, and all the other communication. They've got to be in tune together. 

So once an account and the sales process is far enough along where there's a seventy percent or higher likelihood that's going to come on. You've got to get the account management team involved. So the leadership in there has to be involved in the later stages. So the one thing that is ideal, not always possible, ideal is you're sitting there thinking about who's going to lead the account team. You're already thinking about it. You're looking, and you guys are in typically agencies. We're meeting about that constantly, saying, What is the workload? What's the load on the account manager team? What's my load on Ad team? Who's going to be assigned to it? 

Then there's the personality conversation. If you can get through that, once you're about seventy percent or that you think the likelihood of this account closing is very high. Then you start having conversations, which is, hey, I have whoever, you know, Scott's going to be the account manager. I'd actually like to get them on a call with this potential client once we're down the road. And a lot of brands actually ask for it. Sometimes they don't get it. It's not always possible. That is a really smart thing. So we tried to do that every single can, every time we could. And the other big process difference was all of a sudden from sale, we had sales and account management way more intertwined, way more involved in the later part of the process. Because that's when they identified problems. That's when the account management team, if they had all the insights of personalities, the big problems, we melded those departments together, and it actually solved a ton of problems down the road. 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, that makes sense. Not just what's that saying? Throw it over the fence and say, good luck. You're responsible now. 

Scott Ohsman
Yes. Can I just add one other caveat, which happens almost all the time, which is not on the agency side. This is on the client side. Okay. Now, the reason I know this is because I've lived it so many times. I was the operator owner sometimes in the big, big accounts. I was heavily involved in getting the account. And then I was involved in the account management part. What happens typically, which is also very frustrating for the account management side, is there's this sense of amnesia. Like you told in the sales process, through emails, you documented it, you covered your butt on it. I told you we can do this. This problem is not fixable. This is what I would expect. Let's say it's a growth metric. Let's say it's a buy box issue. Whatever the case is, you tell them what the reality is. And then it's magical, Paul.

In the first two weeks, like you said, the fortnight, in the fortnight there, it's like the account management gets on, the salesperson or the person on the brand is like, they told me in sales that you guys could fix this, and we could have a three X growth on this. And you're like, and then you check with the sales and sales like, I never said that. In fact, here's the email that I said that won't be, you know, here's what the expectation is. I just have, that is a key reality. We just have to live with on the deliverable side is that there's amnesia by the brand typically or the client. That's all. 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, no, I think I like your thing about you saying you sort of have to live with it because I think it is unavoidable, right? Like you're saying it happens and I've seen it happen when things are in writing, when it's documented, then there's, there's clearly caveats are clearly laid out, you'd still be asked the question, and I'd, you know, what can you do? You can just be polite. 

Scott Ohsman
You have to live with it. Now, it creates- that's why you have to get sales and account management as best you can, realistically, involved, intertwined, as the account is even way before the onboarding call, before the account sign, because you've got to establish these things as early as possible. 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. Just on the kickoff call, I just want to ask a more sort of direct, specific question around this. You know, there is this benchmark: as I was preparing for this episode, there is this benchmark floating around that the kickoff call should really happen within five days of signing the contract. You know, and that buyer anxiety sort of starts to compound badly after, like, ten days or two weeks. Does it match your expectation or your experience of what you've seen? What's your view on how quickly the kickoff call should take place? 

Scott Ohsman
I think the best effort is to try to get the kickoff call in there as soon as possible. There's a lot of enthusiasm. A lot of people typically on the client side have taken a lot of risks. They've gone through a huge process. I mean, there's a lot of budgets, a lot of stakeholders involved. And I think the person who is the decision-maker or the lead person of contact is very excited to get the new, you know, they want to show off the new account, right? The new agency, the new toy they just got, they're like, these people are awesome; you gotta see them, and so they want to show that off, and so I think it is very critical to have that big kickoff call as soon as possible. 

Now there's a bunch of stuff that has to be done before the kickoff call. And that's another classic mistake that many agencies make to no fault of their own, because of just volume and people and the amount of counts. We'll talk about that. But to make that kickoff call actually productive, you've got to make it somewhat informal, in the fact that this is the start. You've got to get the enthusiasm. You've got to get the juice going. 

Paul Sonneveld
It's like they're in the honeymoon period, right? They feel very positive about you. It's interesting, actually. A lot of times, I mean, for us, it's obviously a bit different because we're not an agency, but there's a demo process or trial process. And then they sign, and that's probably the highest level of happiness that they'll get. So it's a great time to ask for a testimonial or review, at least on the SaaS side, right? Because, yeah, from there, it can only go down, unfortunately. 

Scott Ohsman
Well, let's hope not. 

Paul Sonneveld
Let's hope not. But, yeah, once they've sort of made the decision to part ways or sign the contract, that is it's definitely a high point. I was gonna change tech into the sort of a follow-up question I had, but if you want to add something. Now's a good time. 

Scott Ohsman
No, no, go, go, go ahead. 

Paul Sonneveld
All right, so I want to sort of get to the next issue, sort of beyond the kickoff call that is quite common, right? And that is often the mismatch between who's working on the count versus what they were promised, right? You know, they were sold a, you know, or sold by a senior strategist, you know, really sort of this sort of trusted advisor type person who knows everything and talks a big picture stuff. And then all of a sudden they find like, more of a junior account manager, you know, servicing their account, juggling all the brands. Now, from an economics point of view, that's a lot of times the way that's going to have to work. Right. But how do you, what's your view on that and how do you, how should you manage that transition honestly and properly? 

Scott Ohsman
So this again is you gotta hash this out, and you gotta really try to get you gotta clear the decks on this in the sales process before the thing is signed you gotta make sure you have a realistic expectation of what they have. This happens non-stop i mean i hear countless stories of some very very significant sized businesses at very large some of the largest agencies in our space And I get it. I get it. But you have a senior person managing and responsible for a very seven, eight, nine-figure business, and they get a junior person. That's just not fair to the junior person. 

So you have to get involved early on to deliberate. Not only is it a personality mix- who you think is going to work with this person, point of contact on the brand side, and what have you, but you have to know the audience, Paul. You have to figure out who is the right person for this audience to do it. What happens is it just starts off, as we've been talking about, it's just a rocky start. I sold you. I thought you get emotions are high. Energy's high. Everybody's excited. 

As you said, then boom, you call in. You're like, what are we doing here? I got somebody who literally doesn't know my business. They've been around for five minutes. I'm paying a pretty sizable fee for what I feel like is not meeting that particular moment. So immediately bosses are called, people are involved, it's a top-to-top, and all of a sudden everyone's screaming and yelling because the expectations weren't met. And instantly you're not happy. And the first impression and the glow and the courtship and the romance is damaged. 

Paul Sonneveld
And how does it relate to the volume of accounts right i think because another flavor of this issue sometimes is an expectation that hey we thought you're pretty much full time on our account and now i'm finding out you're looking after ten other brands as well this is probably yeah go ahead no it's sort of you know a similar issue you know different side of the coin right um you know how do you think through that and and how do you other than sort of managing expectations kind of upfront, is there something else that is worth doing in terms of managing that particular dynamic? 

Scott Ohsman
This is the struggle of agency business, point blank, because you said there's an economics to these decisions. From an agency owner, you're looking at these pods, so to speak. A lot of people call them pods. We did too, where you have these account teams. Well, the account manager is your quarterback, your conductor, right? They're the orchestra. They manage and drive the business to all the other departments. So ads, production, catalogue- everybody who's involved they're the quarterback, and so this is a struggle because if the volume of the account isn't big enough, the big guys pay for everybody else. 

So when you shuffle the deck, you have to meet the seniority and the level of experience, not only, but also you can't have a mid-tier person who hasn't done this for very long, an account manager who has ten accounts. And if not only that the size doesn't matter all the time Paul because sometimes there's a mid-tier account that isn't as high volume but because of the complexities and intricacies possibly it's a hybrid account or their SKU count is large or there's a big ad set or catalog work. 

It's not always just a volume. So you have to really think through, okay, I've got this account manager, and the other thing is you have to address the ad account or the catalogue. One of the biggest challenges in our industry is you get a great account manager. The poor ad person is juggling twenty accounts. And so you show up to the meeting, and they're barely ready. They're looking at dashboards as fast as they can. And you can just tell they don't have the time to put the thought and the effort. 

So the number of accounts is one metric to look at. It's the kind of account it is and the kind of work that is associated with it. And you've got to get the account manager involved in that because a lot of times senior people think they know what's going to be the day-to-day deliverables, but they're too far from it, so they can't understand what actually needs to happen. 

So this is a constant inflection point. It's a tension on every account team and every agency: how many accounts and what type of volume and complexity, can this pod take? At the same time, each pod has to so-called pay for themselves. There's a P&L to the pod. And so this is just probably one of the biggest challenges of our agency. And it reflects on the agency, reflects on the client. It reflects on your financials. It's a huge part of the puzzle. 

Paul Sonneveld
Have you ever had to go through maybe a readjustment? Actually, you realise, oh, that doesn't work. Even without the client kind of complaining, right? You go, right, this is not sustainable. We're setting ourselves up for failure. We're going to have to go back to the client and tell them, actually, there's someone else on the account. I mean, I'd love to just, that sounds like a difficult conversation with the client. You know, I'd love to just... get some of your thoughts on that particular topic because it might well be the right answer in many instances. 

Scott Ohsman
I've done it many times. In fact, in the last three or four years, part of it, I get to do these little consulting projects where I'm kind of a matchmaker. I'm trying to put the right agency with the right brand and the brand with the right agency. The brands hire me. Exactly. We got on the one call, and I had the expectations. I got on the first call with the account manager, and I called the senior person at the agency right away and said, Hey, listen. You were going to have to change this up. I'm so sorry, but we got- that's not the right person. We don't have the right fit here. 

This constantly happens because of, and this happened to us very early, because there was that disconnect and that management communication gap where, hey, we got an account. Okay, they're this category. Oh, well, the account managers handled that category before- what have you. Oh, we got an Ad manager. Okay, we're going to try and reduce his account level because he's managing more dollars from twenty-one down to twelve, or what have you accounts. You get in there and you go, this isn't the right fit. The key to on the agency side is to identify that as early as possible. That's why we have this like before the marriage is consummated in a contract. you try and get that account manager on a call with the potential client or almost-sure client. And you can kind of tell the fit right there.

Sometimes you just, you got it. You got to test your, your nerve and the personality fit and the, the acumen and the history and the experience of what he got. So that if you can cut a lot of this stuff off, we started doing more of that as much as we possibly could, but yes, you have to change it. And then you have to have Someone who started the relationship who can have that tough conversation. It can't be the new guy they just met four seconds ago. It's got to be somebody who they've trusted. And that's the key here in the first fourteen days. You've got to get their trust to have that conversation. We did this multiple times. It's an oops. It's a it sucks, but it has to be done. 

Paul Sonneveld
Appreciate you sharing that; very pragmatic there. In terms of the, there's another part sort of beyond the fourteen days, which is around reporting, right? And this is close to our heart because we play in this space around reporting back to clients you know, and striking that balance between giving them insightful information versus something that's not useful or not giving them anything at all. A lot of times this seems to be at least when i was doing my research here is reporting seems to be where the relationship can break you know often a little bit later maybe by month three or so you know brands can either complain about you know vanity dashboards you know what's the point uh there's no kind of what changed and why. How can you use reporting back to clients as a way of building trust? But then my follow-up question is also: how do you do that efficiently, right? Without being an enormous time drain, you know, and I'm keen to sort of, you know, what does the answer look like outside of kind of MerchantSpring really in terms of how would you tackle that from a, how have you tackled that in the past? 

Scott Ohsman
So a couple of things. So back to the first two weeks of engagement. Okay. You want to overdeliver. I can't say that loud enough or many times enough. You want to overdeliver. So your response time- don't get a brand new account. This happens so much. It used to drive me nuts. We get a new account. Then all of a sudden I'm the guy who brought the business in, for example, and I get a call a week later from the client saying, Hey, I sent an email. I've never heard back from anybody. 

Okay. Hey, I got the permissions. I did all this stuff, but I've not seen one. They said they could get access to your dashboard. I can't get in there, and nobody's talking to me. So I'm folding that in, Paul, because in the first two weeks, you want to respond quickly. It is all about that customer service. OK, get it done quickly. Over-deliver on the dashboards. On the reporting side, you want to actually fill them up in the first two weeks and almost over-communicate, over-deliver. Because part of the first two weeks, not only is to build that retention and trust, is training the client.

From a brand side and the agency side, we need to train the client on what the expectations are, what the scope is, and where our boundaries are. And so I always train to overdeliver in those first two weeks, and reporting is a huge key to that. Now I'm going to tackle the other part. What I learned and what everybody should learn is when I send a report to somebody and, and this is, there's two things to this. Number one is: What is the level? Who am I reporting to? Is this a report that is going to a C-level person? Is this a report going to my point of contact who owns the P&L, possibly? Is this somebody who's in that chart but only has responsibility for product catalogue things or a specific thing? 

Understand who your audience is, okay? And if it's C-level or senior management, it's gotta be a subject three bullets in the report. And you gotta tell me this. Okay. Why does it matter? What matters, what does it mean, and why should I care? I'm going to say that again. What does it mean, and why should I care? Because they want actionable insights. I used to have people, and even when I was in charge of all the account managers, and we had thirty of them, they'd send me great spreadsheets of all this unbelievable stuff. I don't have time to look through that. I can't consume it all. 

First of all, I want to empower you to use your brain, and you have to tell me the actual insights. What does it mean, and why should I care? And the same thing is in the first two weeks when you're building that trust; remember, you're the expert. The other biggest complaint I hear from brands all over in this for years and years I hired you because you're the expert on Amazon. You're the expert on this. You're the expert of this. I get on the call, and they're asking me, oh, what do you think? Do you think we should do a Prime Day deal? Do you think we should? No, I called you. You're the expert. You tell me. You've taken enough. You have all the information. You know my business. Tell me what I should do. You're the expert. You're here to fix my problem. The reason I hired your agency and left the other one is because you said you could fix my problem. I really went into a lot of things, Paul. 

Paul Sonneveld
No, no. I think, why should I care? I think it can apply that in all forms of communication, right? 

Scott Ohsman
What does it mean, and why should I care? If you answer those two things, I'm telling you, the happy meter- I always use the happy meter. The happy meter will go on high, Paul. 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Maybe I'll just write a cool prompt to go through all my Slack channels, summarise channel by channel. What does it mean? Why do I care? 

Scott Ohsman
As far as you get up when you have a bunch of people, it's just physically impossible to consume. The other big tip I said, depending on who your audience is, pretend, and now it's very prevalent. Think about you're reading an email on your phone or a Slack message on your phone. We're all one clip away from living our lives. Everything's a clip. Everything's three seconds. 

Paul Sonneveld
A hundred percent. Now, we're almost out of time, Scott. I know. I need to- I want to ask about one other scenario, which we haven't touched on at all, right? We've spoken a lot about different failure points and essentially, you know, on the agency side, where all the things that agencies can screw up in the first couple of weeks and how to mitigate that. But there is another scenario, and I've seen this personally time and time again as well, right? 

It's the second failure mode, let's call it that. You know, the client signs and hands over access. And then they go dark for weeks, right? You're trying to get a kickoff meeting in the diary. They're not responsive. They don't show up. It's like they've all disappeared for a few weeks. And then... Two months later, they resurface, and they're very unhappy, right? You know, the client that goes dark- you know, willingness is there on the agency side, but somehow it seems to be a struggle to engage, right? How do we deal with that failure mode? What tips can you share with us? 

Scott Ohsman
Yeah. So I've had this myself a bunch of times you get in. So immediately, and this is also the proactive side, right? So I always tell everybody, we did a lot of call, you know, you're trying to answer the questions before they're asked. This is part of that. Okay. If they're not showing up and that that's also a sign, that's a spidey sense of things aren't happy, happy, or they're not going to continue. You got to escalate it right away. You do not hesitate. Escalate back to the sales team. Escalate back to the person, the decision-making relationship. You got to move it up the chain as quickly as possible. 

I'll tell you one time I did this, and it worked really well. I was so frustrated. We had an account come on, and I couldn't get anything. They did the exact same thing you're describing. It went on and on. I did all the things I'm telling you to do. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Finally, I just actually, I sent an invoice for triple the amount, and I said, and I sent an email and the subject line was cancelled service. I fired him. I fired him within, I think it was in within three weeks of them signing, because I couldn't get anything out of them. But guess what happened, Paul? And that was an extreme and I exhausted everything. I'm not suggesting this. I got an email right away. In fact, I got a phone call. We had a meeting the next day. It was remarkable. 

Paul Sonneveld
That is amazing. I mean, it takes a lot of guts. 

Scott Ohsman
I had it. What do you want to do? What am I supposed to do? I can't do the work if you don't give me the work to do. 

Paul Sonneveld
A hundred percent. A hundred percent. When you started out with the invoice, I thought you were going to say, I sent him an invoice for three times the amount, and I put a little line in there. If we get that kickoff meeting in the diary today, I'll give you a 60% discount on this invoice but 

Scott Ohsman
It wasn't the invoice that really; it's the subject line to the most senior person: service cancelled. 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's whatever it is. A bit of a dramatic action, right? But sometimes that's the only thing left. 

Scott Ohsman
But the only end of that story is that they became a very happy customer for a long time. They felt horrible. There were a bunch of circumstances out of their control; what have you. My God, we had a tremendous relationship after that because, again, they felt so terrible. It's not a control issue. It's just that they relied on us. They trusted us. 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, yeah. What a great anecdote. Great story. Thank you so much, Scott. We are past a lot of time, unfortunately. 

Scott Ohsman
I know.

Paul Sonneveld
And I had a few more questions lined up. Maybe we'll carry those over for a next episode. Thank you so much, Scott. It's always been such a blessing. I mean, I just enjoy, you know, listening to you, hearing your passion. You know, everything you say is really delivered with, you know, passion, motivation and true belief, and you know, backed by many years of experience. So, I really, really appreciate that. If there's anyone listening or, you know, watching this on demand later and they want to get hold of you, maybe just chat more about this stuff over coffee or Zoom, how do they best get in touch with you? 

Scott Ohsman
Oh, the LinkedIn. I call it the linky. Just fire me up on the linky; send me a note, and I'll try to do the best I can to get in touch 

Paul Sonneveld
Great. All right. Well, thank you so much, Scott. And I look forward to catching you in person at the end of this month in Seattle for Accelerate. So look forward to catching up with you then. 

Scott Ohsman
Fantastic. Thanks for having me on, Paul. 

Paul Sonneveld
All right, everyone. That is a wrap of today's live episode for Marketplace Masters. If you registered, this recording is going to land in your inbox shortly. So feel free to share it with any others in your account management team or even the sales team. This one's certainly worth hearing. And for more sessions like this, our full on-demand library is at merchantspring.io. And if you're an agency looking for better visibility across your client portfolio or some great client reporting that can save you hours every single week, talk to me about what MerchantSpring can do for you. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you on the next one. Take care.