Write your onboarding checklist in six steps.
A milestone checklist tells your team which new accounts are stuck, and on which step. Here is how to write one, whether or not you ever use Trailmark.
The six steps
Work through them in order. Most teams get a first version done in an afternoon, then adjust the time limits after a month of real accounts.
- 01 DESCRIBE A WORKING ACCOUNT
Before any steps, write one sentence about what a new account looks like when onboarding is done. For example: two teams use the product every week and a report goes to their leadership. Everything on the list leads to that sentence.
- 02 BREAK IT INTO MILESTONES
List what has to happen first, in order: team invited, data connected, first report shared. Four to six is plenty. If you have twelve, some of them are tasks, not milestones.
- 03 FIND WHERE EACH ONE HAPPENS
Every milestone needs a place you can see it happen: a product event, a CRM field, a row in an export. If you cannot see it, you end up asking the customer whether it happened.
- 04 GIVE EACH ONE A TIME LIMIT
How many days is normal for this step? Use your last ten healthy accounts as the guide. The limit is what turns a slow account into a held one.
- 05 NAME AN OWNER
Each held account needs one person who acts on it. Usually the CS owner, sometimes an implementation lead for the technical steps.
- 06 WORK THE HOLD LIST EACH MORNING
List every account past a limit, longest wait first, with the step and the owner. That list is the morning's calls. When it is empty, onboarding is on track.
What the result looks like
A short walk through the sample account cards on this site: four milestones each, and the one step that is on hold.
Take the checklist with you.
The same six steps as a two-page printable worksheet: a milestones table, account cards and a hold list. Free, PDF.
Rather set it up on a call?
Bring your steps. We turn them into milestones in Trailmark and show you which accounts would be on hold today.