Six things the deal record knows. The client record starts with a company name.
A client says yes, and the company that just sold the work loses half of what it learned selling it. A 14-page guide: the six items that have to move across, the five questions the kickoff call is actually for, and the four dates that let you say out loud whether a client is onboarded or still in limbo.
Syncek is not an onboarding tool. No client portal, no intake form, no welcome emails, no file collection. What it holds is the record the card fills in: Signed, Kickoff held, Inputs complete and First value delivered as four date fields, Decision maker and Day-to-day contact as relations, Out of scope and Success line as long text, Onboarding stage as a single select driving a Kanban board. Syncek tracks time in stage, so where onboarding stalls is a column rather than a hunch. 15-day Business trial, no credit card. CSV or JSON export anytime, including after you cancel.
Six items, five questions, four dates. A 14-page guide.
| The handover · what selling already learned | What it is, and what it costs when it stays behind |
|---|---|
| 01What they boughtthe scope line and the amount | The scope in words the delivery side can act on, not a link to the proposal PDF.Without it the work starts from a guess. |
| 02What they said no toOut of scope | The things that came up while selling and were cut, written down as cut.Nobody writes down an absence. This is the week-three argument. |
| 03Who decidesDecision maker, Day-to-day contact | The one who signs is rarely the one who answers on Tuesday morning.Two relations to two people, not one name in a text box. |
| 04The promised start datewhat was said out loud | Whatever was actually said on the last call, including the soft version of it.The client remembers the soft version. |
| 05Where they came fromSource, Referred by | Carried across from the deal instead of re-guessed a month later.A referred client gets a different first week. |
| 06What worries themWorry | The objection they raised before signing, kept in their own words.It comes back in week six if the first two weeks ignore it. |
Questions about onboarding a new client
What should a client onboarding checklist include?
Two lists and four dates. The handover list is what the deal record already knows: what they bought and for how much, what they said no to, who decides and who you talk to daily, the start date they were promised, where they came from, and what they are worried about. The kickoff list is five questions only the client can answer. The four dates are Signed, Kickoff held, Inputs complete and First value delivered. Everything else on a typical checklist is your own delivery process, and that part is yours to write.
What should you ask on a client kickoff call?
Five questions, and nothing the client already answered while being sold to. Who else needs to be in the loop on this. What does done look like in ninety days. What do you already have that we need. How do you want to hear from us, and how often. What went wrong the last time you did this. Re-asking something from the sales conversation spends first-week credibility that took a whole sales cycle to earn.
How do you measure client onboarding time?
Onboarding time = First value delivered minus Signed. One subtraction, in days, comparable across every client you have. The second reading is the more useful one day to day: the gap between Kickoff held and Inputs complete measures your chasing rather than the client's goodwill. When that gap is the biggest part of the total, the fix is on your side.
What gets lost between sales and delivery?
What the client said no to, most often, because nobody writes down an absence. Close behind it: the start date that was said out loud rather than written into the agreement, and the objection the client raised before signing. All three come back in week three or week six, and by then the person doing the work has no idea the conversation ever happened.
Do I need onboarding software for this?
Not for six items, five questions and four dates. Client portals and intake forms are built for companies collecting a lot of documents from a lot of clients, and in that situation they earn their price. If you sign a handful of clients a month, the card works on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in the CRM you already pay for. Syncek has no portal and no intake form, and neither is planned.
Is the client handover card free?
Yes. A 14-page A4 guide, sent as a PDF in exchange for an email address, in English, Spanish, German and Portuguese. It is vendor-neutral, so nothing on it depends on Syncek. No phone call and no drip sequence.
Syncek holds the record. It does not run the onboarding.
No client portal, no intake form the client fills in, no welcome emails, no file requests, no project management. Collecting a lot of documents from a lot of clients is a real problem, and there are products built for exactly that. Syncek is not one of them.
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[ 01 ]
The record is the product.
Four date fields for
Signed,Kickoff held,Inputs completeandFirst value delivered. Relations forDecision makerandDay-to-day contact. Long text forOut of scope,Success line,WorryandRisk note. All of it from the 20+ field types, none of it roadmap. -
[ 02 ]
The board says where it stalls.
A Kanban pipeline over the client record with stages Signed, Kickoff booked, Kickoff held, Inputs chased, Inputs complete, First value delivered. Syncek tracks time in stage, so the stall has a number without anyone building a report.
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[ 03 ]
Nothing here chases the client for you.
No reminders, no automated welcome email, no AI reading the relationship.
Inputs completegets a date when the person who chased the last login types one in. -
[ 04 ]
The card works without us.
A 14-page guide, vendor-neutral. The six items, the five questions and the four dates hold on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in the CRM you already pay for.
The CRM this guide was written for.
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