Exercise Overview

Time Required: 45 minutes

Format: Team-based exercise (2-3 people per team)

Deliverable: A 3-step onboarding plan with success metrics

Objective

Design a comprehensive onboarding program for a SaaS product that balances product-led and sales-led approaches. You'll define activation milestones, identify automation opportunities, and determine where human touchpoints add value.

Instructions

Step 1: Define Your Activation Milestone (10 minutes)

Choose a SaaS product (your own, your company's, or a hypothetical one) and define:

1. Product & User: What product and who is the target user?
2. Activation Criteria: What specific action or set of actions indicates the user has achieved first value? (e.g., "sent first 10 messages," "completed profile and invited 5 team members," "ran first report with data")
3. Time to Activation Goal: What is your target timeframe for users to reach activation? (e.g., within first session, within 24 hours, within 7 days)

Example:

• Product: Project management tool for marketing teams
• Activation: User creates first project, adds 3 tasks, and invites at least 2 team members
• Time Goal: Within first 3 days

Step 2: Design the 3-Step Onboarding Flow (25 minutes)

Create a structured onboarding plan with three key phases:

Phase 1: Welcome & Setup

• Goal: User completes account setup and understands core value proposition
• Actions: List 3-5 specific actions (automated or human-led)
• Success Metric: How do you measure completion?
• Product-Led Elements: What's automated?
• Sales-Led Elements: Where does human touch apply?

Phase 2: First Value Achievement

• Goal: User reaches the activation milestone you defined
• Actions: List 3-5 specific actions that guide user to activation
• Success Metric: Activation rate target?
• Product-Led Elements:
• Sales-Led Elements:

Phase 3: Reinforcement & Expansion

• Goal: User becomes regular user and explores additional features
• Actions: List 3-5 specific actions for continued engagement
• Success Metric: How do you measure ongoing engagement?
• Product-Led Elements:
• Sales-Led Elements:

Step 3: Segment and Optimize (10 minutes)

Consider how your onboarding might differ by customer segment:

1. High-Touch Segment: Which customers get more human involvement? (e.g., enterprise customers, high ACV)
   • Additional touchpoints:
   • CSM/onboarding specialist involvement:
2. Low-Touch Segment: Which customers get primarily automated onboarding? (e.g., self-serve, SMB)
   • Key automation:
   • When human escalation is triggered:
3. Success Metrics Dashboard: What 3-5 metrics would you track to measure onboarding effectiveness?
   • Metric 1:
   • Metric 2:
   • Metric 3:

Deliverable Template

Create a simple document or presentation that includes:

1. Product & Activation Definition
2. 3-Phase Onboarding Plan (table or timeline showing each phase with actions and metrics)
3. Segmentation Strategy (how approach differs by customer type)
4. Success Metrics Dashboard (key metrics to monitor)

Discussion Questions

After completing your plan, discuss as a team:

1. What's the balance between automation and human touch in your design? Why?
2. Where are the biggest drop-off risks in your onboarding flow?
3. How would you A/B test or iterate on this onboarding program?
4. What tools or systems would you need to execute this plan?

Bonus Challenge

If time permits, identify:

• One "quick win" improvement you could implement this month
• One longer-term onboarding enhancement that would require product development