Early churn often starts as a soft onboarding: kickoff happened, slides were sent, and nobody can say what “first value” looked like. A fixed cadence fixes that.
Day 3 — access or named blocker
- Login / SSO / sandbox works, or one named IT owner owns the ticket
- Champion confirmed after any PTO / role change risk
Day 7 — unaided core workflow
- Champion (or named user) completes the single first workflow without you driving
- Baseline for the success metric is written down
Day 14 — go / no-go
- Go: first value observed; expand plan can wait
- No-go: exec-ready note with kill criteria — not “just checking in”
Rule of thumb: if Day 7 is still a product tour, you do not have an onboarding problem — you have a handoff leak from sales.
Check the handoff first
Before you burn another week, paste the AE notes into Handoff Leak Detector and fix missing success criteria, owners, and access.
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Open Handoff Leak Detector Sales Enablement Kit — $47Related: SaaS sales-to-CS handoff checklist · Free tools hub