← LibraryCase No. 15
Medium stakesFinancial services marketing team (agency retainer) · $22K ARR retainer

The Onboarding Was a Mess. They Remember.

First 60 days were rough. You're still paying for it 9 months later.

Based on real client experiences, but anonymized and dramatized to protect identities and confidential relationships.

The setup

On a renewal prep call, the client says: "I'll be honest — your first 60 days with us were rough. We never really recovered confidence. The relationship's been on autopilot since."

The three data points
  1. 01Onboarding ran more than a month behind (your previous account lead left mid-onboarding)
  2. 02Two critical integrations into their stack were never completed
  3. 03Despite that, they have gotten real value from the 2 workstreams that did land
How you pitch

3 minutes to own the mistake, not minimize it, and propose a concrete reset. No "new account lead" hand-wave.

What makes it exciting

Apology pitches are won by specificity. Generic "we'll do better" loses. Naming the exact failure earns back trust and unlocks expansion.