Play 07 · The first 90 days
Onboarding and access
- When
- The first week after signing
- Time
- Two hours
- Who
- You, the company's named person, whoever holds the logins
- Output
- Access granted correctly, the pack received, the ninety-day plan agreed
Purpose
Onboarding is where ownership is either kept or lost. Grant the company manager access under accounts the business owns; never hand over an owner login and never let the company create accounts in its own name. Hand over the baseline pack, agree how and how often you will speak, and get the first ninety days in writing with dates.
The checklist
8 items · ticks stay in this browserWhy access is the whole of onboarding
Everything else in the first week can be redone. Access granted wrongly cannot be, cheaply. A profile whose owner is a contractor, a domain registered in an agency's name, an analytics property under someone else's login: each is the story every business owner has heard from someone, and each begins in the first week with a request that sounded reasonable. Grant what the work needs, as a manager or a user, under accounts the business owns, and nothing more.
Manager, not owner
Google Business Profile has owner and manager roles, and a manager can do everything the daily work requires. Search Console and analytics have user roles below owner. Website platforms have admin roles that can be revoked. In every case the company gets the working role and the business keeps the owning one. Google's guidance on managing access to a profile is linked below.
The channel and the call
Decide one channel for day-to-day contact, one day a month for the call, and who attends. The monthly call agenda is the play for the call itself. A relationship with no fixed cadence drifts into reports nobody reads and calls nobody schedules.
The plan in writing
Four dates: when the audit is delivered, when the roadmap is delivered, when the first changes go live, when the first report arrives. These are the milestones the ninety-day checkpoint is measured against, and the ones the contract's missed-milestones clause refers to. A company that will not commit to four dates in the first week has told you how the rest will go.
Done when
The access inventory shows every grant, none of them ownership; the company has confirmed receipt of the pack; the ninety-day plan is dated and filed.
If it goes wrong
- The company asks for owner access to the profile: decline, and cite Google's own guidance that a business should own its profile. Manager access lets them do everything the work needs.
- The company wants to move the site to its own hosting or registrar: decline unless the contract assigns both back to you on exit, and even then prefer your own.
- No ninety-day plan arrives: ask once in writing. If it still does not, the [[ninety-day-checkpoint|checkpoint]] has already failed.
Sources
- Google Business Profile Help: add and remove owners and managers Platform guidance
- Handbook chapter 03: claim and verify your Google Business Profile Editorial recommendation
Who this playbook recommends
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