OPS · Agency PLAYBOOK
WHY ONBOARDING IS WHERE AGENCY MARGINS ARE DECIDED: every live-commerce agency loses money in the same place — the unpriced, unstructured first month, when the team discovers the client's actual inventory, claims history, platform standing, and expectations one surprise at a time. This SOP converts the first 30 days from archaeology into an assembly line: a fixed sequence of inputs, decisions, and deliverables that ends with a signed-off launch plan. Clients experience it as competence; you experience it as not eating thirty days of margin on every new logo. Run it identically for every client, including the small ones — the SOP is what makes small clients profitable.
WEEK 1 — INTAKE AND AUDIT (THE INPUTS THAT MUST EXIST): the intake form is non-negotiable and covers: product catalog with cost structure and margin floors (the number that constrains every pricing decision — a client who won't share margin floors is a client who will fight every discount strategy); claims inventory — every marketing claim currently in use, with whatever substantiation exists (this maps directly to the compliance audit file; gaps found here are launch-blocking, not footnotes); platform account standing — any strikes, holds, dispute rates, and policy history across every channel (a client with a poisoned account changes the launch plan entirely); fulfillment reality — 3PL contracts, processing times, return flows; and brand assets — visual identity, tone, approved language, and the person authorized to approve claims. Deliverable of week 1: the audit memo, one page, listing what exists, what's missing, and what blocks launch. The audit memo is also your contract-protection document — it records what the client represented at intake.
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