A field guide to B2B onboarding, with fixes you can ship this week.

For a moment, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a classic B2B user, say a seller on an e-commerce platform. What do you think they really care about?

• Is it how agentic the platform is?
• Or whether they are able to get the sales and fulfilment report exactly the way they need it?
• Maybe the platform has a host of AI features in it?

Sure, some users may care about some of those things, but only as a means to an end. At the crux, they care about two things:

1. Get me more business (or manage a specific part of my business better)
2. Make my life easier

And onboarding is the first place they find out whether you’ll deliver on either.

How do we make the first touchpoint that they go through easier, and focused on reaching their goals? We’ll focus on six mindsets users move through during onboarding.

Mindset 1: “I’m new here, and I’m probably confused. Make my life easier.”

Many B2B users normally need to view videos like this one to understand how to onboard themselves onto a platform. And it’s easy to see why: (a) the flows are complex; (b) if they need help, they really don’t know how to get it; and (c) the user can’t afford to get it wrong, or they lose several days.

All of these are solvable. Here’s how.

1. Focus on one thing at a time. Onboarding is stressful, and it’s important for B2B SaaS firms to get the user’s focus on the one thing they need to get right at that point. Hide everything else. It can come later.

2. Make the flow as simple as it can be. If it isn’t yet, try again. For an ecommerce platform, its users are likely to have their catalog someplace, maybe just not in the exact format you need. Can you work with that? Or their catalog is already on their website. Can you pick it up from there?

If you are dealing with documents, can you pick up everything by just asking for the user’s Google Drive folder?

Agents are now good enough to not just do a read, but also an adversarial check of the data with 2–3 sources (public information, their site, etc.). Use them. Don’t overload the user with things you can take off their plate.

3. If something is complex, explain it right there. For example, show where the user can find their VAT ID, or where to get the compliance reference note for a product they are selling. How the app communicates that becomes truly crucial. Minimising mental blocks is more important for procedural cases than a smooth experience everywhere else.

The help should always be inline, exactly when the user is facing it, not elsewhere.

4. Answer the broader questions too. Sometimes the user’s question is more tangential, and broader than a specific field. For example: “How long would it take me to get started?” Or: “I am missing my VAT ID. How long is it likely to take me to get it, and how can I apply for it?” Being able to truly assist users with broader questions is where a bot can be really helpful. Not for all queries (most should be inline), but for a few cases.

5. Make mistakes easy to fix. It’s very underrated, and excruciatingly boring. But the biggest level of stress is when the user submits an error, and correcting it requires someone to “invalidate the form” and get back to them. Mistakes happen, and most of them are technically reversible. Allow users to edit their details at any point in time, so that they can proceed with confidence the first time around.

Try this week: Pick your three most-asked support questions and answer each one inline, on the screen where it comes up.

Mindset 2: “I am operating within ChatGPT or Claude. Why can’t I do everything right there?”

Offering an MCP connection is now non-negotiable. At Linear, issues created through MCP recently overtook those created in the app itself.

“This is the first week in Linear’s history when issues created through MCP surpassed application created ones.” — Jori Lallo, Linear, on X

And it should include onboarding itself: let users share their company details, upload their catalog or ask about their VAT ID without leaving Claude.

That said, not every user will come through MCP yet. Non-technical users may still prefer the stability of a guided workflow, and being shown how to scale.

Offer both, at least for the next 1–2 years.

Try this week: Expose one onboarding step (company details or catalog upload) as an MCP tool, then complete it from Claude yourself.

Mindset 3: “Am I doing this right? Show me what’s working, and what isn’t.”

Using a B2B provider is often a multi-level game. A user’s end goal is a robust and steady income stream, or continuous compliance, or tracking, or a specific service like document signing. But each step builds on how well they did the previous one. So at every step, tell them what’s likely to work and what isn’t, from both a user and a commercial standpoint, before they have to ask.

• For an ecommerce business: get the right listings → get the right marketing → initial sales → service levels → ongoing sales. Key indicators: listings ready to sell (“18 of 20 live, 2 missing images”) · reach and click-through on the first campaign · first orders and conversion rate · on-time delivery and return rate · repeat-customer rate
• For a document signing service (like PandaDoc): template creation → document creation → signature → feedback loop. Key indicators: templates ready to use · documents sent · completion rate and time to sign · where signers drop off
• For compliance: first-time setup → initial scan against compliance guidelines → consistent monitoring. Key indicators: setup completeness (required details and documents in place) · issues found and fixed in the first scan · open risks and days since the last check

Try this week: Pick the first milestone in your users’ journey and show them a progress signal for it, like “8 of 10 products ready to sell”.

Mindset 4: “Stop telling me about your AI. Just make things easier.”

When most companies talk about AI, what they do is add a chatbot on the side, which allows users to get information about any part of the site. That’s talking about AI, not using it. And users can hate it when a capability is oversold.

Product mark

A field guide to B2B onboarding, with fixes you can ship this week.

For a moment, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a classic B2B user, say a seller on an e-commerce platform. What do you think they really care about?

• Is it how agentic the platform is?
• Or whether they are able to get the sales and fulfilment report exactly the way they need it?
• Maybe the platform has a host of AI features in it?

Sure, some users may care about some of those things, but only as a means to an end. At the crux, they care about two things:

1. Get me more business (or manage a specific part of my business better)
2. Make my life easier

And onboarding is the first place they find out whether you’ll deliver on either.

How do we make the first touchpoint that they go through easier, and focused on reaching their goals? We’ll focus on six mindsets users move through during onboarding.

Mindset 1: “I’m new here, and I’m probably confused. Make my life easier.”

Many B2B users normally need to view videos like this one to understand how to onboard themselves onto a platform. And it’s easy to see why: (a) the flows are complex; (b) if they need help, they really don’t know how to get it; and (c) the user can’t afford to get it wrong, or they lose several days.

All of these are solvable. Here’s how.

1. Focus on one thing at a time. Onboarding is stressful, and it’s important for B2B SaaS firms to get the user’s focus on the one thing they need to get right at that point. Hide everything else. It can come later.

2. Make the flow as simple as it can be. If it isn’t yet, try again. For an ecommerce platform, its users are likely to have their catalog someplace, maybe just not in the exact format you need. Can you work with that? Or their catalog is already on their website. Can you pick it up from there?

If you are dealing with documents, can you pick up everything by just asking for the user’s Google Drive folder?

Agents are now good enough to not just do a read, but also an adversarial check of the data with 2–3 sources (public information, their site, etc.). Use them. Don’t overload the user with things you can take off their plate.

3. If something is complex, explain it right there. For example, show where the user can find their VAT ID, or where to get the compliance reference note for a product they are selling. How the app communicates that becomes truly crucial. Minimising mental blocks is more important for procedural cases than a smooth experience everywhere else.

The help should always be inline, exactly when the user is facing it, not elsewhere.

4. Answer the broader questions too. Sometimes the user’s question is more tangential, and broader than a specific field. For example: “How long would it take me to get started?” Or: “I am missing my VAT ID. How long is it likely to take me to get it, and how can I apply for it?” Being able to truly assist users with broader questions is where a bot can be really helpful. Not for all queries (most should be inline), but for a few cases.

5. Make mistakes easy to fix. It’s very underrated, and excruciatingly boring. But the biggest level of stress is when the user submits an error, and correcting it requires someone to “invalidate the form” and get back to them. Mistakes happen, and most of them are technically reversible. Allow users to edit their details at any point in time, so that they can proceed with confidence the first time around.

Try this week: Pick your three most-asked support questions and answer each one inline, on the screen where it comes up.

Mindset 2: “I am operating within ChatGPT or Claude. Why can’t I do everything right there?”

Offering an MCP connection is now non-negotiable. At Linear, issues created through MCP recently overtook those created in the app itself.

“This is the first week in Linear’s history when issues created through MCP surpassed application created ones.” — Jori Lallo, Linear, on X

And it should include onboarding itself: let users share their company details, upload their catalog or ask about their VAT ID without leaving Claude.

That said, not every user will come through MCP yet. Non-technical users may still prefer the stability of a guided workflow, and being shown how to scale.

Offer both, at least for the next 1–2 years.

Try this week: Expose one onboarding step (company details or catalog upload) as an MCP tool, then complete it from Claude yourself.

Mindset 3: “Am I doing this right? Show me what’s working, and what isn’t.”

Using a B2B provider is often a multi-level game. A user’s end goal is a robust and steady income stream, or continuous compliance, or tracking, or a specific service like document signing. But each step builds on how well they did the previous one. So at every step, tell them what’s likely to work and what isn’t, from both a user and a commercial standpoint, before they have to ask.

• For an ecommerce business: get the right listings → get the right marketing → initial sales → service levels → ongoing sales. Key indicators: listings ready to sell (“18 of 20 live, 2 missing images”) · reach and click-through on the first campaign · first orders and conversion rate · on-time delivery and return rate · repeat-customer rate
• For a document signing service (like PandaDoc): template creation → document creation → signature → feedback loop. Key indicators: templates ready to use · documents sent · completion rate and time to sign · where signers drop off
• For compliance: first-time setup → initial scan against compliance guidelines → consistent monitoring. Key indicators: setup completeness (required details and documents in place) · issues found and fixed in the first scan · open risks and days since the last check

Try this week: Pick the first milestone in your users’ journey and show them a progress signal for it, like “8 of 10 products ready to sell”.

Mindset 4: “Stop telling me about your AI. Just make things easier.”

When most companies talk about AI, what they do is add a chatbot on the side, which allows users to get information about any part of the site. That’s talking about AI, not using it. And users can hate it when a capability is oversold.

Product mark