Whether you are leaving your job or just transitioning to another role in your company, having a solid transition plan determines whether a transition goes smoothly or becomes a complete train-wreck, leaving your team confused and annoyed. If you’re like most of us, you don’t want the latter to happen, so you better keep reading to find out how to make your transition effective and efficient!
Outline Your Current Responsibilities In Detail
You will want to clearly lay out your responsibilities for your role, whether it’s playing a part in a team structure, or something you handle completely on your own.
This will need to include:
- Specific tasks
- The time it takes to complete those tasks
- If they are recurring tasks, when the due date is
- Who you send deliverables to
- The overall scope of your position
Make Sure You Include a Training Timeline
The next important part of a good PPC account transition is a training timeline. This will lay out the schedule for training the person that takes over the PPC account for you. You will want to make sure the training timeline is gradual, so they don’t forget what they’re learning because you gave them too much information at once.
Allocate time for them to:
- Review any training documents for each task
- Watch you do the tasks, reporting, analysis, etc at least once
- Have them do the task on their own while you are still available to answer any questions
A training timeline structure that has been extremely helpful for me is using two-week periods.
For the first two weeks:
- Share all of the transition documents and make sure the person has access to every account, Google doc, etc.
- Let them sit in on meetings if it is a client related role.
- Let them shadow you on your daily tasks that they will be taking over.
For the next two weeks:
- They should be doing the tasks, reporting, analysis, etc, while you are there to help them and answer any questions they may have.
- They should start leading part or all of any recurring meetings that you used to lead.
This will allow them to get a feel for what they will be doing and feel confident that they will be able to do the tasks when you are gone.
Create a Master Document That Links To All Other Important Documents
Another key component of painless account transitions is a link to all of your important documents and information.
These docs could include:
- Budget Pacing
- Content/Promo schedules, or schedules in general that you use frequently
- Login info for certain platforms
- Instruction sheets
- Contact Info for clients, vendors, reps, etc.
- Project Status Documents
Make Sure Other Teams Know What To Expect
If this is a client-related role, make sure to have a solid transition plan laid out (using the tips above) and let the client know with plenty of time to adjust. This will be beneficial for both the client and the person taking over your role. By giving the client time to process, it allows them to ask any questions they may have and also allows the new person to communicate with the client about how they do/don’t like things done. Let your replacement know which items are the highest and lowest priority to your client(s). This will save them the time of suggesting a new strategy that will just get turned down and make the client feel like you don’t understand their needs.
If you’re working in-house, at a brand, the same could be said for giving any internal teams you collaborate with a heads-up of the transition timeline. For example, if you work with the Sales team regularly to bolster their ABM strategy with paid ads, you’ll want them to know that you’re moving to another role and when they can expect your replacement to be up-to-speed.
