Whether you've just signed up your first life coaching client or the clients are starting to steadily build up, you need a reliable method for learning about and comprehending their expectations as well as their life goals. While you will gather lots of important information during your discovery session, implementing an intake form will make it easier for you to keep track of progress and maintain clean records of each client you work with.
By using this form, you can gather data in advance and get to develop a customized plan for a successful coaching program. Both you and your client will benefit from this as it provides a clear path and allows you to maintain focus on the objective. Read on to learn about some of the questions you can incorporate into your client intake coach form and other essential forms that might be useful for your business.
But first, let's understand the importance of a client intake form for coaches.
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Why Is an Intake Form Important for Your Coaching Business?
A strong coaching relationship is essential to helping clients and coaches achieve their goals. In fact, a lack of chemistry between the two parties is a common reason for early termination of coaching programs. For this reason, employing a structured intake approach to engage in a matching process is a smart first step to determine whether a client is a suitable fit for your particular coaching practice and style.
Once you know you're a good fit, it will be easier to build a strong and mutually beneficial connection with your clients. A coaching intake form will help you obtain important background information and you can learn a lot about your client's goals, challenges and expectations. It's also a great way to measure the level of motivation they have coming into your program and how likely it is that they will be able to improve the aspects they wish to work on.
Questions to Include In Your Client Intake Coaching Forms
The specific questions that you should include in your client intake form will vary widely depending on your program's specific requirements and your client. However, some questions are applicable to all kinds of coaching as they will help you determine the direction and structure of your coaching sessions.
Of course, you must always ask for the fundamental client contact information. This includes their full name, billing details, email address and preferred phone number for contact. But let's take a look at some other vital questions to include, and what they will help you with.
For starters, using the following coaching questions (or something similar), will help you with goal setting. Prompt your client to describe what it is that they hope to gain from your program whether this relates to personal or professional development.
- Mention three short-term objectives you want to accomplish in the next three months.
- Mention three long-term objectives you hope to accomplish in the next five years.
- Why do you wish to accomplish these objectives?
- Mention three things you believe are keeping you from reaching your goals?
- What does success mean to you?
Next, you want to get a better understanding of all the things they have tried so far, and assess your client's current situation. Include the following questions.
- What has been your biggest challenge so far, and how did you get through it?
- Has there been someone who has been very helpful to you so far?
- What obstacles have you encountered that are making it difficult for you to reach your goals?
- What are your life's biggest regrets? (personal, work-related, or both)
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how stressed out are you? What situations are causing you the most stress?
Finally, you want to find out what are your client's coaching preferences and what methods you could use to help them learn faster. With these questions, creating a tailored program for different types of learning styles and clients will be a lot easier for you.
- What motivates you to pursue new endeavors? What discourages you from doing so?
- How often do you need to be reminded of the task you must complete?
- What techniques make learning more efficient for you? Do you learn best by doing, seeing, reading, or listening?
- Do you feel comfortable using digital channels for communication (such as SMS and video calls) or do you favor in-person and phone conversations?
What Are Other Important Forms to Incorporate in Your Coaching Process?
If you've ever had a miscommunication problem with your clients, it's possible that you weren't clear about their objectives and motivations. Or maybe you simply made assumptions based on incomplete information which lead you to create a coaching strategy that didn't satisfy your client. Using the appropriate forms will make it simple to avoid all of these problems so you never have to question your strategy again.
Feedback Forms
Ending your coaching program with the correct questions will help the client consolidate the advantages of working with you as a coach. By using a feedback form, you will get super useful insights on the success of your coaching and areas where you could improve. In these type of questionnaires, you should always try to ask open-ended questions instead of inquiries that the client can answer with a simple 'yes' or 'no'.
For example, asking them to describe the new strengths they developed during the coaching process will help your client acknowledge their achievements and changes they acquired from the experience. This also gives you a great opportunity to gather valuable testimonials which you can later use in your coaching proposal template to get more clients.
Evaluation Forms
Incorporating a coaching evaluation form is a great way to monitor the current process and manage potential deviations. The plans and objectives for your clients are never stagnant because growth and change are never cyclical. By evaluating the progress it will be simpler the determine whether additional guidance or adaptive action is needed.
Include questions to understand what's working and identify if your coaching methods are meeting the expected impacts. For example, you could ask how significant the changes made so far have been towards the accomplishment of the ultimate goal, or which methods, questions or tools have worked exceptionally well for your client.
Health and Wellness Forms
Despite the fact that life coaching and health coaching are sometimes combined, they are two distinct professions, although both could benefit from incorporating some kind of health and wellness form to their coaching strategies. These could include food diaries, mindset techniques, macro calculators, and a complete questionnaire to better understand how your clients feel and gain a better insight on their health status. Check out or life coaching questionnaire to see the difference.
Business Admin Forms
Being a top-notch coach inevitably involves administrative paperwork, which is frequently dull but always necessary. From legal forms to accounting and invoicing, these are essential tools to guarantee the success and well-being of your business. Bonsai offers you tons of free resources out there to help you create legally-binding client contracts, proposals, detailed invoices, as well as expense and income reports.
Create Professional Coaching Forms With Bonsai
Bonsai is the ultimate all-in-one product suite offering a variety of administrative tools especially designed for small business owners and start-ups. Use our free custom client forms to easily create your client intake, feedback, evaluation and any other type of questionnaire you need. Once you have created your bulletproof forms, you can reuse them for new projects, which will help you seamlessly collect and keep track of valuable client input.
Want more? Start your 14-day free trial today and see why more coaching businesses are choosing Bonsai as the go-to expert helping you streamline your paperwork so you can focus on your passion.
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