Coaching is an exciting way to impact your clients' lives positively. When you have a thriving life coaching business, you can earn a living while doing good in the world. A key aspect of this success comes from understanding each client's uniqueness and developing a high-value coaching program to ultimately deliver the best results. For this reason, getting to know your new clients before you even meet for the first session is crucial.
The best way to do this is by implementing a coaching intake form as part of your onboarding process, ideally before you even sign a coaching contract. Whether you just landed your first life coaching client, or you're looking to streamline client intake now that your business is growing, this intake form will be a simple and professional way to gather all basic details such as contact information but also to dig deeper into your client's life story, goals and expectations.
To help you draft a comprehensive life coaching intake form, we will go over some of the main aspects you must cover and some example questions to get you on the right path. But first, let's quickly go over some of the main benefits of using a client intake form early in the coaching process.
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Benefits Of Using a Life Coach Intake Form
Using the correct life coaching tools makes any business more manageable and effective. When you use coaching forms, here are the primary benefits you can expect:
Better insights into your clients
An assessment form allows you to collect information from your new coaching clients to understand their needs better. Additionally, this intake form provides vital information to ensure you are a good fit for the prospective client and you will be able to deliver the results they are looking for.
When they fill out the coaching forms, it gives you their perspective on important questions before your first coaching session.
More organized processes
When working with several coaching clients, you need the right tools to keep the information organized and the processes running smoothly. A life coaching strategy intake form should be part of your coaching toolkit.
Better client records
Constantly remembering what a client said or, even worse, forgetting necessary details about them can be disastrous to your life coaching business. Using coaching forms can make it easier to keep accurate client records employing an appropriate document.
Adaptable to different clients
Digital life coaching forms can be adapted and changed to meet other clients’ needs. For instance, you could have business coaching forms and life coaching forms for several types of clients.
Top Questions and Details to Include In Your Life Coaching Intake Form
Now that you know how your life coaching intake form will positively impact your business, let's go over some essential elements you should keep in mind when creating your own form. This list is by no means exhaustive, and you should include as many relevant questions as you find appropriate for your practice.
Basic Client Information
First and foremost, no life coaching intake form is complete without the prospective client's basic contact details. Feel free to include any more fundamental queries you see necessary. Don't view these questions as merely a checklist item to complete before moving on to the "good" questions. Gather as much client's personal information as you can in this section because even this basic knowledge can help you create an effective coaching strategy.
- First and last name
- Age
- Date of birth
- Gender
- Phone number
- Email address
- Home address
- Marital status (single, married, divorced, widowed)
- Occupation
Life Goals
Future goals are the most crucial piece of information you need from your potential clients. You must ask your client insightful questions that will enable you to completely comprehend the client's career goals, as well as any personal issues they hope to resolve. Their responses will serve as the basis for developing tailored coaching sessions.
- What are your top three personal goals?
- What are your top three professional goals?
- What is your personal vision for your life?
- Why do you wish to accomplish the objectives you listed earlier?
- Have you already taken any action to reach these goals? If so, what outcomes have you seen and what lessons have you learned as a result?
Current Situation
Understanding your client's current situation is almost as important as knowing where they want to be. These questions will help you get a better grasp of how your clients perceive their challenges and you can prepare follow-up questions using this information to identify red flags during the intake session.
- What are the top three things that upset you about your life right now?
- What are the top three things that make you happy about your life right now?
- What would you say is your greatest motivation in life right now?
- Are you willing to make changes to your life?
- What personal and professional strengths would you say you have?
- Are you currently taking any medications?
- Do you have any health conditions you are willing to share?
Coaching Preferences and Expectations
As a professional life coach, one of the biggest challenges you face is developing a coaching program that your customers find valuable and believe will be worthwhile. The more clients you work with, you will realize people may have different understandings of what your services actually entail, and may be expecting unrealistic results.
For this reason, it's important to include a set of questions that help you set clear expectations and understand the best way to help your future client.
- What do you expect to get out of this coaching relationship?
- Have you previously worked with a professional coach before? If so, what did you like and dislike about the experience?
- How long would you like to take to transform your life?
- How do you typically respond to criticism and how does it make you feel?
- What encourages you to pursue new endeavors? What discourages you from doing so? (Contexts, perspectives, individuals, etc.)
- What techniques make learning more efficient for you? Do you learn best by doing, seeing, reading, or listening?
- How do you want me to help you as our coach-client relationship progresses?
Final Thoughts
Successful life coaches rely on tools like the life coach intake form to make their work more efficient and to allow them to focus more on helping clients. We offered a basic guide for you to create your own questionnaire which can take multiple forms, including marriage, career, parent, or dietary coaching intake form.
Whether you are a budding life coach or already established, use as many tools as possible, including coaching templates, coaching intake forms, life coach intake forms, and other essentials. They can help you to create a life coaching toolkit that empowers your life coaching practice to succeed.
Create the Perfect Life Coach Intake Form With Bonsai
Now that you're ready to create your own coaching intake form, make it simple with Bonsai's custom form builder! Our software allows you to easily create a professional and branded document that you can quickly share with your prospective clients via email or URL link. To help you collect more leads and streamline your onboarding process, we also give you the option to have this intake form embedded into your business website.
Our forms are completely customizable, allowing you to add as many questions as you need, select your preferred answer format, rearrange all fields and incorporate your own branding elements. If you need more help, check out Bonsai's all-in-one product suite, offering endless administrative tools to help you manage client onboarding, invoicing, payments, taxes, accounting and much more.
Our software is designed for small business owners and start-ups looking to save time and grow their business. Start your 14-day free trial today and see for yourself!
