Video Business Academy promised a result a client could check: the first $10K month. An intake form starts there: where is the client today?
That is the job of an intake form in a high-ticket coaching program. It sets the starting point the result is measured from. It tells the client success manager what the client expects, and how to reach them.
What questions should a coaching intake form ask?
Ten, in this order. Keep them short and plain, because the form is one of only five to seven onboarding steps. Change the wording to fit your offer.
- What is your goal in this program, as a number? For example, your first $10K month.
- Where are you today on that number?
- By when do you want to reach it?
- Why did you decide to join now?
- What have you tried before, and what stopped it working?
- How many hours a week can you give the program?
- What do you expect from us in the first 30 days?
- What worries you most about starting?
- Where do you want us to message you: WhatsApp, Telegram or the community?
- When are you usually free for a call, and in which time zone?
Question 7 is the one that protects you from refund requests. Question 1 goes wrong when it asks for a feeling instead of a number.
Why does the goal need a number?
Because without a defined result, the client never knows when they are finished. So they are never finished, leave after about six months, and buy nothing else. Nothing matched, because the expectations were huge or did not exist.
The starting point matters as much. Video Business Academy took videographers from under $5K a month to $10K. A client at $4K and a client at $0 are on the same program but not the same path.
What about goals you cannot count, like mindset?
Define an indicator anyway. For mindset or confidence offers, the intake step adds a short video to the form. The client answers five questions on camera at the start.
There is always an indicator, you just have to define it. For mindset, record the client answering five questions in a video at the start, and ask the same five three months later. If the answers and the perspective changed, the mindset changed. And you can always track the doing: modules finished, the work done, the technique practised.
What do you do with the answers?
Put them on the client's row before the onboarding call. The goal, the starting point and the date go in the goal column. The channel sets where the client success manager writes, because a message on a channel the client ignores is a message nobody read.
| Answer | Where it goes | What the client success manager does |
|---|---|---|
| Goal, today, by when | Goal column on the board | Confirms it out loud on the onboarding call |
| Why now | Notes on the row | Uses it in the first check-in |
| Tried before | Notes on the row | Says what will be different this time |
| Hours a week | Notes on the row | Checks the stage times are realistic for them |
| Expectations in 30 days | Compared with the promise | Corrects anything the program does not do, on the call |
| Worries | Notes on the row | Answers the worry before it becomes a refund request |
| Channel and times | Client column | Sets where and when the check-ins go |
Why ask what the client expects?
Most early refund requests are a chain that starts with an expectation. Marketing or sales said something the program does not do, and the client measures you against it. The expectations answer shows the gap in week one, while it is still a conversation.
If the answer matches nothing in the offer, the client success manager says so kindly on the onboarding call. If the sales team promised it, that goes back to sales the same day.
What goes wrong with intake forms?
They get too long. A form with thirty questions turns the first step into homework, and the onboarding call waits for it. Ask only what the team will use in the first 30 days.
Or nobody reads them. A form that lands in an inbox and never reaches the board changes nothing. The client success manager reads it before the call and writes the goal on the row.
Note. Later in the program we ask one more question in every offer we run: what do you wish this offer helped you with? The answers improve the offer and show what to sell next. It does not belong on the intake form, because a new client cannot answer it yet.
Further reading: What is a client success rate, and how do you measure it? · The first 30 days: onboarding that cuts month-one churn
Diego Miescher
