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Pre-coaching questionnaire: 20 questions to ask your clients

pre coaching questionnaire
By Marina Lovejoy-Black, Last Updated June 17, 2024

When people decide to make positive changes in their lives, it’s always something to be admired and applauded. Approaching a coach to book a session or two can be a successful method of self-improvement.

However, compatibility between coach and client is extremely important within these types of working relationships. If the client’s expectations, requirements and budget don’t match up with what you can offer, they may not end up making much progress after all.

A pre-coaching questionnaire asks a variety of questions of your clients regarding their current situation, difficulties and desired changes. By sending them a pre-coaching questionnaire, you can quickly work out whether or not you’ll be the right coach to help them flourish in their endeavors and undergo some much-needed personal development. 

Get pre-coaching questionnaire template 

Content Snare is here to help you figure out which clients are the best match for you. Sign up to access our built-in pre-coaching questionnaire template. It’s ready when you are.

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pre-coaching questionnaire

What questions should I include in a pre-coaching questionnaire? 

As this is only a preliminary questionnaire to see if the client would be a good fit for your coaching services, there’s no need for an excessive amount of questions.

We’ve gone for 20 fundamental ones to help you get started at this initial stage. Enjoy!

Basic Information

The following questions will provide you with the essential information regarding your client and their contact details. 

  1. Please provide your full name.
  1. Please provide your primary contact phone number. 
  1. Please provide your primary contact email address. 
  1. Please provide your full address and postal/zip code.
pre-coaching questionnaire template

Pre-coaching Questionnaire 

The main questionnaire will help you in gaining clarity as to whether or not the client’s requirements and expectations match what you can provide. 

  1. What is your reasoning behind wanting to undertake coaching sessions at this stage of your life?
  1. Have you worked with a coach before at any point? 
  1. What do you expect to gain from the coaching sessions?
  1. How will you know when you're seeing results from the coaching sessions?
  1. Is there any particular reason behind wanting to work with us specifically?
  1. So far in your life, what do you feel are your biggest accomplishments to date?
  1. Please tell us about the hardest thing you've had to overcome in your life and how you overcame it.
  1. How do you learn best?
  1. Which things stress you out the most?
  1. Please describe your current self using 5 different adjectives. 
  1. What are the three biggest changes you'd like to make in your life within the near future?
  1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how motivated are you to successfully make those changes?
  1. Please provide a rough date at which you'd like your coaching sessions to begin.
  1. Please describe the frequency at which you'd like the sessions to occur, as well as the duration of the coaching.
  1. Please provide us with an idea of your monthly budget for coaching sessions.

Extras

Here, your clients will be able to let you know of any additional information they feel would aid your potential coaching sessions. 

  1. Please share anything else that you think might help the coaching process.

Why create a pre-coaching questionnaire?

Excellent question!

A pre-coaching questionnaire can be useful in many different ways, such as the following:

  • To discover information about your client (who they are in general, their objectives, their strengths and weaknesses, their personality traits, their fears, their key stressors etc)
  • To delve deeper into their reasonings for taking up coaching and what they’re looking to achieve from it 
  • To get a clear picture of the exact role they’d like you to play as their coach and how much aid they require

Placing the pre-coaching questionnaire before the initial conversation or first session can really help to streamline the process. It allows both yourself and your client to reflect on important questions before anything begins and, given that they’ll have more time to reflect on the questionnaire than they would at an in person meeting, you may end up with more honest and direct feedback. It’s the perfect way to begin your coaching relationship and figure out the next steps to take. 

Which tool should I use to create my questionnaire?

With the amount of forms tools on the market nowadays, it’s understandable that you may need a little bit of guidance when it comes to finding the perfect one for you. As there are varying degrees of quality and varying functionalities available, it can take some trial and error before you have a working questionnaire ready to send to your client. 

To help you get started as quickly as possible, we’ve picked out a couple of potential options for you to explore. 

Google Forms  

As it’s a Google product,  Google Forms is a pretty well known forms tool and is suitable for basic survey and questionnaire creation. You can add standard question types and collect the data you need from clients. 

However, Google Forms and the likes have quite a few limitations that make them a little less accessible if you’re looking for something that can solve issues and save time rather than creating another task. If you choose to go with Google Forms, you’ll have to chase clients manually and remind them of upcoming deadlines yourself, which will leave you sending email after email.

In addition, the client is forced to answer all of the questions in one sitting which may lead to them rushing questions or just getting frustrated by the time constraints. 

Content Snare 

On the other hand, Content Snare allows for an easy, foolproof experience when it comes to creating visually appealing and structured forms tailor made for you and your clients. 

Content Snare’s UI is straightforward enough for even the least tech-savvy individuals; anyone can use it without having to spend hours reading through guides or watching tutorials. You can have your first form sent off in just minutes for your client to start providing information into. 

There’s absolutely no chance of a client’s data being lost as all their responses are automatically saved without them having to click a save or submit button first. They can also track their own progress using the percentage bar on the side of the page and see where they’re at and what’s left to provide.

On top of that, those lengthy email trails that you’re most likely used to at this point (but still loathe) are nothing but a thing of the past, as Content Snare deals with all of the communication for you. The platform sends reminder emails to your clients, notifying them of imminent deadlines and any significant events relating to their request. These can also be edited as much as you like in order to keep things coherent and on brand. 

There really are no limits to what you can do. 

We hope you enjoyed this post and that it provides some more insight into how to create the ideal pre-coaching questionnaire.

Is there anything you feel we left out? Let us know in the comments below!

Get pre-coaching questionnaire template

Content Snare is here to help you figure out which clients are the best match for you. Sign up to access our built-in pre-coaching questionnaire template. It’s ready when you are. 

Start your trial here

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2 comments on “Pre-coaching questionnaire: 20 questions to ask your clients”

    1. Hi Liz. When you create a new request in Content Snare, you'll see the list of built-in templates. Currently in the coaching category, there is:

      • Business coaching intake form
      • Consulting questionnaire
      • Life coaching intake form
      • Pre-coaching questionnaire
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