Leveraging Automation: The Intake Form
Ep30
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Why Automation Matters
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[00:00:00]
Bryan Steele: Welcome back. As promised last week, we're going to be getting into a series today on automation. The reason why I have found this so important was we only have a limited amount of time, and doing everything manually is going to be a drain on you and your efforts. If you've got to constantly be checking your messages, going across social media, looking for things that are happening, responding, it's just...
it's not gonna work long term. You want something that is sustainable and repeatable and that doesn't let things fall through the crack. And I'm not perfect at this. There's still [00:01:00] systems even today in my own business that I know need to be improved. But I can tell you firsthand that once you start to build in some automation systems into your business, it starts to feel a little bit like magic.
One of my favorite things that I did was a simple intake system where somebody reached out, said they wanted to work with me, and then boom, they were on their own on my calendar with information about them, and I didn't have to do anything. All I did was when there was a meeting, it was like, "Oh, I'm meeting with so-and-so at this time."
You check some information, and you jump on the call, and you-- I didn't have to do any back and forth. I didn't have to do any scheduling.
The Intake Form Goal
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Bryan Steele: And so what I want to do with you is walk you through an exact system you can use to automate intake and... So what I wanna do with you is walk you through a system that [00:02:00] allows you to collect those leads in a systematic way where you can follow up easily.
So we're gonna be talking through these systems. I'm gonna be giving you some free tools that you can use in your own business so that you can start to get a little bit of that peace of mind that you aren't just gonna be constantly scattered, looking everywhere for information. So today is the first part of that system, ~we're~ gonna talk about, and that is a single intake form.
Missed Leads Scenario
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Bryan Steele: I want you to picture this for a second It's a Saturday morning. You are at your kid's baseball game. You're watching baseball, having fun. Your phone buzzes. You can't answer it, you're busy. you're on the sideline. You're helping coach. Whatever you're doing, you see it at 2:00 in the afternoon. You're gonna reply, you know, but you're busy.
You got some lawn work to do. Maybe after dinner. Finally, it's Monday, and you reach [00:03:00] back out, but they've already hired somebody else. Because honestly, sometimes people choose the first person to get back to them when they're looking for a solution to their problem, and we want to make sure we are capturing those and responding in a timely manner.
Not that you always have to be on call or that you always have to answer, but that there's a system in place so that it feels immediate without you having to be available twenty-four/seven. That's what this system is going to do for you. So today, we're going to build the first piece of that automation.
So remember what we talked about on our previous episode? We're talking about eliminate, delegate, automate. This series is all about automation, giving you a picture for what is possible. So the first piece of this is the [00:04:00] collection of information. We have websites, and we have email signatures, and we have phone numbers.
All these things are out there everywhere, and we need to standardize to one thing, which is a collection form.
Five Questions Only
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Bryan Steele: What is the most basic pieces of information you need to get about a potential client? What is that? Now, if you're selling a product, e-commerce, something like that, this doesn't really apply to you.
But in the service businesses, this is so critical. You need to know who it is that's reaching out to you, so you need to build a form that can be submitted to you. So one intake form, not seven, not like a long version and a short version. One simple, short version that allows you to qualify potential clients.
So this form should have no more than five questions. [00:05:00] That is your limit. Five questions. Because we want these people to reach out. We don't want to put them through, ~a~ giant marshmallow that makes it to where they give up. You know, if it takes longer than 90 seconds, people are gonna check out. So we only want to have five questions on this form, and the first two are automatic.
They're taken. Name and email That's for every form. You're always going to need that information. The remaining three questions is really where it's gonna depend on you or your business. Maybe you wanna collect a phone number. Maybe that's not important to you. Do you wanna collect, their budget? Do you want to know how soon they are needing help?
When are they available to talk? Mmm ~What is it they nee- Sorry, I'm gonna go back.~ The first two are automatic: name and email. Everybody is gonna collect that information, full stop. Name and email. The remaining three are where it's going to [00:06:00] depend on your business. What are those initial questions that you need to ask?
So we've ha- talked about this in previous episodes, you know, budget, authority, need, and timing. So maybe a couple of those help you figure out a question to ask. Do you ask about their budget? What's their timeline? What kind of project is it? Maybe your business, you want a phone number from them. This is really up to you, but think about those three qui- think about those three critical pieces of information you would wanna collect to make sure this is a good fit client for you ~Okay, I'm recording right now.~
~Sorry. Can you~
~Okay, going back~
This doesn't have to be overly complicated. Just go through, find out those critical pieces of information. Now, if you are a business that's being inundated with inquiries, congratulations. You can probably develop a longer form. Based on the conversations you're having, what people opt out versus opt in, you might add additional questions.
Why? Because you actually do want the form to screen out [00:07:00] people who are serious instead of just tire kickers. So there are situations where you might make a longer form. But for most of you starting out, make it simple, make it easy. If you're not getting like ten to twenty calls or contacts a week, then you can probably keep it short.
Anything higher than that, obviously, maybe you wanna do some filtering on there. Okay, so we're just qualifying some initial questions. Doesn't need to be super complicated.
Make It the Front Door
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Bryan Steele: This now needs to be your single front door. This form goes everywhere, and it is your primary action. When somebody says, "I'd like to work with you," they have to get to this form.
So it goes on your website, it goes on your Google business page, it goes in your email signature. Everywhere you are present, this form exists. On your social media accounts, this is the first stop. So you need to make sure it is everywhere. There isn't [00:08:00] another step. People aren't emailing you directly.
They get this form That's the only thing they get. They don't get access other- otherwise. And in social media, if somebody sends you a DM, you can set up the auto-reply. You say, "Thank you so much for reaching out. I'd love to collect a little information to learn more about how we can work together. Please fill this out."
Boom, link. Auto-reply. So as soon as they're contacting you, as soon as they're reaching out, they're immediately getting a response. They're immediately getting something that says, "Yeah, this person is gonna be the right person to talk to." So we've done that. We've got the form field five... We've got the form with five fields.
We've made it the single front door. It is everywhere. It is the first thing anybody does when they express an interest in working with us. We're gonna write that auto-reply one time. So when somebody sends a DM, [00:09:00] here's the auto-reply. "Please fill out this form," yada, yada, yada. They're gonna get some feedback.
Make that standardized.
Send Leads to One Place
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Bryan Steele: Then you need to connect the form submission somewhere you will always check. So maybe you're using Trello, maybe you're using Google Sheets, but you connect the form to somewhere where you're collecting all of that information. So all of the potential clients are going into one place.
Not seven, one place. You can go find them, you can look, and you can see where you're at. Now, these forms, you can use it to organize. Like, have I responded to that person? Did I send the email back? Did we call? What happened on that call? You can start to use this as a initial CRM before you've made a more formal CRM.
You can tie a sheet into your CRM if you've got one already established. But this is a simple thing to do to make sure you've logged [00:10:00] everybody who's reaching out to you. ~It doesn't get lost. Oh, excuse me.~ It doesn't get lost.
Test and Launch
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Bryan Steele: Then you need to test it. This is the final step. Once you think you've got your form ready, you think you've got it connected, test it on yourself. Go to the website, click the link, fill it out, put in the information, use a different email address, and then see if it loaded. It's a simple thing to do, but we have to test to make sure everything is working before we really make sure that we're gonna use it regularly.
So that's where it goes. That's where things are gonna live. Now This is only the first step. We are going to build on this in future episodes.
Free Form Tools
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Bryan Steele: So the first thing I want you to do is go build that basic form that you're going to use to collect potential client information. There are some free tools out there.
The best one that is free with all the features and easy to use, I would say, is Tally. You'll find a [00:11:00] link to that in the show notes. They have templates in there you can use based on different things, and then you can customize to your heart's content. It gives you unlimited forms, unlimited responses, file uploads, Stripe payment collection.
There's a whole lot in there. You don't necessarily need any of that yet. The main thing is those five questions that you're wanting to collect. You can get into paid tiers, which allow you to put in custom branding, custom domains, but the functionality of it as far as a form and collecting information for you is done.
That's the piece that you need to have in place, and that is completely free. So don't feel like you have to pay for those, paid tiers unless you feel like, "Yeah, I want my branding," for whatever reason. But that, that shouldn't... Yeah If you're already in Gmail, another alternative is to use Google Forms.
I [00:12:00] mean, I've used that myself in the past with forms for onboarding and various things, and you can customize it, put in your own questions, and then it logs it and saves it. Really easy to put into Google Sheets and things like that and track over time. So Google Forms, another free option you can use. A link will be available in the show notes.
So Just want you to know, if you start to think about automation, there are different tools out there. Some of them are free, some of them require paid tiers if they get complicated. But this piece here should cost you nothing. Everything that you need to collect information is right there. There may be other options you wanna use.
Maybe your website has an, a built-in form builder. You can use those if you want, but you need to make sure it's able to connect to a database, a Google Sheets, a Trello. Whatever you're gonna do, make sure you don't lose anything. Okay
So now what we've finished with is a [00:13:00] form that everyone can fill out that can give us some initial qualifying information, and it puts everything in a place so we know who we need to follow up with and who hasn't been reached out to, and we can get back out to them. What we'll get into next week is automating some of those next steps in the sequence to bring a client on board.
So make sure you're checking with me for that.
Next Steps and Upgrades
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Bryan Steele: What I want to close with is: how do you take this to the next level? Let's say you've done this before. You've got a simple form. What, what is that next piece you can do? Well, the first I kinda mentioned. You can put-- If you've got a budget form-- Sorry. The first we've alluded to a little bit.
If we're wanting to qualify and you use one form field as a budget form, you can put in conditional logic. If someone clicks on, like, the lowest budget tier, which is cheaper than any project you would ever actually do, you can be like, "Okay, this person cannot afford [00:14:00] me. They're not gonna work with me." You can then set up an autoresponse for those people, and so instead of them going down the next step of the pipeline to where they get to have a meeting with you and discuss the project, you kindly respond to them and say, "Hey, thanks for reaching out.
I don't think we'd be a good fit together. Your budget is not really sufficient for us to work together. If I'm incorrect, feel free to-- If you've got more budget available in the future or you didn't fill that out correctly, please let me know. But if you're looking for something more budget option, here are some things I would recommend."
You might send them to somebody else you know is lower cost. You might send them to some other tools, things like that
It's all pre-written. You don't have to mess with it. It's done. It's taken care of. This is a big thing because calls-- getting on calls where somebody cannot afford you is a giant waste of time. And I hate how that happens. It gets awkward on the call. It's like, "Ah, really? We, we [00:15:00] can't work together. You can't afford me."
And so there's some-- always some difficulty in having that conversation. So this avoids that, saves you the time, saves them the time. It's really... Like, I know it sounds sometimes being mean when we tell people, "Hey, you can't afford me," but it's being clear, and cle- clarity is kindness. Clarity is kindness.
We're saving both of us time and giving them some alternative options that may work better. Another option you can do is routing by service type. So one form, depending on what they fill out, maybe they get a different kind of response. You can get really complicated. If somebody wants something simple, you know, they can go to a consultation with you.
if it's a, if it's a different thing, it looks like it's more complicated, maybe they get a deeper questionnaire sent to them. So you can do some various things that create different trees depending on how someone's filling out a form. And then you can tag the source. So you can add a hidden field or a separate form link so [00:16:00] you can see whether your leads are coming from one place or another.
So you kind of create a thing where if the lead's coming from social media or they're coming from your website, you can start to see what it is that's driving people to fill out the form. Gives you some metrics so you can start to understand what channels are providing ~you your leads.~ All right. ~So hope this was...~
~No, don't say hope this was... Okay.~ So we've got that first step in place, got some ideas for how you could level it up in the future.
Weekly Action Plan
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Bryan Steele: My task for you this week is to make sure you have a single form for potential leads to figure out one step that they need to take. One step, it exists everywhere. Put that into place.
All your other little actions and steps, like, get rid of them. Call me, email me, don't do those. Get rid of those. Give them all one thing in the form, and then set up an auto-reply in your email, in your DMs, so that when somebody contacts you, says, "Hey, would [00:17:00] like to talk," here's this form. Set that up, get that in place, and thank me for the time.
You will not be obsessively checking all of those different places.
Scheduling Next Week
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Bryan Steele: Next week, we're gonna get into scheduling and how to automate that. I'm looking forward to seeing you then.
[00:18:00]
