Your onboarding form can be a gold mine for getting the client data you need to get better results and ultimately fill your program with more clients. 

But most people have set up generic forms with open-ended questions that don’t actually give them what they need to see trends, track client progress, and back their promise with dozens of client results. 

In this episode, Ashley shares two very specific tweaks to make to your onboarding form so you can use the data to improve and sell your group program. 

00:54 — 3 different types of questions to ask that will make your marketing more effective

06:31 — How to collect onboarding data properly so you can actually evaluate and use your client data

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If you are asking your students to take time out of their day to fill

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out an onboarding form, we want to make it as strategic as possible

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so you can really, actually use the data that you're getting from them.

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Welcome to Systems Famous, the podcast where we're revolutionizing the coaching

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industry by putting client results first.

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I'm Ashley Pendergraft, a systems and automation expert with over five years

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of experience in the coaching industry.

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Let's get into the show.

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Hello!

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In this episode, we are going to get very specific and very nerdy

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and talk about your onboarding forms for your group programs,

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your masterminds, your memberships, even your one on one coaching.

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Something I see all the time, and I have been guilty of this too, Is people waste

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their opportunity to get incredible client data in their onboarding form.

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In this episode, I'm going to share with you some really specific tweaks

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you can make to your onboarding form to get to know your clients better and

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ultimately get them better client results.

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The first thing that I want you to do is ask better questions.

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That sounds so silly and basic, but truly, if you look at your onboarding

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form, you probably have not touched that thing, like, since you started

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your group program and you will look at your questions and realize how little

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you're actually doing with the answers.

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And if you are asking your students to take time out of their day to

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fill out an onboarding form, we want to make it as strategic as possible

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so you can really, actually use the data that you're getting from them.

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So I've got three different question categories I want you to add to

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your onboarding form so you're asking better questions so you can

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do more with your onboarding forms.

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So add in a couple of questions that answer for prospective new

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is this right for me?

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So let's say you have a money course, you help people save six figures.

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And you have artists that join the program and you have

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coaches that join the program.

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What I want you to think about is the people that slide into your

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DMs and say, well, I'm an artist.

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Would this work for me?

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I want you to be able to go into your onboarding form data and say,

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actually, yeah, out of our a hundred clients, we have 20 that are artists.

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And actually our artists have saved an average of 40, 000 in the

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first three months of the program.

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That is the power of your onboarding data when you ask the right questions.

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Really think about who is your who, and what are some of the nuances there?

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Some questions you can ask are, what stage of business are you in?

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Are you a beginner?

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Have you been around for two to three years?

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Have you been around for five plus years?

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Because that's going to answer the question for somebody else, how

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far along in business should I be?

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Is this too advanced?

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Is this too beginner?

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You will have data to show here's the average length of time our

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clients have been in business.

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You can ask what industry that they're in.

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Are they in finance?

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Are they in tech?

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Are they in the arts?

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Maybe you have a dating program and you get the objection of,

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well, this is only gonna work for people who live in big cities.

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Ask them, where do you live?

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What state do you live?

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What country?

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So you can say, X amount of our clients are actually based in Kansas, like.

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And so you can answer objections with your data.

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That's the first thing I want you to do is ask better questions so you can get

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the actual results to help your marketing.

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The other questions that I want you to add is ask better questions that

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actually ask them where they're starting so you have baseline data.

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If you are helping people save six figures, you want to know,

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how much do they have right now?

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And if you don't have a super trackable, measurable program promise,

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you can also measure skill base.

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So let's say you want to help people have a confident dating life.

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You can ask them, Hey, right now, entering this program on a scale

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of one to 10, how confident do you feel about your dating life?

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Or how confident do you feel about your ability to identify plants in the wild?

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Or how confident do you feel about your pickleball skills?

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I'm using all like actual clients that I've, worked with, but we want

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to make sure that we have really great baseline data about how your

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clients are coming into your program whether that's qualitative or

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quantitative, so you can have what's your business revenue right now?

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How comfortable are you with a certain skill?

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There are so many different creative ways to really measure where people

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are coming in at your program regardless of what you actually

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promise and what you actually track.

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This is a question that I feel like people do onboarding forms

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but it's going to help you so much.

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You're gonna be so grateful you have it, especially if you have a time

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bound result You want to ask people when they get into your program, do

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you plan on going through this program in the 30 days like we suggest?

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So we have a group program that helps people set up their onboarding,

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offboarding, and re sign in 30 days.

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If someone isn't planning on doing it in 30 days, if they're not planning on

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touching the program for four months, I don't want them to affect the data, right?

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And they'll skew the averages.

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So what you can do is you can ask them and literally say, copy this word for

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word, our program promise states that you can achieve XYZ within 30 days.

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Are you planning on following that timeline?

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Or are you planning on following your own timeline?

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And if they say, I'm planning on following my own timeline, It is going

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to give you the permission and the authority to exclude them from any

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averages that you do when you say people come into our program and get this

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program result in X amount of days.

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And of course you also get to see X amount of people want to come into the

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program and get it done in 30 days.

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And like half of them don't even care and aren't planning on that.

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It's really good data, but that is a question that I've never seen on anybody's

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onboarding board except for ours.

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And I think it's so smart.

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So make sure that you are asking them if they're planning on following

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the timeline that you suggest.

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So those are three different question types I want you to have, so make sure

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you have questions about the type of person they are, so you can answer

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in your marketing, is this for me?

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I want you to also have questions that get baseline where they're

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coming into your program.

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This sounds so basic, y'all, but really a lot of us don't have this.

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So whatever your program promise is, and if you don't know your program

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promise and it doesn't feel like it's super measurable, Go back and

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listen to our podcast episode about cleaning up your program promise

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and your messaging so you can feel really clear on what you're tracking.

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And then also have a question that has them opt in or out on that time

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result promise that you are promising.

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So that's the first part, ask better questions.

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The second tweak that you can make in your onboarding form to get your clients

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more results is to use better field types.

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So this is where we get a little bit nerdy.

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Y'all, if you do not have your onboarding form inside of

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Airtable, you are doing it wrong.

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If you have a Google form, I am side eyeing you, and the reason I

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am is because it is so much harder to track your client results.

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If you have these disparate forms, if you have your onboarding form in a one

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Google form and then you have your results tracking in another form, if you even have

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a results tracker, they're not connected when they are in random Google forms.

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And when you have Airtable, it's going to all be connected.

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Every form that your clients fill out gets connected to their like student profile.

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So we get to see, we get to actually use the data that you are collecting

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and asking them in the onboarding form.

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You get to use that and measure it up against any results

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forms that they're filling out.

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In order to compare how they started in their onboarding form to how they're going

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in your six month, three week check ins,

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whatever,

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you need to have the right field types.

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So again, very nerdy, but

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we have what we call green light field types.

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These are field types that make it really easy to compare data, to

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add charts, to really see trends

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inside of your onboarding and see trends

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in your result tracking.

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Those are things that are pretty straightforward.

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They're anything that you can really easily measure.

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So our green light field types are things like date fields, currency,

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number, percent, ratings, single select fields, multiple select, anything that

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can

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we can use to really aggregate data,

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we can add sums, we can do averages.

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We want as many of those as possible and we want to stay away

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from our yellow light field types.

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Those are anything that are open ended: single line text or open ended paragraphs.

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I want you to look at your onboarding form and be really critical and say

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how can we get as many green light field types as possible and get

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away from these like yellow light ones that are just hard to measure?

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So if you say how long have you been in business?

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Don't have an open ended field.

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I know you think that you're doing something helpful for your clients to

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say like, well, it'd be helpful because I want more details out of them, I don't

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want to give them a drop down because I'm losing out on really important context,

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when actually the opposite is true.

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When you give them a little bit more structure or you give them these

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more field types, you actually are going to gain way more context from

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these onboarding forms because you're going to be able to easily track and

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add sums and all of these things.

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I want you to pull up your onboarding form and see where all of the

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places that you can take out the ambiguity and give more structure.

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So if you're asking them anything about dates, anything about numbers, it seems

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so simple, but make them a currency field instead of an open ended field.

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Don't ask them, how much revenue did you make in the last 12 months,

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and have it be a single text.

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Have it be the right field, so you can sort, so you can

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average, and all of those things.

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Now, I know some of you are probably asking well, if I have all of these

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really rigid response types, then I'm not gonna get how they feel.

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I really need some more qualitative data.

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That's fine.

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I've got a hack for you.

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So anytime you have what I call like a yellow light field type, if you like want

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these like open ended responses, just know that those open ended responses,

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the point of those is to see where your clients are at and not necessarily

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tracking like for onboarding trends.

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You want to get a gut check, but it's not really for trends so you can say

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what's frustrating you right now?

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I agree if you say what's frustrating you right now, and you have like

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ten select options, they're probably gonna select all ten because they're

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like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

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And there's so much value in hearing from their own mouth in their own

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words what they're struggling with.

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You can have those text fields, but use them sparingly and know

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that those are not used for data tracking and trends purposes.

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They're more to help you with messaging and so you can really understand

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where your clients are coming from.

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And an extra pro tip actually is on the back end, so when you have your little

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Airtable base and it has your onboarding forms and you get to see all of the

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onboarding, those text box that they say that they're struggling with, on the

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back end, you can still quantify those trends by reading their onboarding form

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and seeing where they're frustrated and having like a single select on the back

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end that says, okay, this person mentioned they're frustrated with launching.

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This person says they hate social media.

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And basically you're categorizing on the back end with your

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own answers and examples.

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They're pouring their heart out, but on the back end, you can still calculate

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and chart out what the trends are by kind of categorizing them on the

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back ends, but the more green light field types that you have, the better.

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So please go ahead and be ruthless.

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Go and see how you can strengthen your onboarding form because you might already

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be asking the right questions, but they might not be in the right field type, and

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even that is going to give you so much more robust data that you can play with.

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If you have any questions or if you found this helpful and you

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were able to make changes to your onboarding form, I would absolutely

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love for you to slide into my DMs.

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I'm at Systems Over Stress, or if you're watching the YouTube video,

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you can leave a comment below and let us know what changes that

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you've made to your onboarding form.

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Inside of my group program, Systems Over Stress, we actually have a onboarding

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form auditing process where you can send in your onboarding form and we'll let you

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know specific places where we could see that you could tighten up your questions.

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Or questions that you could add that are just like questions that you

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could add that will help you get so much more data about your clients.

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So you can not only help them get better results in the program because you see

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their baseline data and you're able to like track their journey, but it'll also

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help you make more sales because you have more demographic data and you have

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more data about your clients, which is going to help you with your marketing.

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It's going to help you on your sales pages and all of that.

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So I hope you liked this episode and I will see you in the next one.

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If you are committed to getting your client's results and creating

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the go-to coaching program in your industry, we want you to join us.

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