“CONTACT ME” is open-ended and invariably involves back-and-forth emails which take up your time and for a while will unlikely show whether you and your prospect are even a fit.

The following steps, the first three automated yet effective and compelling, involve no time on your part, tell the prospect what you can do for them, and provide you with what you need to know about the prospect.

Step #1: Implement a Needs Assessment 

In place of “Contact Me,” have a “Work With Me” page. Within that page, have a “Needs Assessment” questionnaire. It will transform your consultation process.

Step #2: Ask the ‘Right’ Questions on Your Needs Assessment Questionnaire

Ask pertinent questions and include statements that highlight that you can take potential clients from where they are now to where they want to be. If you demonstrate that you’ll be able to help solve their most pressing problems, your Needs Assessment serves equally as a unique selling tool.

For example, on my Needs Assessment form, I include 16 different “yes” statements, mostly comprised of what my clients have shared with me as areas they have struggled with and why they came to work with me in the first place.

The most relevant question on my form is, “What is going on in your business that tells you that support is in order?” Prospects are instructed to “check all that apply.” In most cases, several boxes are checked, and this tells you they can benefit from your unique brand of expertise, and it shows them you can help them overcome and conquer these issues once and for all.

Here are some examples of yes statements (checkboxes) on my Needs Assessment:

• I’ve reached a level of success I’m proud of, but I’d like to take it to the next level.
• I need guidance on how to grow my business and the implementation of business development and marketing processes and systems.
• I’d like to have structures, systems, processes, templates, and scripts to make growing my business easy.
• I want to create, implement, or improve on a system for keeping in touch with prospects and growing my list of prospects.
• I want to develop a process for pre-screening potential clients and getting to know more about new clients.
• I like my website but know I can do more with it, and I’m just not sure how.

Recognize the importance of the “right” questions and make sure the statements you offer meet their aspirations. By the time they finish this portion of their Needs Assessment form, they feel some relief and will already be thinking what a positive impact you can be on their life and their business. At this stage, you have created the experience that they will be looking forward to speaking with you.

Step #3: Invite Your Prospects to Take the Next Steps

Depending on the platform you use for your Needs Assessment questionnaire, you can have the form redirect to your scheduling link so you will have their needs to address with a date on the calendar for your discussion.

If it’s not through a ‘Work With Me’ Page on your website, invite anyone who expresses interest in consulting with you: “To schedule a time to speak and explore ways I can help you to ………, please use this link to let me know a little about your current situation (insert link to Needs Assessment).”

Step #4: Outline Your Intentions and Objectives

Your potential client will be feeling some excitement and enthusiasm about the upcoming scheduled consultation, but may also be wondering:

• What is going to be the focus of our discussion?
• How are you going to get me over my hurdles?
• Is there anything else I should know about you before we speak?
• Is there anything I should do/prepare for before we speak?

You have reached this stage without any work or time on your part, AND your prospect can’t wait to speak to you…not bad!! Even now, you can have an automated response along the following lines: “Thank you for scheduling your call. Here is the date and time we’ll be speaking and how to access our meeting space: {insert link}. Rest assured, I will have thoroughly read your Needs Assessment questionnaire, and I will address it point by point and discuss how I can help you and areas I can handle entirely for you. We will go over pricing too. Before our consultation, I suggest you revisit my website, specifically the About page, Testimonials, Case Studies, Success Stories (and you are welcome to ask me how we achieved certain results, etc.). Typically, a consultation lasts about …. minutes. I look forward to speaking with you.”

Bonus:  More questions to include in your Needs Assessment Questionnaire:

• “What are your concerns, frustrations, and challenges? How long have these been going on?”
• “What do you want to have or how do you want your life or your business to look in the next six months?”
• “Why don’t you have this already?”
• “What’s has happened that held you back from having that?”
• “What will happen if you don’t get this fixed?”
• “What will happen if you aren’t able to do this for your business?”
• “What do you think will be the outcome?”

For each of these questions, you can have a series of statements for them to check in the way I listed above, with an option to add an answer not listed.

If you want help with systematizing your consultations with a Needs Assessment form, questions and statements to include, a scheduling program, your pre-consultation confirmation/homework, and coordinating, please click here to let me know about your current situation. When you submit this form, you will automatically be redirected to my scheduling link.