Client Intake Form Template
This all-purpose first step for service businesses captures who the client is, what winning looks like, and the budget and timeline realities before your first call.
This intake runs about five minutes and makes our first conversation twice as useful. Answer what you can, and skip what you can't.
Every service engagement opens with the same four-part conversation: who are you, what do you need, what happens if the work succeeds, and can the two of you afford each other. A client intake form holds that conversation while you sleep. Rather than spend a first call on biography, you arrive knowing the business, the goal, and the budget band. The client arrives feeling you did your homework, because you did.
The questions, and what each earns. Name and email stay to two fields, so momentum builds before the thinking starts. The business description runs open-ended on purpose: how a prospect describes their own company reveals how they think, which no dropdown can match. The services multi-select maps their ask onto your real menu and adds a "not sure yet" lane, since the strongest engagements often begin with a mislabeled problem. Then comes the win question, the heart of the form. A client who can name an outcome is ready to buy; a client who cannot needs a different first conversation, and now you know which one you have before anyone books an hour. Budget and start-date selects qualify without interrogating, because a range feels safe to answer and "no number yet" keeps good prospects from bailing. The communication preference sets the relationship's default channel from day one.
Where the form stops. It skips company registration numbers, the ten-question discovery battery, and the describe-your-competitors homework. That work belongs after an agreement, once goodwill exists and effort runs both ways. An intake is a fit filter; the project brief comes later. Overload it, and your qualified-but-busy prospects close the tab.
Who links to it. Independent consultants hang it off their work-with-me page. Agencies keep the pipeline moving with it between sales hires. Accountants, lawyers, and studios send it after a handshake, when "email me some details" would otherwise return a three-line message with none of the details. The form lives at a shareable link, so it also works from an Instagram bio or an email signature, no website required.
The edits that make it yours. Rename the service options to your real offerings, then set the budget bands so the lowest one sits at your minimum engagement. That one change teaches prospects your floor without an awkward sentence. Add a rule in the Logic panel to reveal a follow-up question when a prospect picks a specific service. Switch on email notifications in Settings so new intakes reach your inbox, or point a signed webhook at your CRM so nothing gets retyped. The two-page structure earns its keep: contact details sit on page one, so even an abandoned form leaves a reachable lead in your partial responses. Follow up gently, and a surprising number will finish the conversation live.
Frequently asked questions
Can I see intakes that were started but never finished?
Partial responses are captured automatically, so answers typed before someone abandons still appear in your responses view, marked as partial.
How do I get submissions into my CRM?
Point a webhook at your CRM or automation tool. Each intake arrives as JSON the moment it lands, signed so your endpoint can verify it. For a one-off migration, export everything as CSV.
Can I make the budget question required?
Open the template in the editor, select the budget block, and flip the required toggle. Every field's wording, options, and required state is editable.
Will bots fill this with junk?
Public intake links carry Listel's layered spam protection: a honeypot field, submission-timing checks, and an invisible proof-of-work challenge that surfaces only when traffic looks automated.