Think back to the last time you applied for a job. The process is filled with countless applications, dead-end leads, and fruitless interviews.
It’s a common misconception that embarking on a career as an Excel consultant means you can leave all this behind. Unfortunately, that’s far from the truth.
In reality, these prospecting challenges never cease when you’re self-employed. You’ll constantly encounter people seeking your expertise for cheap or even free, proposing projects with ill-defined scopes, and more.
Working for yourself means that time literally translates into money, without the safety net traditionally provided by employment. It’s crucial to guard your time zealously and implement safeguards and processes. One effective strategy is to create a series of forms, making your interactions and projects repeatable. Utilizing your systems to manage potential clients is a significant advantage to what the typical employee can manage, so it’s imperative to make the most of it.
This post aims to provide valuable tips and tricks for setting up an intake form as an Excel consultant, a tool that can streamline your business processes and enhance your professional efficiency.
Someone asks you for Excel help. What do you do?
It has taken me some time to follow this advice myself, but best course of action might be to send them a form. This approach offers numerous advantages. First, it serves as a test of the individual’s commitment to seeking assistance. If you provide them with a reasonable intake form and they either fail to complete it or do so inadequately, it becomes evident that their request for help may not be sincere.
Secondly, this method establishes clear professional boundaries, signaling that your services are not offered on a voluntary basis but as part of a business. Including a question about budget upfront in this form is crucial. While it’s true that budgets can vary significantly, as a business owner, you should have the flexibility to adjust the scope of your services based on the client’s budget. Asking about the budget in the intake form sets an early expectation that compensation of some sort is mandatory, thereby avoiding prolonged, indecisive conversations.
Elements of your intake form
Your intake form should include several essential pieces of information to assist in project triage, understand the client’s identity, and grasp their requirements.
Contact information
Requesting contact information on the form is, of course, essential for knowing how to respond back. But this also facilitates setting communication expectations. For instance, you can inform the customer about the method of communication you’ll use to reach out, whether it’s through email, phone, or another medium. You could inquire about their preferred method of communication or explain your standard communication practices.
Basic project details
Request a brief description of the project, in their own words. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive scope document; rather, it’s to grasp the essentials of what’s happening and what you’re seeking.
Often, what’s labeled as “Excel consulting requests” might simply require someone proficient in using search engines or a large language model (LLM). Or, it could indeed be a genuine Excel project. In my view, it’s crucial to discern the nature of this project before scheduling your day around a phone call. Your time is invaluable, especially as someone self-employed, given the significant sacrifices you’ve made to maintain a flexible schedule.
Desired outcomes and deliverables
Here, you can delve deeper into the specifics of the situation. If you’re uncertain about the nature of the project, or you’re still not sure if this is something a quick Google could handle, the following questions might be helpful. Consider asking about any previous solutions that have been attempted but failed. Ideally, the prospective client could share example datasets or other inputs with you, or create some mock-ups.
It’s also important to clarify what the expected deliverable is, especially if this is a bespoke project from scratch. Are they looking for a dashboard, a report, or something else?
Budget & timeline
Here is where things start to become more concrete. You want to understand how realistic this prospective client would be on a project. If the client assumes assistance within the week without intending to compensate for your time, that’s hardly a fair exchange. However, if they have a flexible timeline spanning a few months and a reasonable budget, the conversation becomes more interesting.
Determining whether the budget justifies your effort, setting a schedule for deliverables, and other considerations form an entirely separate discussion. Yet, if you’re optimistic about the direction things are taking based on this information, you can inform the client about the next steps. Typically, I prefer to direct them to my booking page, where they can schedule a complimentary consultation call at their convenience. During this call, we can discuss the basic scope of the project and proceed to draft a proposal.
Example intake form
I hope this has been helpful in giving you an idea of what to include in your Excel consulting intake form. However, sometimes the best way to grasp something is to see an example.
With that in mind, I’ve shared my own intake form below. Please note that this is an active form, and any responses will be recorded. That said, if you need assistance with an Excel project, you are certainly welcome to use it, and I would ask you to fill it out anyway. 🙂
What questions do you have about setting up an intake form for Excel consulting? Is there anything you’d add to yours that mine might be missing? Please let me know in the comments.
Additionally, keep in mind that I offer one-on-one coaching for individuals interested in advancing their data analytics careers, including those aspiring to become independent consultants. You can find more details below.
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