One of the primary tools of the client intake process is the intake form.
In this post, I talk about how to set up tools like your client intake forms to help make your client intake processes as simple and efficient as they need to be.
The Client Intake Process
Are you sabotaging your business by making it too easy to work with you?
So much of today’s business rhetoric is about “removing barriers.”
But you’re introducing barriers if your client intake processes and intake forms are not, at every step of the way, helping you make meaningful progress towards a successful outcome.
How to write multi-select checkbox questions and analyze the results
No one is just one thing.
And that matters when you’re writing things like those client personas that we’re all supposed to have.
But how do you capture that nuance in a survey?
One way is to use the multi-select checkbox question, e.g., check all that apply. But how do you write a checkbox question that gives you information instead of just a grab bag of data? By
- choosing the right “master” question
- crafting options that are both logically grouped and logically disparate
- formatting
How to write open-ended questions and analyze the results
There are so many good use cases for open-ended questions, and including them as part of your surveys can really increase the insight you can glean from your respondents. But:
- How do you write questions that get you the type of answers you need?
- How do you reduce all of that free-flowing text into something that’s manageable and usable?
How to tackle a huge project | A SOP Story
TL;DR? There are four things you can do to make a huge project not only seem manageable but be manageable, even as you keep saying to yourself, “What was I thinking taking this on?!?” (1) Know what you’re trying to do and break it down into manageable steps as soon as possible. (2) Track your progress in a way that fosters momentum. (3) Be realistic about your energy levels. (4) Plan for implementation in a way that, as much as possible, lets you be mindful but thoughtless (i.e., well-considered but requiring no real decision-making when it comes time for application).
How information flows through a mail merge document
There are three files involved in the mail merge process: the Data Source, the Mail Merge Template, and the Review Document (which is sometimes called a merge document). In this post, I’m going to explain each one, covering where they come from, what role they play in the process and how they’re related to each other, and, finally, when it’s time to update them.
Analysis paralysis and the myths of being data driven and successful
Do you ever overthink or overanalyze to the point where you stop making decisions and taking action? Where you’re afraid that the choice you’re about to make isn’t the BEST choice, so you wait it out a little more, and maybe research a little more, and maybe gather together more data … just so you can be SURE? That’s called analysis paralysis.
Debunking the myths of being data driven and being successful can set you free.
Turning live, virtual events into high-quality on-demand content | A SOP Story
TL;DR? Pairing OBS Studio with Zoom can give you a lightweight way to both conduct a live, virtual event (like a training) and give you the recording you need to create high-quality, on-demand content for asynchronous viewers later on. It’s an even lighter lift if the event you’re holding involves content that doesn’t need to shift as much as it does with synchronous to asynchronous training.
Auditing your process improvement process | A SOP Story
TL;DR? Schedule some time to review the end results of the processes you’ve “improved,” and revise your current-day SOPs to incorporate back in anything you might have inadvertently “incrementally improved” out of your process along the way. Then again, you might just have an opportunity to pat yourself on the back for actually improving, and continue on! As a case study in this article, I draw from my own video production experience.
I’m a big believer in making incremental improvements, but sometimes an incremental change is actually an incremental deterioration.
How (and why) to categorize and organize your data
If you’ve ever targeted an email marketing campaign to a specific demographic, assigned a category to your blog post, or chosen a hashtag for your social post, you’ve used data classification. Classification is basically the process of chunking up or organizing your data, into different groups or under different labels, so that you can quickly isolate and bring together all of the things that belong to that group, so that you can do something with that group:
- monitor it as part of a metric,
- investigate it and compare it to other groups,
- work with it, like with targeted marketing campaigns, or
- plan with it.
In this post, I’ll discuss the problems that arise from unclassified or improperly classified data, and give some pointers on how to create and apply your own classifications.