QuestionPunkQuestionPunk
Start free
All templates

Business Consultation Discovery & Needs Assessment

A pre-consultation intake for advisors, coaches, and consultancies to understand a prospective client's business situation, top challenges, and goals before the first meeting. A best-worst trade-off ranks competing priorities, and an AI follow-up interview digs into the real story behind the challenge that matters most, saving live consultation time for solutions.

Use this templateBrowse more templates

Sample questions

A preview of what’s in the template. Every question is editable before you launch.

13 questions · ~7 min
Q01
Message

Thanks for booking time with us! To make the most of your upcoming consultation, we'd like to understand your business and what's on your mind first. This takes about 6 minutes and helps us come prepared with real solutions instead of generic advice.

Q02
Multiple ChoiceRequired

Which best describes your business right now?

  • Pre-launch / idea stage
  • Early stage (under 2 years)
  • Established, steady growth
  • Established, but growth has stalled
  • Scaling rapidly
  • Turnaround / recovery mode
Q03
Multiple ChoiceRequired

What industry is your business in?

  • Retail / e-commerce
  • Professional services
  • Food & beverage / hospitality
  • Manufacturing
  • Technology / software
  • Healthcare
  • Construction / trades
Q04
Best–Worst Trade-off (MaxDiff)Required

Thinking about the next 6 months, which of these areas is most pressing for your business, and which is least pressing right now?

  • Generating more sales / leads
  • Cash flow and financial management
  • Hiring and retaining staff
  • Day-to-day operations and processes
  • Marketing and brand visibility
  • Long-term strategy and direction
  • Technology and systems
  • Leadership and team management
Pick best & worst per setBest:Most pressingWorst:Least pressing
Q05
Opinion ScaleRequired

How urgently does that top-priority area need to be addressed?

Scale: 1 – 10
Min:Can wait a whileMax:Needs action immediately
Q06
AI Interview

Probe the challenge the respondent flagged as most pressing: get a concrete recent example of when it caused a problem, what they've already tried, what's stopped them from fixing it themselves, and what a good outcome would look like from the consultation. If their answer is vague or purely financial, ask them to walk through a specific week or decision where the issue showed up.

Q07
Rating ScaleRequired

Overall, how would you rate your business's performance right now compared to where you want it to be?

Range: 1 – 5
Min:Far below where I wantMax:Right where I want
Q08
Short TextRequired

What's one specific outcome you'd like to see within the next 6 months as a result of this consultation?

Q09
Multiple ChoiceRequired

What's your role in making decisions for this business?

  • I'm the sole owner/decision-maker
  • I co-own or share decisions with a partner
  • I'm a senior manager, but ownership decides final budget
  • I'm evaluating this on behalf of someone else
Q10
Multiple Choice

Have you worked with a business consultant or coach before?

  • No, this is my first time
  • Yes, and it went well
  • Yes, but I was disappointed with the results
  • Prefer not to say
Q11
Multiple Choice

How many people work at your business, including yourself?

  • Just me
  • 2-5
  • 6-20
  • 21-50
  • 51-200
  • 200+
  • Prefer not to say
Q12
Multiple Choice

What's your business's approximate annual revenue?

  • Pre-revenue
  • Under $100K
  • $100K-$500K
  • $500K-$2M
  • $2M-$10M
  • Over $10M
  • Prefer not to say
Q13
Message

That's everything we need — thank you for the thoughtful answers! Your responses will be reviewed before your consultation so we can focus our time together on the challenges that matter most to you.

What’s included

  • AI follow-ups

    Adaptive probes on open-ended answers that pull out detail a static form would miss.

  • Attention checks

    Built-in safeguards against rushed answers and low-quality respondents.

  • AI-drafted copy

    Wording, ordering, and branching written by the AI — tuned to your research goal.

  • Auto report

    Themes, quotes, and a plain-English summary write themselves once responses come in.

How it compares

We reviewed the closest templates from other survey tools. Here’s what they do well — and where this template goes further.

Why this template

  • A best-worst trade-off ranking forces prospects to reveal which single challenge is truly most pressing, not just a list of concerns rated equally
  • An AI follow-up interview then digs into that top-ranked challenge specifically, drawing out concrete recent examples and the real story behind it before the advisor ever gets on a call
  • Firmographic and qualification questions (team size, revenue, industry, decision-making role, prior consultant experience) are built in to help advisors segment and prep for the right conversation
  • Automated per-response quality scoring plus an auto-generated report mean the consultant walks into the first meeting with a synthesized picture, not raw form dumps

Jotform

Business Needs Assessment Form Template

A general-purpose static form for gathering business needs, built on Jotform's drag-and-drop form builder. It's ready to field as-is but relies entirely on fixed questions with no dynamic probing. Best suited for teams wanting quick customization and integrations rather than deeper qualitative discovery.

What it does well

  • Easy drag-and-drop customization within a mature form builder
  • Broad integration and payment/app ecosystem typical of Jotform
  • Free tier available for basic use

Where it falls short

  • Static question set with no adaptive AI follow-up to probe deeper on a respondent's top challenge
  • No automated per-response quality scoring or synthesized report generation
  • No voice AI or guided screen-share task options

SurveySparrow

Copywriting Consultation Form Template

This is a niche pre-consultation intake built specifically for copywriting service inquiries, not a general business consultation or needs-assessment template — it would need significant rework to fit advisors/coaches across other industries. It does use SurveySparrow's conversational, chat-style form format, which is a nice UX touch for a static form.

What it does well

  • Conversational one-question-at-a-time chat UI improves completion feel
  • Mobile-friendly presentation typical of SurveySparrow templates
  • Quick to deploy for a narrow, single-service use case

Where it falls short

  • Purpose-built for copywriting clients, not general business consulting discovery, so questions don't map to broader needs assessment
  • No adaptive AI interview to explore the respondent's most pressing issue in depth
  • No automated quality scoring or auto-generated consultation-ready report

Typeform

Business Consultation Form Template

A general business consultation intake form using Typeform's polished, conversational one-question-at-a-time format — a closer match to our use case than most alternatives. It's a static template with basic logic branching, not an interactive interview, so all follow-up depth depends on how many conditional questions are manually built in advance.

What it does well

  • Clean, conversational question flow that feels less form-like
  • Basic logic jumps to branch based on prior answers
  • Easy to embed and share for pre-meeting intake

Where it falls short

  • No adaptive AI-driven follow-up interview that digs into the respondent's top challenge in real time
  • No voice AI interview option or guided screen-share tasks
  • No automated per-response quality scoring or auto-generated report synthesizing findings

Ready to launch?

Open this template in the editor. Every part is yours to change before the first respondent sees it.

Use this templateStart free