Describe your services and ideal client. Makeform creates a focused business needs assessment form for goals, challenges, priorities, budget, timing, and decision readiness before a proposal.
Route assessment responses to Slack, Google Sheets, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a prompt, adapt it to your services, or send it to the builder. Each structure is an editable example.
Audience
Owners considering a strategy engagement
Format
Executive assessment with ranked priorities
Prompt size
282 chars
Example form structure
Executive assessment with ranked priorities
Company, business model, and revenue streams
Rank your current business priorities
What would a successful outcome look like?
Budget range and desired start date
Who participates in the decision?
Suggested routing tags
Ready for discovery
Needs clarification
Long-term opportunity
Ask prospects to rank priorities and define success. This separates the urgent project from the wish list.
Step 1
Context
company, audience, and current state
Step 2
Need
problems, priorities, and impact
Step 3
Fit
scope, budget, timeline, and stakeholders
Step 4
Next step
route the right discovery conversation
Better pre-proposal discovery
A useful assessment reveals why the prospect is looking now, what has already failed, and which constraints will shape the engagement.
Ask what triggered the inquiry, where the current approach breaks down, and who feels the impact. The requested deliverable may not be the underlying need.
Capture the desired result and current baseline. This keeps the proposal tied to a business change instead of a disconnected deliverable list.
Budget, timing, stakeholders, procurement, and ownership show whether the opportunity is ready for a proposal or needs clarification.
Adapt the assessment
Keep the core qualification questions consistent, then branch into the details that determine scope for your particular offer.
Gather business model, market position, growth priorities, decision criteria, and the measures leadership already reviews.
Capture audience, brand, channels, campaign history, content resources, approvals, and the deadline driving the request.
Map workflows, handoffs, systems, data, bottlenecks, integration constraints, and the people responsible for implementation.
Clarify audiences, required actions, content scope, technical features, migration needs, launch dependencies, and ongoing ownership.
Assessment workflow
Generate the structure, tailor your qualification path, publish it, and review each response before choosing the next step.
Describe who you serve, what you sell, which answers change scope, and when to show follow-up sections.
Remove unused questions, require essential fields, add realistic budget ranges, and keep the form focused.
Use conditional logic so each selected service reveals only its relevant scope questions.
Route submissions by service and readiness, then prepare discovery questions from the answers.
Assessment vs contact form vs call
A contact form captures interest and a call explores nuance. An assessment adds consistent qualification without replacing collaborative discovery.
Field guide
Move from context to need, then from desired outcomes to practical fit. Use these six sections as a modular question bank.
Business context
Ask how the organization creates value, who it serves, how the relevant team works, and what changed recently.
Current state
Ask where the issue occurs, how often, who is affected, and which systems or workarounds are involved.
Goals & priorities
Have prospects rank needs, then pair each priority with a desired outcome and a sign of progress.
Previous attempts
Ask what was attempted, what helped, what stalled, and what should be different this time.
People & decisions
Capture the owner, subject experts, decision-maker, affected teams, and procurement steps before proposing a schedule.
Scope & readiness
Budget, timing, dependencies, access, and fixed events shape the viable approach. Use ranges and focused follow-ups.
Related tools
Use a focused form for each stage instead of combining qualification, discovery, scoping, and onboarding.
Collect consistent client details when an opportunity becomes an engagement.
Open toolBuild an agenda and note structure for the live conversation.
Open toolCreate a deeper questionnaire for a defined service, audience, or project phase.
Open toolGather audiences, content, features, integrations, migration, and launch constraints.
Open toolTurn an approved business need into a structured project request with owners and deadlines.
Open toolCollect access, contacts, files, communication preferences, and kickoff details after selection.
Open toolFAQ
Answers for designing a pre-proposal assessment.
It is a questionnaire about an organization's current state, challenges, priorities, outcomes, constraints, and readiness. Consultants use it to qualify fit and prepare discovery.
Ask about context, the trigger, current process, impact, outcomes, priorities, previous attempts, stakeholders, budget, timing, dependencies, and decisions. Add service questions only when they affect scope.
Ask only what you will use for qualification, discovery, or routing. Use branches instead of showing every question to every prospect, and remove repeated detail.
A budget range can reveal alignment. Use suitable ranges and offer a not determined option. Consider outcomes, urgency, capacity, and readiness too.
Yes. After service selection, show channel questions for marketing and workflow questions for operations. Keep shared qualification fields outside the branches.
Usually not. The form standardizes background information; the call explores nuance and tradeoffs. Use submitted answers so the prospect does not repeat facts.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, including generation, editing, publishing, and response collection. The paid tier removes the Makeform badge.
Review need, outcomes, constraints, stakeholders, budget, and timing. Route a strong fit, clarify missing details, or record a follow-up date.
Turn vague inquiries into focused discovery.
