How to move on from Paper Forms.
You’ve spent thousands on your new gym business set-up. You have the latest gear, have signed a long lease, and are running lots of facebook ads with a great response. Then the sign-ups start rolling in. YES! And you hand your new clients a paper form for them to complete, which asks for all that info you need to build them the perfect exercise and nutrition plan.
Then you spend the rest of eternity trying to keep up with those paper forms.
Perhaps you then transcribe them one by one into an excel spreadsheet.
Perhaps you just keep the paper document in a filing cabinet.
Perhaps you put it to one side hoping to forget about it.
Whatever you currently do with it, it should be automated so that you can spend more time with your paying clients and less in the office trying to decipher Glen’s hand writing.
My recommendation is Google Forms which feeds to a Google Sheet, and here’s why.
When you have a new sign up - you send them a link to complete the survey online. This is SO much easier for a customer. They don’t have to write anything down, they can do it at work, and they don’t have to remember to bring you the sheet.
It looks professional with very little work. You can customise it to some extent, but it looks fine straight out of the box.
You get a notification when the customer has completed the survey. No more double/triple checking with Sandy that she will remember to bring in her form before that first session.
The results feed DIRECTLY into a spreadsheet already set up. Yes, automatically.
This spreadsheet is available to you everywhere via your Google drive. So if you are out of the office and need to check on a clients allergies, you can access it on any of your devices (provided you have internet access)
You can filter the data to get exactly what you need. Want to find out who is on the waitlist for a 6.00am Wednesday class? Simply filter the data for that question and have the list in seconds.
IT. IS. FREE.
Anyone can get a google account and have access to Forms, Sheets and Drive. Simply sign up via Google and then access the Drive and Sheets apps via the ‘Apps Grid’ on the browser top bar:
To create a google form - once you have set up a google account follow this link to get started with forms.
This is what the Google forms set up looks like:
It’s very straightforward to add additional questions, and can support a range of answer types such as multiple checkboxes and linear scales.
The whole set up process would take one to two dedicated evenings. And then you can get your evenings back!