Are you looking to craft a pre-sales questionnaire that collects qualifying information about new leads?

You’re in the right place. Though you might not be getting more into the pre-sales process, we will be providing you with insights into how to improve sales.

The following is what you can expect from this blog.

What is a pre-sale questionnaire?
7 Different pre-sale questionnaires for each use case
5 Best pre-sales survey questions you can ask
Why you should invest in a pre-sales questionnaire

Let’s dive into it.

What is a Pre-Sales Questionnaire?

The easiest way to understand a pre-sales questionnaire is as a quality filter for your leads.

Think of it this way: Your marketing strategy can bring you a lot of leads, but not all leads are created equal. The sales team, though, must focus on only the best ones. So, a pre-sales survey asks customers a few quick questions. That pre-sales questionnaire and the feedback from the same help your sales team sort the severe prospects from the wrong leads.

Here’s what happens: You send prospects a carefully crafted set of questions before your sales team engages with them. Their responses reveal critical information about:

Their specific needs and pain points
Budget availability and decision-making authority
Timeline for implementation or purchase
Current solutions they’re using
Level of interest and buying intent

Before we detail each of these pre-sales survey questions, here’s a pre-sales survey designed using SurveySparrow that you can use for free.

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7 Industry-specific Pre-Sales Questionnaire Templates

Different businesses need different qualification questions. We’ve created specialized questionnaires for seven common business types, each designed to capture the most relevant information for that industry.

With that in mind, we have created the following questionnaire list for you.

1. Pre-sales Questionnaire for Restaurant

For restaurants, your pre-sales questionnaire should focus on understanding dining preferences, frequency, and customer expectations. The goal is to gather insights that help you tailor your offerings and identify serious diners versus casual inquirers.

Key Areas to Explore:

Dining frequency and habits
Cuisine preferences and dietary restrictions
Service expectations and pain points
Budget considerations and special occasion needs

Here’s a sample survey template you can use.

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For those who want to create surveys on their own, read through the following survey questions and get an idea of what to and what not to include.

Ready-to-Use Restaurant Pre-Sales Questions:

How often do you dine out at a restaurant?
What types of cuisine do you enjoy the most?
Do you have any preference with respect to seating?
How do you order your meal? (online or instore)
What do you like the most about the restaurants you frequent?
What are the biggest pain points you noticed with the restaurant you frequent?
What are the factors that influence you when choosing a restaurant?
Are you satisfied with the offerings from local restaurants?
On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend a restaurant to your friends or family?
Suggest some ways restaurants can improve your experience.

2. Pre-sales Questionnaire for Hair Salon

Hair salons face unique challenges in understanding client preferences and expectations. Your pre-sales questionnaire should focus on hair care habits, styling preferences, and service expectations to better qualify potential clients.

Key Areas to Explore:

Current hair condition and styling preferences
Service history and frequency
Product usage and budget
Pain points with previous salon experiences

For example, salons offering nail services might want to consider a booking app for nail techs to simplify appointment scheduling and improve customer experience..

Taking this into consideration, we have created a template that’s tailored for the salon’s use. Have a look at it.

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Ready-to-Use Hair Salon Pre-Sales Questions:

The following are some survey questions to include while creating a pre-sales survey.

What is your natural hair color?
What is your current hair length?
How often do you style your hair?
What are your biggest concerns about hair care?
What do you prefer – a low-maintenance look or a more styled look?
What are your go-to hairstyles for special occasions?
What hair products do you currently use?
How much do you spend on haircare products per month?
Are there any specific hair styles you would like to experiment?
On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with your current hair salon?
What are the biggest challenges you face with your current salon?

3. Pre-Sales Questionnaire for Fast Food

Fast food establishments have different priorities than full-service restaurants. Your pre-sales questionnaire should focus on speed, convenience, menu preferences, and ordering habits.

Key Areas to Explore:

Food preferences and dietary restrictions
Ordering frequency and methods
Speed and convenience factors
Price sensitivity and value perception

Ready-to-Use Fast Food Pre-Sales Questions:

What’s your favorite fast food?
Do you have any go-to menu at a fast food restaurant?
What are your favorite beverages to have with the fast food?
Are there any dietary restrictions or preferences?
How often do you visit a fast food restaurant?
Do you order at the counter, drive-thru, or use mobile apps to order your food?
How satisfied are you with the speed and accuracy of your fast food orders?
What do you like the most about fast food experiences?
What do you like the least about fast food experiences?
What are the factors you look into when choosing fast food?
Do you have any suggestions or comments you would like to add?

PS - You can edit the pre-sale template for the restaurant and share it with your customers. OR generate a brand new one from scratch within seconds using SurveySparrow AI.

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4. Pre-Sales Questionnaire for Tuck Shop

Tuck shops have unique characteristics based on their location and target audience. This questionnaire helps you understand purchasing patterns and preferences, particularly for school-adjacent shops.

Key Areas to Explore:

Visit frequency and timing
Product preferences and price sensitivity
Age-appropriate offerings
Convenience factors

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Feel free to customize is to your needs by signing up. Or create a new one from scratch. In this case, keep a note of the questions you need to add.

Ready-to-Use Tuck Shop Pre-Sales Questions:

Do you have a tuck shop at (or near) a school?
(If yes) How often do you visit the tuck shop?
What items do you typically purchase from the tuck shop?
Are there any specific items you want to include in the tuck shop items?
What factors influence your decision to purchase a specific item from a tuck shop?
How satisfied are you with the current offerings of the tuck shop?
What is the biggest challenge you see in the truck shop?
What are the factors you consider when purchasing items from the tuck shop?

5. Pre-sales Questionnaire for Bakery

Bakeries need to understand customer preferences for baked goods, dietary restrictions, and purchase patterns to better serve their target audience.

Key Areas to Explore:

Purchase frequency and preferences
Dietary restrictions and special needs
Price sensitivity
Occasion-based purchasing

You can use the following template (customize it to your needs) to share with your customers. It’s completely free!

You can use the following template (customize it to your needs) to share with your customers. It’s completely free!

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Ready-to-Use Bakery Pre-Sales Questions:

Here are questions to keep in mind while creating your survey anew.

How often do you purchase bakery products?
Where do you currently buy most of the bakery products from? (online or instore)
Do you have a local bakery you frequent?
What kind of baked goods do you often purchase?
Do you have dietary restrictions or preferences? (Eg: gluten-free, vegan, etc.)
What are bakery items you would like to try out more?
On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with the local bakeries?
What are the biggest challenges you see in local bakers?
What factors influence you to visit a particular bakery?
What additional amenities or services would you like to see in a bakery?

Pre-Sales Questionnaire for Coffee Shop

Coffee shops need to understand beverage preferences, atmosphere expectations, and visit patterns to better serve their customers.

Key Areas to Explore:

Coffee preferences and customizations
Visit frequency and timing
Atmosphere and amenity expectations
Food pairing preferences

Ready-to-Use Coffee Shop Pre-Sales Questions:

The survey questions are as follows.

How often do you visit our coffee shop?
What type/s of coffee do you typically order?
Do you have a preferred coffee roast? (Dark, medium, light)
How do you typically customize your coffee?
What is the ideal coffee temperature? (cold, lukewarm, hot)
What factors influence your decision to visit a coffee shop?
What do you like the most about the coffee shop you frequent?
On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with the coffee shops you visit?
What additional amenities or services would you like to see in a coffee shop?

PS - You can edit the pre-sale template for the bakery and share it with your customers. OR generate a brand new one from scratch within seconds using SurveySparrow AI.

Pre-sales Questionnaire for Market Research

If you are looking to understand the market better, then this is for you. You can be running a bakery, restaurant, coffee shop, or whatever. By tailoring questions and sharing the surveys with right target audience, you can get a clear idea of how the market is evolving.

The following are some questions you should add to your survey.

Which age group do you fall into?
Where do you currently reside? (include state and city)
What type of products (or services) are you interested in?
How often do you purchase these products (or services)?
How do you discover new products (or services)?
Do you have any brand loyalties or preferences?
How price-sensitive are you when it comes to purchasing products (or services)?
How satisfied are you with the options available in the current market?
What do you dislike the most about an existing product in the market?
What do you like the most about an existing product in the market?
Do you have any suggestions or comments you would like to add to this research survey?

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The 5 Best Pre-Sales Survey Questions You Can Ask

A pre-sales survey is only helpful for you if it gives you the data that you need. It is essential to put some thought into your pre-sales survey questions.

We have two objectives with your pre-sales survey questions. The first is to filter out the bad leads. The second is to get a hint about the priorities of our potential customers. It’s important to balance those two priorities in your pre-sales questionnaire.

1. What Challenges Do You Aim to Solve Using Our Product?

In a pre-sales survey, you want to determine whether the customer has a business challenge your product can address. This is an efficient method of separating the good leads from the bad ones.

Suppose the customer can envision a value addition from your product. But even if they can describe their challenges in the pre-sales survey, you can use that to suggest solutions using your product.

This pre-sales survey questionnaire format can be multiple-choice or descriptive – the choice between these two depends on your business.

If you have a set of fixed challenges you address, you could add them as choices. A descriptive question is probably your best route if your business is more flexible and adapts to client needs.

2. How Does Your Company Currently Meet this Challenge?

This probably is one of the most decisive pieces of information you can get in a pre-sales survey. A sales pitch needs to prove that your product is better than the company’s existing setup. You’ll be able to do this only if you know what your company’s setup is.

Let’s take an example. You’re a company that makes toasters. There are two kinds of customers you will have – those who own toasters and those who don’t.

Your sales pitch to those who own toasters will be about why your toaster is better. For those who don’t own toasters, you’re better off talking about the benefits of toasters.

This pre-sales survey questionnaire finds out which kind of toaster customer you are. For a sales team, this information can supercharge conversions. Knowing what you’re up against is great for deciding how to convince your customer.

3. Are You Considering Any Other Solution Providers?

This pre-sales survey questionnaire helps you strategize for the conversation ahead by finding out who your competition is.

You need to prove you’re better to make the business case for your service/product. But better than whom? Allow your pre-sales survey to find out for you.

There is another angle here. If your lead answers negatively, your chances of making a sale grow significantly. Your chances of conversion are also great if they’re considering vendors who are certainly not offering as good a deal as you are.

You can use a pre-sales survey to gauge your competition because it’s different for every customer. Design a sales strategy using this data, and you’re all the more likely to convert a potential lead into a customer.

4. What’s Your Designation Within the Company?

One of the most common sales inefficiencies is dealing with people who don’t have authority. Having this question in your pre-sales survey ensures that doesn’t happen.

You probably don’t want to pitch an expensive service to a lower-level employee. Your sales goal for those lower in the hierarchy is to convince them to recommend you to the decision-maker.

One of the great things about a pre-sales survey is that you get to ask your contact’s designation and department beforehand. This lets you modify your sales strategy according to the designation of your contact.

You can then spend your energy making the sales pitch only to people who are ready to become customers.

If you have a lot of leads, then the designation also helps you prioritize reaching out to ones with authority.

5. What Does Your Company’s Purchasing Process Look Like?

This question has multiple uses in a pre-sales survey.

First, you get to know who you have to sell to for sale to be final. An employee with no authority will likely mention that it’ll have to be approved by the supervisor. Knowing the process helps you indirectly determine who to focus on for sale.

Secondly, if your customer base includes enterprises, this pre-sales survey questionnaire is useful for another reason. Often, enterprises have a procurements division with very specific vendor requirements.

It’s important to know if you can meet these requirements.

You don’t want to put a lot of effort into selling digital products to a company and then find out you’re not eligible for the sale. So, knowing the purchasing process will help you find out if there are any reasons to worry.

Why You Should Invest in a Pre-Sales Questionnaire?

Conventional wisdom states that the easier the buying process for the customer, the better. By including a pre-sales survey, you are actually making the customer do more work. So there have to be strong reasons for doing this.

Trust us – answering pre-sales survey questions is good for both the prospect and your company’s sales efforts. Here’s why.

Find the Warm Leads Quickly

You would think that the best sales strategy for a good sales team is to get people talking.

If only you could contact your lead, you could convert them. However, a lot depends on how primed a customer is to be converted. Marketers often pass on leads to sales teams that are not actually ready to convert. The number of leads might look good at first but doesn’t always add up to conversions.

So, relying purely on a talk-first strategy often leads to an inefficient sales process. Thankfully, a pre-sales questionnaire is an easy way to increase sales efficiency.
Pre-sales questionnaire uses: A Gleanster Research report actually found that only 25% of marketing leads are even qualified to pass to sales.

Save Time Wasted on Bad Leads

A salesperson wasting time talking to a bad lead could be spending that time converting a good lead.

Inefficiency in sales, in particular, has a huge opportunity cost. But a pre-sales questionnaire helps to reduce this by increasing the time sales reps spend – on selling the right products to the right customers.

In short, a well-designed pre-sales questionnaire with relevant questions saves your sales team tons of time. They can then spend that time focusing on good leads and driving business growth.

Online survey platforms like SurveySparrow, with its intriguing and conversational UI, can help you quickly build a pre-sales survey that actually works. You can sign up for free to get started with a pre-sales survey.

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Reduce Preparation Time

To convert a lead, a sales rep has to properly research their prospect before the sales call. They might even have to plan multiple approaches based on how the customer responds.

Ideally, they also want to understand what the customer’s priorities are so they can personalize their sales approach.

A pre-sales survey gives all that information right from the source. It reduces the time spent on research and designing sales strategies that are irrelevant. And like I said before, more efficiency means more sales and better numbers!

Make It Easier For the Customer

Having a customer fill out an additional pre-sales survey sounds like more work. Actually..it’s not.

The questions the survey asks will come up in a traditional sales call anyway. A pre-sales survey just makes the process smoother and more convenient for both sides.

Additionally, if the customer invests some time in laying out their priorities at an early stage, the decision-making process is faster.

On the other hand, the salesperson who has a pre-sales questionnaire is ready with all the details before the phone call or meeting. So they can present options and convert the lead faster.

Increase Your Deal Size

When you get yourself into a sales call with no knowledge of what the customer wants, you are constantly on the back foot. You might have to hastily gauge their responses and suggest the most obvious solutions.

That makes the sales process unnecessarily stressful and inefficient. It also takes you longer to close each deal.

Getting information about your customer using a pre-sales survey can help you grow your deal size. When you know the customer’s priorities, your sales rep can spend time thinking of additional solutions to sell to the customer.

In this way, a pre-sales questionnaire can help you go beyond the obvious solutions and increase your sales.

3 Tips for Conducting A Pre-Sales Questionnaire

Getting the questions right is only one part of the challenge. It is equally important to think about how and where you’re going to place a pre-sales survey.

The survey should be placed such that customers are not turned away, and are most likely to take the time to fill it. Here are some survey guidelines to follow.

1. Make It A Chatbot On Your Website

One of the best ways to use a pre-sales questionnaire is to integrate them with your website.

Let’s say a customer lands on your company website looking for something. With the help of the chatbot, you can ask them, ‘Can we help you with something?’ The chatbot can then go on to ask the relevant survey questions.

Embedding a pre-sales questionnaire as a chatbot is easy with tools like SurveySparrow’s no-code chatbot.

Moreover, customers are likely to answer candidly and feel less stressed answering in texts. Also, they are more likely to leave their contact information if prompted by a chatbot for a website.

With a chatbot pre-sales survey, your human sales agents can relax on their off-hours because they will collect and screen more leads 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

2. Use It For Your Email Promotions

Pre-sales surveys are actually great for getting prospective customers to engage in an email conversation.

By asking them relevant questions in a white-labeled email, you can get them to respond and tell you what they want. You can also tailor future promotions according to their responses.

Email is often overlooked by marketers, but it is still one of the most powerful tools for customer engagement. Add pre-sales surveys to emails and see better engagement rates!

3. Explain Why You’re Asking

One of the cons of a pre-sales survey is that leads might be unwilling to disclose information without talking to you first. This is understandable.

Potential customers might feel out of their comfort zone in giving you information about them.

To address their concerns, explain exactly why you’re taking a pre-sales survey. Let your leads know how it helps them experience a smoother sales process. A pre-sales survey is a win-win situation, so make sure that your lead knows that.

Wrapping Up

Companies frequently suffer the costs of not taking simple steps to get more done in less time. Maintaining efficiency is hard because it means constantly evolving to adopt new workflows.

Yet, there are simple solutions that organizations can implement to bring new energy into the workplace. A pre-sales questionnaire falls exactly in that category.

Marketing and sales teams that invest in a pre-sales survey will be much more effective at driving business growth. The opportunity cost for bad leads is huge, and pre-sales questionnaires help us eliminate them to a large degree.

There’s really no need to go through the stress of cold-calling leads and presenting half-baked solutions anymore. Remember, the path to increased sales effectiveness doesn't have to be complicated. Sometimes, asking the right questions at the right time makes all the difference between struggling with conversion rates and watching your sales numbers climb.

And adopting a survey software like SurveySparrow makes sure you’re doing your pre-sales questionnaire the right way.

A pre-sales survey makes life easier for everyone. Add it to your sales strategy today and experience better conversions and faster growth!

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70+ Best Pre-Sales Survey Questions for Different Use Cases