When a close friend recommends a product or service to you, don’t you almost always form a slight bias in favor of the recommended product or service? Likewise, when a friend criticizes a product or service, doesn’t that make you think twice about that brand? Especially if you’ve never used it before and haven’t formed your own opinion?
No matter what business you’re in, you can use testimonials to your advantage. A good testimonial skews a prospects bias in your favor, even if she doesn’t know the person making the recommendation.
Most of us have a hard time getting them, though. Why? Because we’re afraid to ask.
Ask for the praise
It’s actually not that unusual for people to give you good feedback in the course of providing your service, or selling them a product they need or want. Unfortunately, most of us are so focused on finishing the pitch, the work, or getting paid that we forget to ask for the testimonial. For some strange reason, it only takes about 5 seconds for us to suddenly develop a case of bashfulness when it comes to getting testimonials.
I think it all stems from being raised to be modest and self-effacing. If you’re in business, you need to overcome your shyness and counter-productive modesty. If you know you do good work, quality work, then you owe it to your customers to promote yourself relentlessly. If you don’t promote yourself, you’re likely to go out of business or take a regular job one day. That’s a shame for your clients and prospects, who are counting on you to be around the next time they need what you’re selling.
Learn how to ask
Do you invoice clients? Here’s a sample letter that you can use as a model, if you’re too afraid to ask them face-to-face.
Dear Mr. Doe,
I’ve enclosed the final invoice. It was truly a pleasure working with you. I would be very interested in hearing if there were specific examples of how my services may have helped you, either in clarifying your business image, boosting your website traffic, improving your customers’ online experience, or in some other way. With your permission, I would love to post your comments on my website, to help other potential clients see how I might be of service to them.
While I’m asking, can you suggest ways that I might have improved our business interaction? Was there anything in any of my processes that was confusing or annoying? With feedback from valuable clients like you, I intend to continue improving my service.
Thanks very much. I’m looking forward to our next project together.
Of course, only ask for that feedback if you really want to hear it, and plan to take your customers’ suggestions seriously.
Make it part of the process
My dentist has a little sign up at his reception desk that says something like
Our business grows by word-of-mouth from happy customers. We greatly appreciate any referrals you send our way.
There’s nothing wrong in being upfront about your desire for referrals and testimonials. Can you add a line to your invoices that asks for testimonials or referrals?
Treat them like gold
Don’t abuse your testimonials. Don’t plaster them on everything. You’re not a carnival barker, after all. Create a testimonials page on your website. List two or three of them to start, then add to them as you collect more. If you find there are trends in the comments, for example, some comments praise your reliability, while others praise your creativity, create sections on your testimonials page. Some customers care more about reliability than creativity. Make it easy for them to find the assurances they need.
Use examples and samples as testimonials
If you have provided creative work as part of your offering, such as website design, copywriting, or other tangible products, ask your clients if they would mind you adding a brief description of that work to your clients page or your samples page. If it’s a website design, provide a thumbnail screenshot that is linked to the site. If it’s some form of writing or other consulting work, see if the client will allow you to post a PDF of part of the deliverable.
Prospects never want to feel like they’re your first client. Using testimonials is a great way to give them confidence in your abilities.
If you have used other methods of getting testimonials, please let me know.
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