Testimonials are powerful and most of your customers and clients would be happy to provide one – but they need to be asked or it just doesn’t cross their minds.
Testimonials are third party validation. They’re great marketing tools – providing they have the right information in them. And there lies the challenge – if you leave people with a blank piece of paper (or screen) to write on, what you get may not be what you need.
For instance, how would you feel about receiving this testimonial?
Acme Business Services are a pleasure to work with, always friendly and approachable and come into our workplace with a smile.
On the surface that seems like positive feedback, but what does it say about your services?
Does that mean that the person who wrote this doesn’t value your services? Of course it doesn’t, it’s just that the first thing that popped into their mind when asked to write a testimonial was how friendly you (or your team) are. If you leave people with no guidance, you’ll get a lot of this as people remember how you made them feel.
That’s lovely feedback to get, but it’s more therapy for you, than useful business information to help potential clients make a decision.
The three questions approach
To best way to get a comprehensive and focused testimonial is to ask your client to answer three questions.
1: What did we do for you? (The project, services, product supplied)
2: What was it like working with us? (This is the bit they want to tell you)
3: What were the outcomes you got from what we did? (The measurables, results, changes that happened, impact made).
There are two advantages to asking questions.
One, you get specific outcomes that will tell potential clients the value of your work.
Two, when someone has a question to answer it’s much easier for them to write the testimonial, so you will probably get more responses than if you just ask for ‘a testimonial’ or ‘recommendation’. That blank page is too easy to ‘do later’!
Better still, if you know someone is busy and it’s going to slip down their to do list, you could always give them a call and ask the questions verbally. Some people find this much easier.
Question 4
When someone has just said positive things about you, it’s a great time to ask them that extra question.
“Thank you, I’m glad you got so much value from what we did. Who else do you know who might value that kind of result?”
Ask for the introduction and you have a very warm opening to another client.
