Wednesday, 28 March - 09:44 Category: e-marketing

Getting Testimonials The Easy Way

SYNOPSIS: Getting great testimonials for your website simply involves picking up the phone and asking questions. The advantages are countless and turn a chore into a real business benefit at many levels.

Okay, technically this idea isn't exclusively about web marketing but the end result is so please bear with me.

Perhaps you don't have the same problem that we used to have but getting written testimonials out of clients can be quite a chore. Not because they don't want to say nice things about us but that they simply don't have the time. I know because when I have been asked for the same from our suppliers I invariably forget, push it to the bottom of the pile or wait until I'm asked again. Oddly, this behaviour is not because there is a problem with me doing it the problem is me having to do everything else first. I guess the same is true for all of us.

So how can we get convincing testimonials without having to pester our client? A few months ago I hit upon a solution which does more than just elicit the testimonial. Here's the process...

  1. Put together a list of your top 10% of clients who you think would be happy to extol your virtues.
  2. Call them! You're phoning because you want to find out how they are, what they've been up to, etc. In other words, general personal chitchat.
  3. You then move on to asking them how they are getting on with your product/service. At this point start taking notes on what they're saying. The secret to this is about genuinely wanting to understand both the good and bad about what you have done for them. (It's important to mention the 'bad' because understanding what didn't work assists your overall service/product improvement plan.) Start asking questions like, "what do you think we did really well?", "what made you choose us over X?", "what did we do that surprised you?", "would you refer us to your business colleagues/friends?". I'm sure you can come up with lots more but hopefully you can see that by phrasing the questions this way you are going to elicit a particular type of content for your testimonial. Naturally enough, asking different questions will give you different content.
  4. Once you've got everything you need simply say "you've said some really great things about us do you mind if I write them up and put them on our website?". I have done this countless times and no-one ever says "No"!
  5. You then rephrase your notes into a testimonial and post it to your website. As soon as it goes live e-mail your client to let them know and to thank them once again.

Usually the phone call lasts no more than 5 minutes and in that time you have; got yourself a testimonial, reaffirmed in your client's mind why they buy from you and just how good you are at helping them, flushed out any problems or concerns and demonstrated after sales service. Now that’™s a 180 degree shift from having to write a testimonial for you (which is them doing you the favour!).

There is one very important thing you must not do... Do Not Sell to Them! This must be seen as a customer care call not a sales call.

There is one more advantage that I should post script to this entry and it is this... quite often when you ask for a testimonial your client will ask you to write it and they'll sign it. The problem with this is that after a while all the testimonials begin to sound the same. Using the method above you will be writing up near enough the exact phrases that the customer uses. In fact you'll probably find that they say things that you would never have anticipated and thus, give you a totally new perspective on your business.

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Posted By:Jed Wylie on Sat, Jun 28th 2008, 09:44