Let me let you in on a little secret: amazing testimonials aren’t just going to land in your lap. We can’t wait around for a customer to just decide to write nice things about us. The truth is, we have to be proactive about gaining testimonials and lead our customers through this process for their words to really benefit our business.
So what are the steps to accomplish this? I’m so glad you asked. Here are a few “secrets” to making testimonials work for you and your business.
Secret 1: Put asking for testimonials into your workflow
This is something we need to get good at being consistent with because if we wait until we’re updating our sales pages or the reviews section of our website, it’s probably too late. More importantly, asking for testimonials while working with you is fresh in your customers minds is not only going to get you more detailed and stronger testimonials, but it’s more likely they’ll take the time to fill it out. Think through your sales process and client experience and identify the right time to reach out. For example, for my wedding clients, I would wait until they were back from their honeymoon when life settled down a bit and they’ve had a chance to look through their photos.
You’ll also want to automate this process if you can. This will not only save you time, but it will keep testimonials fresh and consistent with each new client you work with. Add an automation to your client management system. You have a few options here, you could set it up so after x amount of days of working with you an email request goes out requesting a testimonial. Or you could make this action-oriented, so once the product is delivered, an email request goes out. There are endless ways to configure this, but the point is to set it up once and let it run.
Secret 2: Guide them through the process
Often we need to help our customers tell their story. They may have loved working with you, but putting pen to paper and expressing that in a testimony can be harder than it sounds! You want to be able to show what someone’s problems and fears were before hiring you or buying your product and then illustrate what has changed since then (gains, confidence, income, outcome, etc.). You also need to help them get super specific in providing tangible results in numbers (if possible) because real results are much more powerful than saying something like “we saw a big improvement.” If you can get your client to share exactly what changed will bring your testimonials to the next level.
Secret 3: Be bold in sharing your testimonials
Let’s not be shy about shouting these client testimonials from the rooftop! You have an amazing service or product and sharing results with prospective clients will help them get off the fence and purchase from you. Switch your mindset that this feels salesy and instead view it from a place of serving and helping more people. Share your testimonials everywhere, but especially at the point where new clients are making decisions to buy. I’m going to bet most of you already have a testimonials page on your website, but these will be long forgotten by the time someone is at the point of making a decision (if they saw them at all!) Instead, have testimonials placed anywhere you are asking someone to take action like your contact page, email sign-up page or a sales page.
Implementing these three things will transform not only the amount of testimonials you are able to collect but the quality of what your customers are saying.
