Getting great testimonials

Testimonials make fantastic supporting material and can form an integral part of your presentation.
What format should they be, where will you display them? We will help you design the content of your testimonials, and the bonus for clients who write them is that you are going to give them free publicity!

As we have seen, having fantastic supporting material is an integral part of your sales presentation and Testimonials are one of the strongest ways of doing this.

The most common form of testimonial is in a letter from a satisfied client, but in today’s world they are more likely to be posted on a website. Now that many people can take a video with their own phone, then this is a really strong way to demonstrate your client’s satisfaction. You can put them on your Facebook page or on YouTube.

Even better is to take prospective clients to a recent clients’ home where they can see and touch the product for themselves, and have a chat with the satisfied client who can put their mind at rest that everything went well. Obviously ensure your client was satisfied!! This works for say a kitchen, bathroom or bedroom furniture supplier, but does not work for all products.

So the first thing you need to decide is what medium is the most powerful for you to use, and where you will post the testimonial. Make sure you can access it yourself at any time. You never know when you will be able to impress a future client.

Then you need to design the content of your testimonials. Ideally you want one that will illustrate each of your achieved benefits. So revisit your list from Lesson 9 and try to tie each of the achieved benefits up with a client who can illustrate an aspect of your work. This is obviously not going to lend itself to every product, but take the idea as far as you can with your product, service or company.

Now you need to persuade these clients to give you a testimonial. They will do that if you position it to them as free publicity.

Admittedly this works better with B2B than B2C

A testimonial is most powerful if the person giving the testimonial has credibility –they can be believed because they are to be admired for some reason.

So the style of testimonial you ideally want allows the giver to position themselves in the first few sentences, and this is where their PR comes in. They introduce and establish themselves.

“I am the Technical Director of a company who has been operating in this industry for x years and I am expert at selecting the best people to work for us. Company Y did a brilliant job…. “

That’s you !

So they have given themselves a boost, and then consolidated that with their ability to make the correct choice-you! They may not be familiar with this style of testimonial, so you may have to polish it up, but don’t write it for them straight away. You may well be surprised at the things people say that would not have occurred to you. A good plan is to give them a format with spaces to add their own thoughts.

The bonus for them is that you are going to give them free publicity.

This takes a while to organise, and should be updated frequently, but will be worth it.

Exercise

Plan and design the content of your testimonials. Ideally you want one that will illustrate each of your achieved benefits. So revisit your list from lesson 9 and try to tie each of the achieved benefits up with a client who can illustrate an aspect of your work.

Make a start on getting them made. But remember to allow the client to also illustrate benefits THEY perceived- sometimes we get too close….!