Your most powerful sales tools are your satisfied clients. Here’s how to harness their goodwill to sell more of your products and services.

When it comes to spending money with you, most people want reassurance that you are good to do business with. Put simply, they want proof of your claims. Yet it isn’t always possible for you to demonstrate your product or service, particularly at a distance.

You can, of course say all kinds of positive things about your product or service. Unfortunately, people won’t always take your word for it. So, who will they believe? The answer is people with no vested interest in your business. These can be customers, end-users, industry authorities such as trade press editors and the chairs of trade associations. So you need to get testimonials from these people.

Testimonials, or third-party endorsements, are proof that you deliver on your claims. They move you from, ‘I’m great and you’d better believe it!’ to ‘I’m great and here are real people who say so’. Testimonials also help you convey elusive qualities about yourself and your business that don’t otherwise easily or convincingly come across on paper.

The more relevant testimonials you can give prospects, the more prepared they will be to hear what you have to say. One business tested this theory with a mailshot. The letter with testimonials increased sales by 65 per cent over the letter without them.

Essential ingredients

What makes good testimonials?

• They are specific and quantifiable. The more specific, the better. ‘I think your product is great’ proves nothing. ‘I bought your Molecatcher and within 24 hours I had got rid of all the moles in my garden’ is a much more powerful statement.
  
• They are precise. When quoting percentages and figures, for example, be exact. ‘Savings of 9.3 per cent’ is more impressive than ‘Savings of around 10 per cent’. The former figure is more believable because there is no quibbling with it.
  
• They are short and snappy, so you may have to edit the original version. You can combine phrases and condense wording so long as you don’t change the essential meaning. Sometimes you will also need to supply the context so an outsider understands the relevance of the praise.
  
• They are attributable. For maximum influence, testimonials end with a person’s full name, job title and company name where applicable, and a recognisable town and country or city. The more of these ingredients that you omit, the more you weaken a testimonial’s power, regardless of the content. For instance, ‘JF, Macclesfield, Cheshire’ is weak. ‘JF, Cheshire’ is even weaker. Only customers who are extremely easy to influence will be convinced by such testimonials. Anonymous testimonials are likely to provide even less value.
  
• They are never faked – as this could leave you vulnerable to charges of deceptive advertising.
  
• You have sought permission to use the testimonials in your marketing materials. Simply send a copy of what someone said and ask permission to use it ‘in full or edited form’ – sometimes you need to shorten the text when it’s too long. Ask too, if you may use their name, job title, business name and town. (If you significantly edit the copy, it’s a good idea to run the new version past the person again.)

Generating testimonials

Spontaneous testimonials are always heart-warming and you may already have some of these. But what if they are rather vague, or you are new in business or launching a new line? How do you get some good testimonials fast?

Extract quotes

When you receive a letter of thanks, extract the strongest two sentences to use for your promotional materials.

Capture spontaneous praise

Whenever someone spontaneously utters quotable praise over the telephone or face-to-face ask, ‘Do you mind if I quote you on that?’ and make a note of it.

Ask

Ask for testimonials! You can also call, email or fax regular customers saying that you’re putting together a new quote sheet. Ask them what they feel is special about doing business with you, or how they have benefited from buying your product or service. For example, here is the wording of an actual email asking for a testimonial for a business-to-business journal.

Help! I’m just creating a promotion for [Product Name] and I need some testimonials – my old ones are getting rather tired! If you feel you can endorse the kind of advice I give in [Product Name], could you let me have a short testimonial about how it helps you? A couple of lines will do.

As a thank you I will send you a copy of my insider report on [Special Topic].

Many thanks.

It really is that simple.

Many customers will give testimonials without an incentive. If you choose to use one, it need not be particularly expensive and may not even cost you a penny. If you do use one though, it must be relevant to the product and the customer.

Note that by being specific in asking for a testimonial ‘about how it helps you’, you are reducing the chances of getting a bland response that won’t be much use.

Personality testimonials

Other suitable people to ask for testimonials include authorities in your field. If it’s education, for example, try headteachers, the director of the local education authority, editors of parenting magazines and chairs of children’s charities.

However, anyone with integrity will be wary of linking their name to yours without proof. So invite them to test your product or service for free, urging them to ‘do their worst’ and give you their honest feedback. Only then ask if you can use any favourable comments.

Tap into after-sales warmth

Another way to generate testimonials is to tap into the after-sales glow. Immediately after a sale, send your customer a postcard asking what they like about your product or service. When prompted, people are often willing to say really nice things.

Survey customers

Another method is use customer surveys. Again, a good time to send these is immediately after you have delivered a product or service. However, there is nothing to stop you revisiting old customers. Indeed the latter can be more beneficial.

Questions to ask include:

• What are you able to do now that you couldn’t before because of…?
  
• How has your business benefited overall from…?
  
• What do you like best about…?
  
• What do you like least about…?
  
• If you could change one thing, aside from price, what would it be?

Use open questions, where respondents can’t simply tick boxes or answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Rating systems will not yield usable testimonials.

Design the survey so that it is easy for people to fill in their answers and return. For example, put it on a postage-paid postcard or fax-back form.

Not only can these customer surveys help you gather suitable quotes, they:

• Provide more information on customer preferences.
  
• Highlight negative elements in your product/service that you need to remove or improve.
  
• Provide feedback for future product development.

Collect success stories

Tell customers that you are collecting some success stories from other customers and ask them if they would like to be included. Putting it this way is flattering and presents it to them as a compliment rather than an onerous request.

Help them write it

Many people find it hard to express themselves or feel coy about giving praise. So it is often easier all round if you put happy clients’ thoughts into words for them. Write a few lines related to some recent good work and send it to them for approval. For example, ‘I am happy to confirm that, thanks to Joe Jones & Associates, we increased our profit margin by 13.35 per cent without reducing our turnover. Signed...’ They will usually be only too glad not to have to think of something themselves.

This is not putting words into customers’ mouths so much as helping them focus their thoughts. It may even be worth your while going in and helping customers quantify their results. ‘Our delivery time was cut by two days’ is much stronger than ‘Our delivery times have improved’.

How to use testimonials

Now that you have a set of genuine testimonials, you have something to support your claims. How do you use them effectively?

In your office

• Keep a file of testimonial letters and quotes in the reception area.
  
• Frame good ones and hang them on the wall – they will also boost morale.

In your marketing literature

• Back up every claim with a testimonial.
  
• Include a separate sheet or page of testimonials in your brochure.
  
• Use them freely in sales letters. Sales letters with appropriate testimonials are more effective than those without any.
  
• Make the best ones into headlines in your advertisements.
  
• Use them to generate publicity stories in the media – for example, in case studies in your trade press.

Face-to-face

A big challenge for smaller businesses, particularly those with a modest track record, is to build enough trust to persuade people to buy when, in theory, it is safer for them to buy from a big, nationally known supplier. This is where testimonials come into their own.

You have doubtless pitched to countless people who you know need your product or service and who have the money to buy, but who won’t go ahead because they don’t quite trust your claims. For example, when prospects say, ‘That’s great, but I’m still not convinced,’ they are either asking you for further proof, or they are saying this because they have an objection that they may not be able or willing to articulate.

A good sales technique here is to state a benefit and immediately back it with a testimonial, ideally from a similar customer – someone in their field who once had similar doubts but who is now delighted with you.

This will either resolve the issue or uncover the real issue. ‘That’s great, but I’m really not sure about the payment terms...’ So you clear that obstacle and close again.

Close with reference visits

Following on from the concept of the testimonial is getting customers’ permission to visit them with new prospects, or at least asking if potential customers can call or write to them for a recommendation. This is bridging the gap between testimonials and turning customers into your extended sales force.

Close with testimonials

Use testimonials to clinch the deal. For example, the prospect raises objections or concerns. You can reply, ‘Joe Bloggs of Bloggs & Associates had exactly the same concerns but he recently wrote us a letter confirming [describe the result]. Look, here’s a copy of it’.

Clearly, to be able to do this effectively, you need a wealth of testimonials.

Keep them up to date

You can never have too many testimonials. Keep asking for them and keep updating the list of the ones you use so that you have the best possible range. Used imaginatively, they can drive your sales approaches.

The beauty of testimonials is that they are so powerful and yet they cost you little or nothing to acquire!

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