How Customers Give You Credibility-Boosting Testimonials

Introduction

When it comes to forking over money to you, many people act like proverbial Missourians: hands folded across their chests, they demand “Show me!” You can’t always mount a demonstration of your product or service, particularly at a distance. The next best thing: earning their confidence with testimonials.

Also known as third-party endorsements, or blurbs, testimonials boost your credibility because they move you from saying, in effect, “I’m great and you’d better believe it!” to “I’m great and here are real people who say so.” They also help you convey elusive qualities about yourself and your business that don’t easily come across on paper otherwise. In marketing copy, they help erase doubts and edge the reader closer and closer to buying.

Don’t try to market a product, service, event or company without them!

Anatomy of a Testimonial

The essential components of a credibility-boosting testimonial are these:

1. Actual words of a customer, client or colleague praising your product or service.

2. The full name of the testimonial giver.

3. Identifying information about the testimonial giver – normally, either a city and state or province or a title and company.


Without all three components, the reader simply has too many doubts about the authenticity of a quote. This means that the following blurbs each lack at least one crucial ingredient:

“eBib gave me confidence that I was feeding my baby properly. Thanks!”

“eBib gave me confidence that I was feeding my baby properly. Thanks!” - Cathy L.

“eBib gave me confidence that I was feeding my baby properly. Thanks!” – C.L., Elko, NV

“eBib gave me confidence that I was feeding my baby properly. Thanks!” – C.L., Nevada

“eBib gave me confidence that I was feeding my baby properly. Thanks!” – new mother in Elko, Nevada


The content can be improved, as we’ll see below, but the following at least satisfies minimal standards of acceptability and effectiveness:

“eBib gave me confidence that I was feeding my baby properly. Thanks!” – Cathy Lightner, Elko, Nevada


For a business customer, a blurb having all the essential ingredients would look like this:

“eBib gives isolated new mothers confidence that they are feeding their baby properly. Thanks for your service!” – Cathy Lightner, M.D., head of the Department of Public Health, Elko, Nevada


Optional additional components in the identity section of a blurb would include an email address, a World Wide Web address (URL), a mailing address, a phone number and a photo, either a head shot of the blurb writer or a photo of them using the product or service. With any of these extras, the reader can’t help but be impressed that the satisfied customer, client or professional was happy enough to make themselves that identifiable. A long roster of testimonials that include phone numbers and/or email addresses practically dares the reader not to believe that the item in question is totally wonderful. A layout of quotes accompanied by photos is absorbing and pleasant to read, more so than the quotes alone.

Misconceptions about Testimonials

Probably the biggest misconception I’ve encountered when I discuss testimonials with clients or at marketing seminars is people jumping to the conclusion that this involves requesting a formal letter of recommendation on business stationery. Perhaps this idea comes up because so many of us have had the experience of asking for such letters, for example when applying to college. Even when people know that such actual letters can’t be included in the marketing piece at hand – a brochure, a sales flyer or a Web site – they may still imagine that that’s what they’d be asking for, and they shrink. It seems an enormous favor to ask someone to draw up such a letter.

In truth, for most situations you do not need such a formal letter. You don’t even need a signature, or anything in writing at all. And you certainly don’t need something half a page or longer. All you need is a couple of sentences – two or three is ideal – and permission to use them in a promotional context along with the person’s identity. Indeed, I use that wording when I ask for blurbs: “Would you write a couple of sentences...?” This sounds much less burdensome than a request to write a letter, testimonial, blurb or reference.

Another myth is that the only way to get a testimonial is to have someone write one. You can get testimonials over the phone, in person, on audiotape, on video or in the midst of email correspondence. You can also write them yourself (see the next section on the limited sense in which I mean this). Below I describe more than a half dozen ways to gather testimonials besides asking someone directly to write one.

Lots of people assume that you have to be passive about customer quotes and wait until someone is overjoyed enough about your product or the work you did for them to send some praise your way. On the contrary, not only can you be proactive in soliciting blurbs, you can also be very strategic about who you request them from and gently direct them to say the sort of thing that would most benefit you, as I’ll explain below as well.

Once in a while I encounter the sentiment, “No one believes those quotes anyhow, so you can just go ahead and make them up.” This couldn’t be more wrong. First, it’s actually against the law, at least in the United States, to make up testimonials. Concocted quotes from clients who do not exist can land you in hot water with a governmental agency such as the Federal Trade Commission or serve as strong evidence of deception in a lawsuit brought by a dissatisfied buyer. Second, when quotes are properly presented, most people do believe that they are real and would get a negative opinion of you upon learning otherwise.

Finally, lots of folks take it for granted that whatever someone actually said or wrote about your item is what you’re stuck with having in the quote. With the speaker’s permission, however, you can always expand, condense or change the original words. Indeed, usually the phraseology that customers offer at first isn’t specific, clear or complete enough and you pretty much have to ask for changes in order to have something powerful. Do’s and don’ts for editing blurbs are also explained below.

8 Ways to Get Tons of Testimonials

If you take a passive attitude toward testimonials, you won’t have enough on hand to create truly tantalizing marketing copy. Use some combination of the following tactics to get them streaming into your office in significant quantity.

1. When unsolicited praise comes your way, seize the moment.

This could happen on the phone, by email, in person or even second hand when someone tells you that a third party was lauding you to the skies. While on the phone you probably do not always have pen in hand, ready to take notes, so any time your ears start to burn from the nice things someone just said, you need to interrupt the flow of the conversation. Ask your client to repeat what he said, write it down and read it back, asking if you can quote them on it. You may not be able to capture the exact words uttered spontaneously, but you can usually get something close.

By email you at least have some words down, even if you have to ask for clarifications or more details or shorten the passage. One productive habit I’ve gotten into in the last two years is that any time someone emails me how much they liked one of my books, I shoot back a request: Would you mind posting your comments on Amazon.com? The online bookstore features reader reviews, which influence sales. Hardly anyone says no, and checking back, I can see that almost everyone who says yes, they’ll do it actually does post a review. Just the other day I went through this with someone who praised two of my books, and she wrote me back, “I’ll absolutely do it. After all, I found out about your books through a reviewer’s post on Amazon!”

In person, someone might start singing your praises while introducing you to a colleague at a professional meeting or attest to your influence on her while introducing you as a speaker. In such situations, it might not be appropriate to stop the action and scribble down the words, but try to do so as soon as possible afterwards and get your admirer’s OK to use what she said. Ask for their business card if it’s someone you don’t already know.

2. Distribute questionnaires or feedback forms along with the delivery of your product or service.

If you sell tangible products, this would mean enclosing a questionnaire or feedback form in the package. This could appear on a sheet of paper to be sent back or faxed back, on a postage-paid postcard or in the case of something such as clothing not delivered in a package, a hang tag.

If you sell digital products or Web-based services, the request for feedback could be built into the product or service. Customers would get either an email address to send comments to or a link that would take them to a special online feedback form.

If you sell off-the-Web services with real-world interaction, then you might have a convenient way to ask someone to fill out a questionnaire or form on the spot and hand it in or send it in. Restaurants and motels do this with tent cards on tables or bureaus, and quick-print shops set out postage-paid postcards in plexiglass display boxes. Seminars usually ask participants to fill out the form and hand it in before they leave.

In any of these situations, you don’t of course ask directly for praise. You ask for feedback, and when that’s negative, you use it to improve. Where it’s very positive, you have raw material for testimonials. Remember, you’ll need a name, identifying information and permission to use a quote, so design the questionnaire or feedback form accordingly.

I’ve learned from years of experience that the wording of your questions can make a huge difference in the quality of comments you receive. A numerical rating scale or a scale like poor/acceptable/good/very good/excellent is completely useless for testimonial purposes. Instead, ask evocative, open-ended questions like these:

What were the three most useful things you learned in the seminar (or, from this manual)?

What would you tell friends or colleagues who were thinking of booking a stay in our establishment?

How would you describe the styling, wearability and comfort of our rainwear?

3. Send a questionnaire or feedback form at some point after the delivery of your product or service.

In many cases it doesn’t make sense to ask the customer to provide feedback when the product or service has just been purchased, because it wouldn’t be used yet and there couldn’t be any meaningful feedback at that time. The thing to do then is to send the questionnaire or feedback form by mail or email at a set interval after the purchase. This can easily be done automatically online through the use of autoresponders. For a smaller number of respondents, it could be done, say, once a month for all new clients that month.

Your rate of response with this technique will be much lower than when you can get your request for feedback to the buyer when they have just finished using your item. Wait too long and they won’t provide feedback at all because the experience is no longer fresh in their minds. On the other hand, you may get much meatier