Testimonials; they are so important yet so painful to source.
Of course, you’ll probably have some favourite customers or clients that you know would be more than happy to write a testimonial but you don’t want to be too much of an imposition.
So, how do you source good, succinct, testimonials, real ones, but get them quickly?
As such, the answer lies in the middle of writing them yourself (always a no, no 🙂 and asking your customers or clients to write them.
In this episode, you’ll learn the process for sourcing great testimonials, quickly, that are authentic. A process that is painless for everyone!
If you are looking for the list of questions covered off in the show, here they are:
- How did you find out about them?
- What services or products do they provide to you?
- How important is it that they do their job well? (Or what did it mean for them to do their job well?)
- What is it like working with them?
- Are they responsive when there are any issues?
- Would you recommend them to others?
Enjoy.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
As part of the service, I have had this episode transcribed. Transcribing, proofing, and editing a podcast episode is A LOT of work. That’s why I use a service called REV who provide professional freelance transcriptionists who are vetted for quality. While they offer a 99% accuracy guarantee, I do not proof-read their work extensively. Instead, I simply copy and paste below and, as such, please note that this is not a verbatim transcript of the episode and I have trimmed things like the intro, close, and mid-show ad.
Testimonials, hey. Well, they are so important yet so painful. Painful to source. Painful to write when a business asks for one.
Sure, Google reviews can roll in fairly easily but if you want some proper, good testimonials that you can put on your website and other marketing collateral, that’s a bit of a different proposition.
Of course, you’ll probably have some favourite customers or clients that you know would be more than happy to write a testimonial but you don’t want to be too much of an imposition.
Even when you ask someone, and they say “Yes”, you are never 100% sure when they’ll get it to you and you certainly don’t want to be a pain and chase it from them every few days.
However, this holds your marketing efforts up, especially if you are developing a new site or want to use testimonials in your printed marketing collateral.
Plus, not everyone is a great writer and can write a testimonial that will fit into your other marketing.
Or, sometimes, people get right into it and write war and peace. I’ve seen whole A4 sheets, full of a testimonial, just scanned and stuck up on a website. Trust me, none of your prospective customers or clients are reading all of that.
And all the while, you still need testimonials.
You could write them yourself and fake it. I wouldn’t suggest that. That’s a big no no and, besides, most people can smell a rat online with things like that. It just feels wrong.
So, what to do?
Well, I’ve been faced with this challenge a lot of times when developing websites and people’s content.
How do we source good, succinct, testimonials, real ones, but get them quickly?
I was getting tired of sourcing testimonials being the reason projects were held up and I wasn’t going to simply let clients say “Oh, don’t worry about them. We can do without them”
They are too important because testimonials, as well as Google reviews, and the like, are important social proof that you can do what you say you can do.
There is an old saying in marketing, from the target audience’s perspective, which goes “Don’t tell me what you can do, show me what you can do”
The point being that showing people what you can do is much more powerful than just words on a website or in brochures. That’s why content marketing, especially video, can be so powerful … but that’s a topic for another day.
The point is, testimonials help bridge the gap between you simply saying what you can do and happy customers showing others that they love your work.
I didn’t answer the question yet of, So, what to do?
Well, as I said I’ve been faced with this challenge a lot of times when developing websites and people’s content.
How do we source good, succinct, testimonials, real ones, but get them quickly?
As such, the answer lies in the middle of writing them yourself and asking your customers or clients to write them.
The way it works is someone (and I’ll come back to the someone in a little bit) rings the customer or client and asks them a few, standard questions, but records the conversation. Then, post the phone call, someone listens back and reworks everything that was spoken about, into a short, well-structured testimonial, that then gets sent to the customer or client for approval.
Here is how that all plays out.
Firstly, I’d highly recommend you find someone who doesn’t work in the business to be the one making the phone call and chatting to the person giving the testimonial. That way, the testimonial giver will speak more candidly.
However, someone in the business needs to email or call the testimonial giver and explain the process and ask if it is OK to introduce them to the person who will make the call. It is also important to note to the testimonial giver that they’ll get final editing and approval before you use their testimonial.
Once that is done, and the intro is made, the caller can schedule a time with the testimonial giver. The call usually takes about 5 minutes and no longer than 10.
At the time of the call, the caller needs to be able to record the call. This allows them to focus on getting good answers from the testimonial giver rather than trying to write a bunch of notes.
After the break, I’ll run through the questions for you, what to do with the answers, as well as share some examples of the end product.
By the way, if you have listened to the last two episodes when I had Bob Regnerus on the show to talk about Facebook advertising, then you’ll know he is the author of the book, Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising.
At the end of the last episode, I mentioned that I am running a competition to give a copy of Bob’s book away to one lucky listener. All you have to do is submit a marketing question to me which I will use in a special Q&A episode, the next episode, episode 37, where I’ll invite some of the amazing marketing people in my network to come on the show and share their perspectives and expertise.
So, please, submit a question for the show. Hit me up on do@contentgrasshopper.com.au or search for Marketing Builder on Facebook or Instagram or find me on LinkedIn, just search for Daniel Oyston, that’s O Y S T O N.
So, by this stage, a caller has been sourced, the business has intro’d the caller to the testimonial giver, and the call is scheduled.
At the time of the call, the caller needs to be able to record the call. This allows them to focus on getting good answers from the testimonial giver rather than trying to write a bunch of notes and maybe miss important things. Or, if you are like me, wonder what that note means when I read it a few days later!
OK, so now, the questions. The questions to run through on the call are:
- How did you find out about them?
- What services or products do they provide to you?
- How important is it that they do their job well?
- Or what did it mean for them to do their job well.
- What is it like working with them?
- Are they responsive when there are any issues?
- Would you recommend them to others?
The absolute key question is the last one, “Would you recommend them to others?”
Now, I’ll admit that while this is the absolute key question, it wasn’t by design. In fact, it is a fairly rubbish question, on face value, because of course they would. That’s why we are talking to them.
However, I essentially stumbled across the power of this seemingly straightforward question during one of these calls. I asked the person “Would you recommend them to others?” and they said “Yes”. In that split second, I thought, “Sure, I already knew the answer but that’s not why I asked it. I want to know the why”, so, instead of asking “Why?”, I thought to myself, “I’ll just not talk”.
So, I said nothing … and waited.
Yeah. It was kind of awkward.
The few seconds felt like ages.
But I held my ground.
I said nothing.
And then, suddenly …
The person on the other end felt so uncomfortable they just started blurting out why they would recommend them to others. It was kind of raw – they just went for it, almost as if they’d been warmed up by the earlier questions!
That, right there, was pure gold and where most of the good stuff for the testimonial comes from.
As such, whenever I go through this process, I always shut up after asking “Would you recommend them to others?” and getting the obligatory “Yes”
So that is the key, with the last question, ask “Would you recommend them to others?” and then keep your mouth closed. The first person to talk loses!
Trust me, it’ll be worth it.
From there, the process is all about listening back to the recording and pulling out the key points and crafting them into a short testimonial, about 50-75 words, maybe 100 if really needed.
It is really important to keep the testimonials fairly short because when people see them, they don’t want to be greeted with a big wall of text. Their eyes will glaze over and they’ll skip them. You need to make the testimonials snackable.
Besides, case studies are where you go into deep detail.
If you don’t want to listen back to the recording and takes notes, and would prefer someone else does it, check out a website called rev.com. You can upload your audio and they’ll transcribe it for you and the turn around is super quick. You’ll probably get it back the same day and it only costs $1.25 US per minute.
Once you have worked your notes into a nice testimonial, simply send it to the testimonial giver and ask if they are OK or invite them to make whatever changes they need.
9 times out of 10, they just write back and say “It is all good”. Any time I’ve had changes come back it is because of a missing comma or a simple word change preference here and there.
So, what does that all result in?
Well, here is one I sourced, using the exact technique I just ran through, for a long-time client, Critique Bookkeeping and Accounting. This testimonial comes from Andrew Fenton, Four A Commercial Plumbing in Canberra, Australia.
Quote …
Critique Accounting & Bookkeeping are absolute gold! I was referred to them by my accountant after a run of three bad bookkeepers – all of which made an absolute mess of MYOB and my tax.
Critique Accounting & Bookkeeping fixed everything up and even worked through an ATO audit with me. They had everything at their fingertips when the ATO asked for information.
They are easy to communicate with and speak to me on a level that makes the finances easy to understand. I can’t rate them highly enough.
End quote …
Or, another, for Aussie Home Loans, in Manuka, Australia, from a gent named Vic
Quote …
Aussie Manuka helped me secure my first mortgage about 15 years ago. Back then, I had a not so good credit history but I was upfront and honest with Aussie. They just took it all in their stride and helped me. From day one they were fantastic to deal with. 15 years later, they are just the same. Working with Scott and the team to refinance has been fantastic. They did a great job and it meant I didn’t have to worry about anything in the process. They took everything on board, worked with me, kept me informed every step of the way and delivered. They even went above and beyond and introduced to me to a number of people in their network, a financial planner and a realtor, simply because they wanted to help.The team are efficient, up-to-date with what is happening in the market, informative and helpful – they are the whole package! I’m very happy with the result.
End quote …
So, there you have it, the process and questions you can follow and use to source amazing testimonials for your website and other marketing collateral. And, best of all, it makes everyone’s job in the whole process as painless as possible!