Testimonials: Their Pat on Your Back Raising the Barr Weekly Memo: Issue 236

I received a request this week from one of my clients asking me the best way to get a powerful video testimonial from a client.

I’ve been saying for years that if you tell others how great you are, it can come across as boasting or a bunch of fluff. Yet if your clients tell others how great you are, that’s an indisputable fact! It is the social proof needed to increase your credibility and reputation. I am a huge fan and an advocate in the power of testimonials and I encourage you to be the same.

I like to separate between solicited and unsolicited testimonials. Solicited testimonials are when you approach your clients and request they provide you with a testimonial. The best time to do this is when they share with you a recent success they’ve achieved that is associated with your help and involvement. This is also the time they will be most appreciative and willing to do it. The second best time is to approach your client when you hear of their success.

One way to approach your client to get the testimonial is to say: “I love hearing when my clients achieve great successes. It would mean the world to me if you’d be willing to provide me with a testimonial that accurately captures this success.”

An unsolicited testimonial is when your client surprises you and provides you with it without your asking. This represents the highest level of trust and compliment in you!

I favor written testimonials and recommend they appear on the pages that they reflect such as consulting testimonials on the consulting page, product testimonials on the particular product they apply to. I also recommend placing them on what I refer to as the main testimonial repository page that includes all of them. This page should scroll down forever and indicate the massive amount of confidence and value of working with you.

A while back one of my clients shared her amazing success and thanked me for my contribution in helping her reach this outcome. I was delighted to hear it and asked her for a testimonial. She readily agreed but apparently was busy doing it. After a few reminders over the next few weeks via email and still no testimonial, I decided to try LinkedIn. I sent her a request through LinkedIn and to my surprise, she immediately posted an amazing testimonial. This made me realize the added bonus of using LinkedIn. Not only is the testimonial now connected to my profile on LinkedIn but can then be used on my site as well.

Although written testimonials are extremely powerful and effective, client video testimonials are also invaluable. Whether solicited or unsolicited, I ask the client if they would be willing to provide the testimonial on video. The power of video is that it can then be uploaded to YouTube or other similar video platforms, embedded on your site on the proper page as well as the video testimonial page. This video can then be transcribed and leveraged as a written testimonial and even extracted as an audio testimonial.

Here are some tips about getting the most out of your video testimonial:

• Coach them and quickly rehearse with them what they are going to say.
• Ask them to focus on the outcome and results you have helped create for them. If needed, remind them of what you believe these results were.
• Avoid the focus on tasks or personality attributes. For example, rather than the client saying how impressed they were with your presentation, it is much more powerful for them to share the one key insight they gained from your presentation that they can’t wait to implement and that they know this will help transform their success. Instead of them saying how helpful and devoted you were to the project, it is profoundly more convincing for them to say for example, that with your help their business and profits grew 32% in less than a year or that they entered new global markets in 6 countries.
• Suggest they keep it short and concise.
• The best structural format is to:
  • Introduce themselves by name, title and organization.
  • State the key challenge they were facing when they contacted you and how you helped resolve it.
  • Identify why they decided to work with you.
  • Articulate the profound outcome they’ve achieved by working with you.
  • NOTE: The most important and powerful part of the testimonial is the profound outcome. If needed, have them skip everything else but that.
• Consider creating a mini documentary.
• I tell them that I will record it three times so our team can pull out the best segments. This puts their mind at ease and prevents you from having to say “let’s try this again” after the first take.
• Keep the camera at their eye level. Use a tripod and also a good external microphone when possible and shoot in high definition.
• Make sure you are relaxed and smiling to keep them relaxed as well.
• Of course, don’t forget to thank them when done.

Testimonials often lead to referrals and with them more business and recognition for you and more success for them.

Connect with a few of your clients, have a conversation, identify recent success and request a testimonial.

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