Chapter Six
P.U.M.P. Up Your Referrals
(How to Quickly and Easily Collect Testimonials & Turn Them Into Cash)
Wouldn't it help your company if you had your customers, your clients, your patients, whatever business you’re in, recommending you? A free, unpaid sales force.
Who are they? They’re you’re loyal, raving fans, and hopefully, you’re providing a product or a service that brings such value to them that they’re willing to share that information.
But more importantly give you a testimonial so you can share their comments and good love with future prospects who you want to turn into future clients, future customers, and future patients.
We’re going to talk about testimonials. This is one of the most underutilized pixie dust sales powers that there is. I’m talking Walt Disney-like because it is magical. Our focus is on how you can get your customers to give you testimonials and how to capture them.
The more testimonials you have, the more emotion you have for people who are already giving you money, who are already investing in your products or service or buying your book if you’re an author. Talking about you is easier for them to sell you than it is for you to sell you.
Wayne Dyer said, “There’s no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There’s only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen.”
I threw that in because very often, I’ve met with clients and customers who have been in business 25 years. They have $50 million in sales, and they have no testimonials.
They have not captured them. It’s not that your customers and clients aren’t saying good things about you; it’s just that you haven’t taken the effort and the resolve to capture those. I challenge you and suggest that you start thinking about testimonial-gathering every day.
Albert Hubbard said, “To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” I don’t think that’s advice to do nothing, I think it’s advice saying no matter what you do, people are going to have issues.
Probably the number one reason I see people, professionals, coaches, businesses, companies, not collecting testimonials is there’s this subconscious or subtle fear that they’re going to get criticism.
By asking one of your customers, “How am I doing?” by asking one of your readers, “Did you like my book?” we’re opening ourselves up for that criticism. However, very often, the fear of criticism is unfounded.
Or, it’s taken as constructive criticism. But don’t let that stop you from getting testimonials. E.M. Gray said, “The successful person has a habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do.
They don’t like doing it either, necessarily, but their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.”
It comes down to not being that difficult to collect testimonials. You need discipline and a commitment to do it. It’s a professional activity for you to continually collect testimonials. If you can do that, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of your competition and out-performing yourself.
Wouldn’t you enjoy knowing how to get testimonials and the benefits of them? I think it’s an exciting challenge to get you to start collecting testimonials, but at the same time I know that you’ll get incredible results.
A lot of people don’t like selling. They don’t like marketing, they don’t like self-promotion. By collecting testimonials, it’s just a natural way to let your customers and clients promote you.
Benefits of Testimonials
The first benefit is that it establishes credibility. It’s not you saying, “I graduated from Harvard cum laude.” It’s not you saying how wonderful you are. It’s somebody else giving you credibility.
The first part of the credibility is who’s giving the testimonials.
The next benefit is it provides third-party validation. Credibility is, whether you competent for the job. The validation is someone else giving you that stamp of approval.
Third, it influences prospects. To influence prospects, the main goal there is to turn them from prospects into customers. Turn them from browsers into buyers.
Isn't it motivating to know just by putting positive comments from other people in front of your browsers, it turns them into buyers? Couldn’t that light up your sales?
Next, it reinforces client confidence. This is an area that’s probably even weaker than using testimonials in the sales process. Include testimonials to reinforce your existing clients’ perception of you.
If you have a membership site online, if you have patients that come to your clinic for regular adjustments as a chiropractor, you want to re-expose those existing customers and clients to positive statements about you.
When they sit down in the waiting room chair, they think, “Yeah, I made a good decision to come here. There are lots of other people who like this doctor, this dentist,” whatever you are.
People are coming back to your website, and it’s a membership site. “Yeah, I’m going to let my credit card continue to be charged. Look at the new people who are joining. Look at the other companies that are using this service. I’m in good company, this is a good investment.”
Testimonials help with retention of existing customers.
Next, testimonials initiate additional sales. By introducing testimonials for additional products that you’re upselling or cross-selling, you’re taking that special sales elixir, that pixie dust of testimonials and referrals, and adding additional sales.
We all know it’s far more profitable to sell to our existing customers than it is to try and find new ones.
Next, testimonials raise the bar by holding you to a higher standard. By putting out the testimonials of people who have gotten great service or great functionality or a good product from you, it keeps you on your toes.
You need to continually meet that high standard that your customers are talking about. There may be some short term pain, hiring someone to rewrite a transcript, hiring someone to design a book cover or redo your website, or look at the usability, but in the long term, testimonials will bring additional sales.
You need that higher standard to be met, get more customers, and in the end, you’ll end up more profitable with bigger cash flow. Wouldn’t you agree that finding more information is important to you?
The next point is generating market research by revealing additional customer desires. Wouldn’t it be significant if your customers are telling you through your testimonial gathering what they want to buy next? This is definitely a benefit of testimonials.
Next, testimonials provide press and media data. If you’re interviewed about why your next book is so great or what you’re planning on writing for your next bestseller, you can provide information quotes from third parties to the media to include in the article on you or your business.
This is just a natural thing for the media. They’re going to ask you for a third party validation and credibility building pieces, and you can refer them to people who are your testimonials.
A very important benefit is that testimonials really have no cost. There’s no incremental cost to stop for 30 seconds and ask an existing client, “Hey, what do you love about us? Why did you pick us over the competition? How come you stayed with our membership site for so many years?
They have no cost. The only cost is a little bit of time and a little bit of investment to take that text or audio or video and put it up on your website.
The next benefit of testimonials is that by putting together a testimonial-gathering campaign we increase frequency of customer communication.
I’m going to contact my customers. In my next invoice, I’m going to ask for a testimonial. In my next email, I’m going to ask people to go to a testimonial site and give a testimonial.
This is another reason to have the communication with them. Subtly you’re asking for their input and you’re also supporting them by making them feel important for their feedback. It increases customer loyalty. They’re investing in you by giving you their positive feedback.
They’re recommitting to your product or service when they’re giving a testimonial, when they read testimonials, because you’re reinforcing client confidence by putting up new testimonials, by putting them in your invoices offline, by maybe having recordings on your voice mail line that have testimonials on them.
You’re increasing customer loyalty just by the fact that you’re reinforcing that it was a sound decision to work with you.
Don’t end up as one of those companies who have lots of customers who love you but you just haven’t had the time or the inclination to collect them.
Put something in your calendar every day where you ask somebody to call your testimonial line, when you ask somebody to maybe send you back an email or you write the email and send it to them. All the different ways you can get testimonials.
Wouldn’t you prefer to have your clients selling for you rather than you on the phone cold- calling? Isn’t it fantastic to know that you can do this without a lot of effort and definitely at a very low cost, if not free?
What Testimonial Is
Well, first of all, it’s a positive statement about you. You’ve always been committed to the information. They know that you stay up to date, that you travel, you go to seminars, you’re continually updating what you’re doing, so it’s a positive statement about you personally.
It’s about your company. It’s about your organization, your mission statement, what you’re committed to, maybe something factual about how long you’ve been in business.
A testimonial can be about your staff. This is about the people inside the company.
It’s about your product or your service. This is where a lot of people focus, to the neglect of the other areas. This is a mistake that people make in their sales process and their marketing process, focusing solely on the product or service.
A testimonial could be a revelation about other information, so a customer or a client will say, “I first joined this health club because I was focused on the exercise program. What I didn’t know was they had this nutrition program and it’s allowed me to lose an additional five pounds just by putting together a better diet for myself in combination with their super exercise programs.”
A testimonial has this subconscious influence factor in that the willingness of the client to lend their name, possibly their image, their face, their company name to you to use to promote your company means that they must really like what you’re doing.
The willingness of the person or company giving their testimonial shows that there’s positive energy around my company or service.
Testimonials bring a feeling of reciprocity. Just by giving a testimonial, it is a gift and when there’s a gift, there’s always this feeling of reciprocity. This comes back to you providing better product or service because you want to make sure those people stay happy, because people may even be contacting them.
To sum up, the definition of a testimonial is a positive statement about you, your company, your staff, product, or service that really supports what you’re putting out there in your marketing communication.
Customer Catcher Tip: If you put the full name and the company name and then as much contact information as you can with a testimonial, 9.9 out of ten times, nobody will contact them to verify.
Sometimes I have clients ask for a telephone number or contact information. The larger the investment, the more likely they are to do that, but 99% of the time, people do not follow through. Especially when there are multiple testimonials present, so you don’t necessarily need to worry about that.
What a Testimonial Is Not
Sometimes to define something, it’s good to look at what it’s not. A testimonial is not just a generic, vanilla, goody-goody comment about your product or service.
So often I see this, where people talk about quality, service, and a guarantee. Everybody in their industry says it. This is not a differentiating factor.
A testimonial is not a common, typical goodwill statement. “I’ve dealt with them for years and they’re a good company.” That is not a useful testimonial.
A useful testimonial is one that really sways somebody who’s been doubtful to become committed to doing business with you. To take action, to take out their credit card, to go to your website, to call you, whatever it is.
Eight Different Types of Testimonials
One of the reasons people don’t collect testimonials or collect enough testimonials is they’re not aware or creative enough to understand how many different types of testimonials you can actually get. The overall point is that there is a wide variety of testimonials.
Wouldn’t you love to grow your testimonial book, whether it’s audio, video, or text, by just recognizing that there are different types? Doesn’t it thrill you to know that now you’re going to have something to talk about when you talk to a client, when you talk to a customer?
1. Measurable results. This is a common testimonial type when talking about weight loss or when talking about financial services.
“In the past six months, working with Mark Pearlman, my finances have improved 200%. I’ve reduced my debt by over half and I now have investments that are giving me returns of 10-12% instead of 2-4%.”
So there’s measurement, there are numbers, there are statistics.
“By working at this health club, not only have their machines and their nutritionists helped me, I’ve seen myself drop 20 pounds that I have not previously been able to do that before. All within the space of 30 days.”
Measurable results are about numbers.
2. A professional testimonial. A professional testimonial refers to the credibility of the company, your professionalism as an expert coach, or your commitment and discipline as an author to write a chapter per month, or a dissertation, or whatever it is.
A professional testimonial comes from somebody who’s been working with you in an industry. You may change companies three or four times on a career path, but you should get professional testimonials from people who have known you for the past ten years.
“I’ve known Susie for the past ten years. In every role she’s had, no matter what company she’s worked at, she’s always been committed to the detail. She’s always been committed to making sure that you get what you want at every level and every detail.”
That’s a professional testimonial. A little more generic, but specific about you or somebody that works for you, that you’re always providing good service, regardless of your role, regardless of your company.
3. The quality of your product, service or content. This can refer to the quality of the cost involved.
For example, if you make furniture, you might involve things like the leather is imported from Italy, even though it’s manufactured here locally. We get quality products from around the world that composes our end result.
4. Knowledge. Have people comment on your knowledge, how you collect it, how committed you are to your continuing education, your ability to provide resources, websites, references to books offline.
Other topics could include your knowledge of the industry, your knowledge of a situation or problem, and your knowledge of solutions. What’s in your brain, and how you can use that?
5. Time saving. This is one that doesn’t get a lot of focus. If you want a value proposition offer where you keep your prices up, you need testimonials that talk about the time saving.
I did a radio coaching program and one of the testimonials was from a lady, and it was powerful to me because she said, “I purchased a coaching because of the time saving. Instead of me spending a week of time looking for information, by spending a single hour with Martin, I was able to save myself a week’s work.”
Now they’re comparing the price to a week’s work, not to what you’re getting for an hour of your time. It could be time saving in terms of them not having to do market research, it can be time saving in avoiding errors.
The other thing is delivery. For example, you’re a ghost writer and you’re talking about how quickly you can deliver a book or a chapter or an article to somebody, you can get a testimonial on your delivery capability in a short period of time.
6. Your guarantee. Why not get a testimonial from somebody who returned a product to you? Get a testimonial about the guarantee.
“They gave me my money back; they didn’t ask me any questions.” This is great for when somebody maybe returns an information product just due to budgetary reasons.
“I loved the program. I really want to take it. At this time my budget really doesn’t allow me to participate. I did participate in the first two sessions and it’s amazing information, but what I really love is that the company was very willing to work with me, refund my money without any questions.”
This makes prospects feel comfortable. It reduces the risk for them.
If you can get one of those testimonials where they say, “I love the product and the service, it just wasn’t the right fit for me. In fact, I still recommend it to all my friends, I still recommend it to anybody I know in business, I just took advantage of the guarantee for personal reasons.”
Something along those lines is very powerful to include.
Customer Catcher Tip: Put a testimonial related to what you’re talking about as close as you can to that item of discussion. For example, on a website, if you’re talking about the guarantee, have a testimonial about the guarantee on that page.
If you’re talking about some of the benefits or features, have a testimonial talking about that benefit or feature very close to it.
One mistake people make online is they have this page full of testimonials and they expect people to go there and read the 50 testimonials that are there. Put the testimonials next to the item, feature, or benefit that you’re talking about.
7. Your team. If you’re a solopreneur, then this doesn’t necessarily apply, but you can talk about your virtual team. You can talk about your virtual assistants. You can talk about the editors.
If you’re an author, you can talk about the team that edited the book, the design of the cover, whatever’s appropriate. However, if you do have a team, then talk about the ability of the team to work together.
“If Martin wasn’t available, then I talked with Samantha. If Samantha wasn’t available, I talked with George. No matter what happens, there’s always someone at the company who could help me because the focus was on me, the customer, not X, Y, or Z employee.”
8. Customer service. Get testimonials about your customer service. How quickly the customer service team responded, how well the information was presented, everybody on the team, and in combination with the team here, everybody on the team was well trained.
There are lots of different things you can talk about. You just need to sit down and analyze what the process is that you use in your company from sales, service, after-sales, whatever it is, and then get testimonials about each one of those steps as you go.
This will lead to more sales, more success, and more profit for you.
How To Get Testimonials
Wouldn’t you love to find easy ways to collect them? Wouldn't it make a difference in your sales process if you could more easily rely on tools like this?
Let’s talk about how to get them. The first way is they come to you passively and sadly, this is the way most companies “collect testimonials.” A customer takes it upon themselves to actually write an email, or send a letter, or phone and leave a voice mail.
It is not a good strategy to just wait for these things to come in. People are busy. They don’t have time, and the ones who do and sit down and do it are one in a thousand. Don’t wait for your customers to do it, but it is one way that they come in.
The thing to know here is when they do come in passively, use them. Some people offhandedly take a phone call and someone says, “You’re great, I love you, you really saved my butt this time!” and they don’t say, “Oh, that’s fantastic, would you call our testimonial line and record a testimonial for us?”
If you’d like to hear an example of a testimonial line, my testimonial line is 1-800-609-9006 then extension 7464.
This is an example of a service I use, and you can check it out if you want to look at the marketing process they use at www.InstantAudio.com/martin. I’d appreciate it if you’d use that address. There is an affiliate program associated with it. I just find it fantastic for posting and recording.
Anyways, the reason why I gave you that number is you can hear the process. If you like what you are reading, I’d appreciate you calling that line and giving me a testimonial, as well.
What I just did was I gave you an example of the second way to collect a testimonial, and that is ASK.
So many people just don’t ask. They don’t build it into their sales process. They don’t build it into their post-sales research. You should phone after and say, “Did you get the book. Did you read it? What did you like about it?”
Ask them counter questions. “What would you like to see improved? What would you like next time?”
If you have employees, teach them to ask. Make it part of their training when they come to your business to learn how to ask for testimonials.
The third point is listening. Very often people will be phoning about one aspect of the business.
If you’re a coach and they phone and say, “I just want to tell you that I’ve been having a fantastic time. I look forward to the next session. It was really important to me the last time we spoke when you asked me this question, ‘What’s the most important thing in my life?’”
In there is a testimonial. You can ask if you can turn on a recording device that you have on your telephone and capture it. You can ask them to call a number like I just gave there.
You can type up what they just said in an email and send it to them and ask them, “Would you mind if I typed that up, sent it to you for your approval, and used that in my promotion? That would really help me.”
The fact that they just gave you a positive comment, 110% of the time nobody says no.
The fourth way is pursue. Pursue testimonials. Make a campaign where you send out an email asking for a testimonial. You ask for an honest, heartfelt, positive comment about your company or service. When they do give you one, send them an unexpected gift.
You can tell them ahead of time, “We’re doing a campaign to collect testimonials. We’re revamping our marketing. We’re redoing our website. We’d appreciate your participation as a valued client, customer, or patient. Whatever the copy is, it really doesn’t matter.”
You can say, “Thanks for taking the time. We’d like to reward you with a 25% off your next service or a free book or a free e-book.” Whatever it is you can reward them. Definitely pursue them. Have a proactive project and plan in place to get testimonials.
The next one is you write them. Write them yourself. I mentioned if you’re on the telephone with someone, they say something positive, write it up yourself, and then send it to them.
“I really appreciate your positive comments the other day on the telephone. I was wondering if you’d mind if I quote you. This is what I heard, ‘Your company has been amazing at getting my products delivered on time.’”
“Would you mind if we used that along with your name, company name, and title, because we’re revamping our website and looking for positive comments and content to post.”
Then give them a reason why, “Your company will receive some promotion. We have a high- traffic website. People will see your company’s name and we’ll put in your tag line,” or something like that. They’re getting exposure for their company as a benefit for them giving a testimony.
The next one is capture them. If you’ve got somebody on the phone and you’ve got a recording device or service hooked up to your phone system, then you can capture them right then. Another way is you hear it and you write it down and you send it to them.
Another way is video. If you’re holding a customer appreciation event, if you’re visiting a conference or a seminar where you know your clients are going to be, take a video camera and microphone with you.
You want to do a video camera and a microphone. Microphone so you have better audio, the video so you see who the person is. The Internet is definitely moving towards more video, more audio, and less text.
Well, maybe not less text, but increased use of audio and video, so why not be doing it for your testimonials?
If you have a business or company and you have a reception area, you have a service department, you have people who go out on site, they need to be trained how to capture testimonials also.
Train them as to what they’re listening for, the types of comments that you want, how they’re going to capture them. They’re going to write them down if they’re a field service representative, and bring them back.
Provide them with digital recording devices. If they’re continually out in the field and customers are saying great things, make sure they know how to use the technology.
There are definitely opportunities around you every day when customers communicate with you. Those are some of the ways to capture them.
The Characteristics of a “Good” Testimonial
I say “good” in quotation marks there, because these are at least the minimal standards that need to be present.
Isn’t it worth considering what’s going to work and what’s not? I’ve seen testimonials where people say, “I was really satisfied with the ABC Company,” and then it says just the initials of their name, C.W.
I’m like, what’s that? It may as well not be there. It’s either made up or it’s unbelievable and it’s certainly not credible.
The first characteristic of a good testimonial are first and last names. If you can say their full names, that’s far more believable.
The next is the title. The title is important for a number of reasons. Very often you’ll see on infomercials, it’s a teacher, a nurse, or a doctor. Credible, believable, trusted people through time are teachers and doctors.
My next point in regards to title is, “As often as you can!” find people who are your customers. If you’re selling a sales management tool or a CRM software to vice presidents of marketing, or vice presidents of sales, you want to have testimonials from vice presidents.
People are comfortable in their own crowd. If you can find people with the same titles, that’s great. Even if it’s a work-at-home mom or a work-at-home dad; whatever it is, you want to find people with the same title as the prospect that you’re selling to.
Company names are also important to include. You could have marquis customers that are recognized, brand name companies. “We sell to the U.S. Army. We sell to Procter & Gamble.”
You can also include names like Williams and Associates, Limited. By having the Limited and LLCs, it just adds more titles to the testimonial and gives you just that subtle boost up as a credible company.
Next thing, and a lot of people don’t include this, is to include the place and the name of an event they attended. Let’s say you go to a book marketing university. Mark Victor Hansen does a Mega Book Marketing Seminar.
We’re at Mark Victor Hansen’s and we’re talking about book authors. It makes sense to say, “Cindy Smith, author, Mega Book Marketing University in San Diego, California.” Now I’m adding a place, I’m adding a title. I’m adding energy to the testimonial by naming a city and state, as well.
Finally, it’s the positive comments. A positive comment goes in quotation marks. Sometimes people just italicize it to differentiate it. It’s more powerful to have those quotation marks there. It’s a direct quote from the person.
I can imagine while I’m reading a copy, if it’s a text-based testimonial, the person is saying it. There’s a beginning and an end, there’s a clear distinction of the testimonial. Quotation marks are powerful for the positive comment.
From “Good” to Powerful
Wouldn’t it be marvelous to use the most powerful testimonial? Why not get twice the results? Wouldn’t you agree that a powerful testimonial is going to lead to more sales?
The first point here is, you want to use all of t