Earlier in my business, people were sending me great feedback on my services and my work, but they weren’t quantitative enough to be really compelling to my prospects. What I wanted to do with the feedback from my clients was to use them as testimonials. After working with each client, I know how much my services have helped them and where their business has gone from my working with them. These quantitative results were what I wanted to see in my testimonials. The problem I was having was finding a polite way of asking for exactly what I was looking for.
Some coaches I know will craft the testimonial for the client and then ask them for permission to use it. However, I am most comfortable when the testimonial comes straight from the client. My prospects know when feedback is coming straight from someone’s heart. I prefer this over drafting a testimonial for them to review. I like the feedback to be in their words. Afterall, isn’t that what you as a prospect would like to see? Words straight from a client?
I developed a strategy that has been working very well for me to get the feedback I am looking for from my clients, and they write every word. Here is what I do:
- I created a list of questions to ask my clients that would help clarify where their business was before we started working together and where their business is now. This shows how much I have helped them.
- I put these questions into a survey format by using Google docs. I love Google’s form feature for creating surveys. The responses are all placed into a spreadsheet that I can view online or even export to Excel. This makes it easy for me to send the same questions over and over again as I get more clients.
- Whenever I have a client that has just reached a new level in her business, I ask her if she would be willing to fill out a short survey about us working together. (I have never had anyone say "no")
- I take their answers to the open-ended questions and place them into a paragraph or two that tells their story. Remember they sent me the words, all I am doing is making the testimonial flow from one answer to another. If you have the right questions, this works beautifully.
- I send them the paragraph to review and ask them to supply a photo and URL that I can post with their testimonial. Not only does their feedback help me to gain credibility to my prospects, but I am giving my clients exposure by including their photo and website with it on my website. The photo also proves to my prospects that the feedback comes from a real person.
- All that’s left is to put everything on my website in a place that would be appropriate for the type of feedback that was supplied.
Testimonials are a great way to gain credibility on your website, as well as to let your prospects know how you have helped other clients like them. Testimonials have been used for years as a great marketing tool because they work. These 6 steps will help you to gather more effective testimonials for your marketing efforts.
If your business is fairly new and you don’t have enough clients yet to get some great testimonials, check out this post for some great ideas on how to overcome this issue.
