How to Get A Kickass Testimonial From Your Clients

Today we’re going to talk about testimonials! Testimonials are one of the most important factors that play into your client’s decision to hire you. That being said, if your testimonials don’t give your potential clients anything to connect with, then you’re not utilizing them effectively. Never fear, there’s a couple of things you can do to help your clients help you.

But first, a little context…

If you take a look at where your leads are coming from or what the deciding factor was when it comes to why a client hired you, I’m sure you’ll start to see that a good number of your them come from referrals or word of mouth. And that little push a client needs to book you? It’s usually a really stellar testimonial or referral from someone that they trust and can connect with. Potential clients will see your past client and relate to that person because they’re struggling with the same problem that you helped that past client overcome.

The natural thought process that occurs is, “If she can solve that problem for HER, and I’m just like her, then she can solve that problem for ME!”

Think about it. People come to you and decide to invest because of what OTHER people are saying about your business. Unfortunately for us we can shout from the rooftops about our accomplishments, but all of our pushing and proving our worth isn’t going to have half of the weight of a solid testimonial where one of our clients says, “I was struggling with X, but after working with {insert your name here} I have overcome that problem AND been able to accomplish A, B, and C.”

So how do you get those influential testimonials?

By asking your clients to describe the “before” and “after” transformation that occurred through working with you. When you do that, you paint a picture of how you can solve your client’s problem. According to Storybrand, there are three questions you can ask your clients to help avoid the old, “She was great and super helpful. I loved working with her,” type of testimonials you usually get.

Ask your clients to answer the following three questions as they write their testimonial:

1. What was life like before working with me? (i.e. How were you feeling? What were you struggling with?)
2. What product or service did you hire me for?
3. How does life look now? (i.e. How do you feel now that you have overcome this problem? What has solving this problem done for you?)

If your clients answer these questions in their testimonials, you’ll be good to go! BUT there’s one last thing you should ask when you are requesting a testimonial from a current client:

Do I have your permission to edit, revise, or use a portion of this testimonial as needed WITHOUT altering the intended meaning?

The reason to ask this question is because you always want to respect your client’s feedback, but sometimes you need a “sound byte” or a few words of a testimonial to use somewhere where the entire thing won’t fit or doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, you really only NEED 1-2 sentences for a testimonial because as we know (#TLDR) people don’t read things anymore.   If you need to edit their words down to get the good stuff, you don’t want your client feeling disrespected because you didn’t get their permission and just frankenstein-ed their words.

If you do implement these techniques, I promise your testimonials will help sell your services for you. I hope this was helpful! I’d love to hear your biggest takeaway from this post and how you’ll be implementing it in the comments below.

Thanks for reading,