Garnering a well-thought-through (and longer) easy testimonial can sometimes be rather like trying to get blood from a stone.  

Is much easier just to sit back and hope that one day they take it upon themselves to write something wonderful about you but unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen.  You are going to have to ask them to do it!

But wait that feels scary!

You’re more than one aware of how busy your clients probably are and that might take the time in order to give a testimonial to you when perhaps they’ve already said that they love what you do and can be difficult for them to put it in writing

Plus you don’t want to sound like you’re coming across as a snake oil salesman. 

Trust me it isn’t creepy at all you’re doing is asking your happy client to help somebody else who might feel comfortable booking your services to

For some people, there’s nothing scarier than sending out a request for a testimonial knowing that it’s entirely possible that they may secretly be happy and might send you something back which is the opposite of a testimonial how scary could that be

This isn’t going to happen.

You’re not likely to send a request for a testimonial to somebody who you know is unhappy, your time and energy are going to be much better spent on making them happy again.

Another problem that you quite often see is people are asked to leave a testimonial but don’t give any other guidance with regards to what kind of easy testimonial you would like to receive.  Then you end up getting a couple of one-liners such as

“yeah it was really great working with you” or “I loved hiring you it was fabulous and you were friendly”…

While it is really nice to hear it’s not really very useful to you because what you really need is something that you can put on your website with more ‘gusto’.  That’s the point of asking for a testimonial right?

Deep breaths…

We’re going to be using the information to help other people make the decision whether to buy from us or not.  So it has to be right!

So instead, try saying “Would you mind answering a few quick questions, it will only take a moment?”

Explain that you’re asking for them to help others feel comfortable using your services.

Question 1: What was your worst worry before using my services?  Did it come true? If not what happened instead?

It doesn’t matter what kind of service you provide if the potential client is scared to book for some reason.  They might be worried that you aren’t capable, they might be afraid that they can’t afford it, they might worry that they’re not good enough to do the work alongside you.  

Don’t worry about changing these questions slightly in order to ask them directly.  The idea here is just to get a before-and-after feeling from your client with regards to how it felt working with you

Question 2:  What specifically was your favourite part of working with me and why?

This will elicit something a bit more in-depth from somebody rather than one or two-word answers.

Question 3:  If you were to recommend me to your best friend, what would you say?

The reason we ask this is to discourage your client from giving an answer they think you would want to hear, creating a more human feel to the words.

Once you get the responses you can remove your questions and put the words together to form a testimonial, in one block.

What I usually do is send that back to the client and say:

“I’ve collated the answers to your questions to form a testimonial to put on my website to help others feel more comfortable with booking my services.  Is that ok with you?”

Always make sure you’ve got their permission to post it.

You could even go one step further if you’re feeling brave, and ask them if they would take a moment to copy/paste it into a Google review.

That’s going to help your SEO and it’s going to be dead easy for them.  They don’t have to do any extra work it’s just a copy and paste job, so why not ask them?

Do you have any new tricks to make sure you get the testimonials you want?  Have you got testimonials on your website? Where have you put them?

Let me know in the comments below or on Facebook.