A great starting point is with your current clients or customers. They love you and your goods and/services, right? They can do your business possibly the greatest service by shouting it from the mountaintops – okay, maybe not exactly from the mountaintops but it’s even better today because there are so many more avenues available in today’s digital world, you can reach more potential customers. It gives your future prospects the idea of how very thrilled other customers are or were with your business and lets your prospects know that you will treat them the same and they will be equally thrilled with your business.
The way to do that is by client/customer testimonials. A testimonial doesn’t have to be long or elaborate or go into every tiny detail but should tell how wonderful you are personally (if they dealt with you). A good testimonial should go into how satisfied they were with your work, how your company saved the day (maybe even did a rush job), how your specialty work was exactly what they needed. They can also describe how you, your staff and your company in general have the knowledge that brought it all together for them.
A testimonial can be short enough to cover just a few of points about how you saved the day printing their company t-shirts and hats 3 days before they needed them for a convention with an attendance of 5,000. It could maybe go into detail about how your company had the staff, connections and expertise to cater their wedding and attend to all the details of a panicking bride when the perfect wedding venue they booked two years ago had to close because of a plumbing disaster.
You can ask all your customers/clients for their good words about your business or services, something like, “We’d love to get a testimonial from you since you are so pleased with our service.” See what that gets you. Or you can send an email a few days later thanking them for their business and asking not only for their referrals but asking for “a short testimonial telling why you were so happy.”
Some people have no idea how to write a testimonial and they might need a little help formulating their ideas on how great you are. You’ll find that some people are too busy in which case you could simply ask them to just jot down a few thoughts, then get it back to you and you can write it out more cohesively and/or embellish it. But don’t change their intent or meaning – just make it flowery and warm so future prospects will realize that you are the one for them, too!
If you need help with prods and ideas for testimonials, just let us know. We have great ideas and talented wordsmiths who can help out. If your business or service is something that would benefit more from a video testimonial, we can also help with that.
The bottom line is that the whole idea of a testimonial is to let people know that they should be working with YOU. And your previous customers are the best ones to let your future customers know that you are the best company to take care of them, too!
(If they want to shout it from the mountaintops, that’s okay because no matter the method, testimonials work!)
