How to Ask for Testimonials

Contrary to popular belief, your most successful sales representative does not work for your organization. The most persuasive sales pitch for your business comes from your loyal consumers.

Customers have lost more faith in conventional corporate communication — such as marketing, advertising, and sales — than at any point in history. Indeed, 55% of customers no longer trust businesses, and 79% of buyers place a higher premium on online evaluations than on personal recommendations.

Today, you must rely on client recommendations and testimonials to motivate a new consumer to give you their business. However, how do you solicit a testimonial? We’ll explore the fundamentals below, followed by proven methods that will prompt a “yes” from your consumers to write testimonials.

To maximize the value of testimonials, you’ll want to amass a large number of positive ratings. The following are the processes for requesting a testimonial from a consumer.

1. Accurately time your actions.

To begin, study your client base and their interaction with your product or service to decide the best moment to ask for a testimonial. Ideally, you should ask for testimonials after a client has achieved success with your product or service – this ensures that they are satisfied with their results and working relationship while they are heading to write a testimonial.

If you work for a marketing firm, the optimum time may be after you assist a customer in exceeding their monthly targets; if you work for a SaaS firm, the optimal time to contact a client maybe after they’ve used your product for 30 days. Before you submit your first request, do some research with your team and your customer health data to understand which instances indicate that a client is having success.

2. Decide whether to automate or manually send queries.

Depending on the optimal timing for sending the testimonial request to your customers, you might discover that email automation is a better match for obtaining testimonials from them.

For instance, if consumers are dealing with a free software tool and are not interacting with customer service often, it can be more appropriate to send an automatic email when they achieve a point of success with a product.

If, on the other hand, you are a customer success manager or account manager who regularly interacts with customers. It may be preferable for you to decide the ideal timing to submit the request based on your talks.

3. Provide a cause for consumers to say Yes to Testimonial

Whatever you are, if you are a human being with an email account, your inbox is almost certainly overflowing with messages on any given day. Therefore, if you want your valued customers to read your email — much alone write a testimonial — you must provide a compelling reason for them to say yes.

A simple approach to do this is to provide the reward for delivering a testimonial — such as a gift card of their choice or business stuff. Suppose that is not feasible for you or your organization. Then compose a persuasive request email explaining how you and your company will benefit from their testimonial submission to persuade them.

4. Make it simple for them by providing several alternatives

Personal preference or accessibility can make various ways of submission more convenient for different consumers. Thus, ensure that you enable customers to provide outstanding testimonials regardless of the format. You can go with these options:

• Record a brief video in the comfort of their own workplace.
• Compose 2-3 paragraphs highlighting their accomplishments (be sure to provide prompts or questions).
• Conduct a “social media takeover” in which they publish their testimonial on your business’s Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages.
• Hold a live interview on one of your social media platforms.
• Accept an invitation to appear on your podcast if you have one.

Additionally, you might try a more involved technique. You can offer to bring a video crew to their workplace and arrange a formal interview that way, or you can shoot a testimonial through a Zoom conference in a remote situation. One of your coworkers will have to conduct the interview and remember to have a list of questions with you.

5. Ask basic questions to get estimates from customers.

What your customers say can have an influence on the testimonial’s efficacy with your prospects. By providing effective testimonial questions, you should ask for information from your consumer about why they are happy with your service. This increases the likelihood that their testimony will connect with prospects who “see themselves” in the review.

Open-ended inquiries are preferable since they avoid one-word replies. Select questions that represent not just their feelings about working with you, but also their story. This can include the problem, issue, or suffering they were facing that prompted them to seek a solution. What drew them to you as a provider, what they wanted to gain, and their experience along the way.

6. Add a testimonials section on your website.

If you haven’t done, begin adding up a testimonial page for your website. The testimonials page can be a single lengthy page including all of the testimonials or a gallery or grid of testimonials with links to individual testimonies. If you’re not sure where to begin, you can check through different testimonial page samples for inspiration.

We propose emphasizing a different aspect of your product in each testimonial. For instance, one of your customers can be situated abroad, demonstrating the availability of your product in many languages. Another testimonial might come from a tiny brand, demonstrating how well your product fits smaller firms.

Each testimonial is another opportunity for prospective consumers to identify with your present customers and see themselves benefitting from your product.

7. Customize the email template for your request.

While the templates can help you get started, ensure that you adjust them for each customer relationship before clicking the ‘send button. You’ve made an effort to develop a connection with them. Thus, customize the email to ensure that it makes sense in the context of your relationship.

Conclusion

Marketing cannot do all of the hard work on its own. Testimonials and word-of-mouth recommendations provide crucial support for your business’s development. We’ve discussed the fundamentals of “How to Ask” for testimonials. A customer testimonial plan will energies your flywheel, converting your current customers into advocates.