Sometimes, those of us in sales forget that its our existing satisfied customers that can do a better job of selling what we're offering than we can!
Sales and marketing author Bob Bly has some good tips on how to use testimonials as a way to effectively sell your product or service:
- Always use real testimonials instead of made-up ones. Even the most skilled copywriter can rarely make up a testimonial that can match the sincerity and credibility of genuine words of praise from a real customer or client.
If you ask a customer to give you a testimonial, and he or she says, “Sure, just write something and I’ll sign it,” politely reply: “Gee, I appreciate that, but would you mind just giving me your opinions of our product – in your own words?” Fabricated or self-authored testimonials (those written by the advertiser or their copywriter) usually sound phony; genuine testimonials invariably have the ring of truth.
- Prefer long testimonials to short ones. Many advertisers are hooked on using very short testimonials. For instance:
“ … fabulous! … ”
“truly funny … thought-provoking … ”
“ … excellent … wonderful … ”
I believe that when people see these ultra short testimonials, they suspect that a skillful editing job has masked a comment that was not as favorable as the writer makes it appear. In my opinion, longer testimonials – say, two or three sentences versus a single word or phrase – come across as more believable. For example:
“Frankly, I was nervous about using an outside consultant. But your excellent service has made me a believer! You can be sure that we’ll be calling on your firm to organize all our major sales conferences and other meetings for us. Thanks for a job well done!”
Sure, it’s longer, but it somehow seems more sincere than a one-word superlative. Which brings us to … - Prefer specific, detailed testimonials to general or superlative testimonials.
Upon receiving a letter of praise from a customer, our initial reaction is to read the letter and find the single sentence that directly praises our company or our product. With a blue pencil, we extract the words we think are kindest about us, producing a bland bit of puffery such as:
“We are very pleased with your product.”
Actually, most testimonials would be stronger if we included more of the specific, detailed comments our client has made about how our product or service helped him. After all, the prospects we are trying to sell to may have problems similar to the one our current customer solved using our product. If we let Mr. Customer tell Mr. Prospect how our company came to his rescue, he’ll be helping us make the sale. For instance:
“We have installed your new ChemiCoat system in each of our bottling lines and have already experienced a 25 percent savings in energy and material costs. Thanks to your system, we have now added an additional production line with no increase in energy costs. This has increased profits 15 percent and already paid back the investment in your product. We are very pleased with your product.”
Again, don’t try to polish the customer’s words so it sounds like professional ad copy. Testimonials are usually much more convincing when they are not edited for style.
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