Client testimonials can make or break a website. They are a vital factor in establishing a relationship of trust with new visitors to your site. Visitors want to see that others just like them have hired you or purchased your products and have successfully overcome some hurdle or some issue. Better yet, when the testimonials specifically note how the client’s life or business has been enhanced by buying your product or service, the visitor then begins to believe that it will help her overcome a similar issue as well.
Several years ago I updated one of my sites. I continued to get phone calls from potential clients who wanted to hire me, but the calls were much different than I had gotten previously. The difference was that I spent the duration of the phone call in salesmode to convince them to hire me, which is something I hate to do. I’d never had to do that before. Typically when someone would call me, they were already sold on the concept of hiring me and just wanted to know when we could get started.
I racked my brain to try and figure out what in the world was going on and what had changed with these prospects. Suddenly it hit me that in the update of my site, my client testimonials had gotten lost in the process and weren’t on the new site. This gave me the motivation I needed to get additional testimonials from satisfied clients and determine how to best display those testimonials for maximum impact. Once I added those to my new site, things returned to normal and those rave reviews did all of my selling for me.
So, now you know thattestimonials can serve as an important sales tool on your web site. How do you go about getting testimonials that say something more compelling than, “Jane is great to work with!”, which is useless for all practical purposes.
Here are ten questions you can ask your clients to get results-oriented testimonials for your online business:
1. What factors made you to choose my business to assist you with (fill in the outcome desired by your client here)?
2. What were your preconceived understanding notions about using (my type of business, service, or product). For example, “What were your perceptions about working with an accountant before we started?”
3. How has that perception changed since you hired me/bought my product?
4. What do you like most about working with me/using theproduct?
5. Did you expect it would work as well as it did?
6. Did you have any objections/hesitations before you decide to hire us/buy the product? If so, what were they? How did we overcome your hesitation and objections?
7. What are the three biggest benefits of working with us/using the product? OR How has your life changed since you changed things/began using our service/product? Please be as specific as possible (i.e. we increased sales by 25% in 3 months; I lost 15 pounds in 20 days; I doubled my income last year).
You may also want to ask this as a before/after question, i.e. “How are things different now” after hiring us than they were before you hired us? “
8. If you were to recommend me to a colleague, friend, or business associate, how would youdescribe the way I provided my service to you (or the way I helped you achieve a certain result)?
9. Is there anything else you’d like to add that I haven’t yet asked about?
10. Can I share this information in our marketing materials?
If you don’t have any client testimonials on your site, it’s not to late to go out and solicit a few. Use some or all of the questions noted above to increase the trust visitors have in your services and products and increase your sales dramatically!
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