The great poet Bryon wasn’t wrong when he said: “A drop of ink may make a million think”.
There’s real power in words – especially when they come from a customer. A strong third party endorsement can give your product or service the edge it needs to persuade a prospect that they should be buying from your salespeople. It can also serve as a handy way in, when a prospective client is as keen to agree to an appointment as they are to recreating the entire back catalogue of Barry Manilow in a marathon karaoke session with their mother-in-law!
Personally, whenever I’m looking for a testimonial, I ask my client to split it into four clear sentences or sections, 4 steps to a textbook testimonial.
1) A few lines on why they agreed to meet with me.
2) A sentence or two on what persuaded them to buy my product.
3) Some words on the benefits they’ve seen from my product.
4) An account of the level of service I and my company has provided.
The benefit of doing things this way is that it allows you to use a specific part of the testimonial for a specific purpose. If you need to get that all-important meeting in the diary, for example, nothing will have quite as much impact as a statement like: “It took me two years to agree to meet with this company, but I wish I’d seen them earlier”.
Just remember to get the client’s agreement to use their name, job title and organisation alongside the testimonial. Although a prospect is unlikely to seek verification that a testimonial is authentic, they will expect to see some attribution if they’re to believe the quote is from a genuine customer.
For any advice or more information, please contact Lorna at lorna.leck@salesactivator.com Lorna is the Managing Director of The Sales Activator® Ltd.
