Building customer testimonials. A 5 step guide for small business.

Building Customer Testimonials:
A 5 Step Guide for Small Business

Geoff Vincent
CEO & Founder
Bizcompare.com
Copyright BizCompare Inc. 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction
• It’s commonly known that customer testimonials about a company’s
products or services can be a very strong influencing factor for potential new
buyers.
• Almost every company has happy customers who would probably be willing
to provide such a testimonial.
• The challenge is how to get these great testimonials in writing (read: cogent)
and usable for a web site or sales collateral.

The key is to make it as easy as possible for your customer to “give you the
goods” and with that in mind, here’s a simple and effective guide to soliciting
and securing great testimonials.


Step #1: Get your sales reps to secure preliminary
commitment from customers.
• Your sales reps are the gateway to your best customers:
• because they own the relationship and
• they know EXACTLY who is likely to provide a good testimonial
• The rep must make the initial request. The rep’s script goes something like
this:
“Stan, we’ve worked together for years and I’m hoping that you’ll provide my company with a
testimonial about our services. This will not take more than 10 minutes of your time and we’ll
do the work to create the testimonial. In exchange, your company will be featured on our
website with a link to your site. If you’re OK with that, our marketing team will contact you via
email”.
•The challenge is how to get these great testimonials in writing (read:
cogent) and usable for a web site or sales collateral.
• Your rep is happy because their job is done. The customer is happy because
they don’t have to invest much time at all.


Step #2: Have an admin person call or email to
confirm participation:
• A simple call is made from someone with good customer skills
• The caller references the sales rep’s name and confirms that their effort to
provide the testimonial information will take no more than 10 minutes.
• This is simply a professional thing to do.

Note: This step is optional but recommended.


Step #3: Email is sent from Marketing soliciting
specific information.
• In this email, you ask the customer to answer just 4 short questions.
• If the customer prefers, you can conduct a brief interview over the phone
when a Marketing person poses the same 4 questions (but email is better
because you get more complete thoughts from the customer).
• The questions are:
• What was your original business challenge that caused you to seek a solution
from us?
• What was the specific reason that you chose us? What stood out in our offer?
• What has been the specific business success that you’ve enjoyed as a result of
our services?
• Lastly, was there anything specific that we did that really impressed you ..perhaps
something about our Sales rep, our post sales team or our customer service team?


Step #4: Marketing re-writes the feedback from the
customer into a standard format.
• Having a standard format is important because over time you will have
dozens of testimonials and you’ll want to them to follow the same general
flow and length (approx 200 words). The flow is:
• The first part of the text briefly describes the customer and their products and
explains their business challenge.
• The next section specifically states why they picked your company….in their own
words, what was your “promise” to them.
• Next, what were the specific results that the customer enjoyed, quantifiable if
possible.
• Lastly, the customer summarizes their positive experience with some specific
feedback on their interaction with your company.
• Note: The reason to try and get this information via email is because it forces
the customer to take a few minutes to structure their response in writing
which you can then use in the text. Whenever possible, use actual customer
quotes in the text, complete with “quote marks”


Step #5: Get your customer to approve the write up.

• By sending a finished version, you allow the customer to OK the text which is
just good conduct on your part.
• Every testimonial should end with the customer’s name, title, location (city,
state/prov.) and web address which would serve as a live link to their site.

•The final steps are all internal, so presumably can be done with precision and
expedience:
• A Testimonials page should be created on your company site with appropriate
links to that page throughout the site.
• These testimonial texts should also be available for reps to quickly send to
customers so they be formatted into PDFs and be accessible with other sales
materials.


Final thought:

• This is not a onetime effort.
• Soliciting testimonials is an ongoing effort and Marketing should own the
project.
• A little bit of effort on a continuous basis will result in a healthy number and
variety of customer testimonials.


About the Author and Bizcompare.com
Geoff Vincent is the founder and CEO of BizCompare Inc. which owns and operates
Bizcompare.com. Geoff’s background includes a plethora of senior marketing and
management positions at leading B2B companies including American Express, FedEx,
CCH and Dun & Bradstreet. Geoff can be followed at his blog and on Twitter.

The Bizcompare.com site is a business to business information portal that features over
100 industry research reports and 1.5 million company profiles focused on the BUSINESS
SERVICES vertical. The site displays key firmographic information in insightful graphs so
one can compare companies to their peer group for greater context. Popular uses for
the site include market research, lead generation, competitor analysis and B2B
marketing planning.

Quick links: BizCompare home page
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Building customer testimonials. A 5 step guide for small business.

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Building customer testimonials. A 5 step guide for small business.