By Fabienne Fredrickson
Testimonials are my favorite low-cost and high-impact Client Attraction tools. Getting testimonials from clients is a crucial element of your marketing plan and become a powerful tool for acquiring new clients. Best of all, testimonials do the ‘selling’ for you, even when you’re not around.
The reason testimonials are so important is that the testimonial itself becomes a third-party endorsement, an enthusiastic referral from someone who doesn’t benefit directly from that prospect working with you. Potential clients trust that! Testimonials can also be used as references by potential clients if you set it up that way (I’ll discuss that in a minute).
All of my client testimonials are set up in one easy-to-read document and each testimonial has the person’s name, their website, phone and email address (of course, I have gotten permission for this from each client). I let potential clients know they are welcome to call or email any of my former clients listed to ask about working with me.
Now, most prospects don’t really call my former clients as references (some do, most don’t), but just knowing that these are (or have been) REAL LIVE CLIENTS, and that these clients are raving about the results of our work together, puts the prospect at ease and instills a greater amount of trust in the work I do, so closing the sale is easier, even without selling. You should try it.
If you don’t have clients yet, consider getting testimonials from any freebie clients you’ve had or people you’ve helped in the past. Any testimonial is better than none. You can replace these as you start getting real paying clients (that’s what I did).
Ok, on to what’s REALLY important about testimonials.
There are two types of testimonials.
- The one that says you’re a really nice person and that it was great to work with you.
- The Makeover Testimonial: One that describes what their situation was BEFORE working with you, what direct results they experienced as a result of your work together, and lastly, what their situation is like now. It’s all about the before-and-after, the success story, the rags-to-riches. And it WORKS!
You must ask for TANGIBLE and SPECIFIC results they’ve experienced! Prospects reading your testimonials will then see that it will work for them too. See what I mean at http://www.clientattraction.com/testimonials.htm.
Design a handout asking for tangible results since your time together. This is a really efficient way to do it. You may hand this to your clients towards the end of your time together, mid-way through a program or email it to them if your work is phone-based, like mine.
Virtually every time, especially when you’ve gotten great results from working together, clients are honored to fill it out and love to give something back to you. Best of all, you can then take these powerful results-based testimonials and add them to all your marketing materials (brochure, website, etc.) at low-cost and very high-impact.
Once completed, you’ll have one of the most powerful marketing materials ever “invented” and guaranteed to get you more clients than you have now (at not cost to you!).
Your Client Attraction Assignment:
Make a list of clients who have had fantastic results from working with you and contact them. Tell them you loved working with them and that you’d like other prospects to read about some of the results they’ve gotten.
Ask them to fill out your testimonial request form (you can use a copy of mine in the Client Attraction Home Study System™ as inspiration) or send it to them as an email. Make sure to give them a deadline by which to return it; otherwise, they might never do it.
Collect all the testimonials you receive, put them on one sheet of paper or on a page on your website, and ask prospects to read these before your initial consultation. You’ll start hearing your phone ring a lot more frequently than it’s currently ringing and will close more clients as a result. I guarantee it.
Now, if you’re short on clients to ask for testimonials in the FIRST place, I suggest getting a copy of the Client Attraction Home Study System™. It’s everything you need to know to create a marketing message that will appeal to the best clients for you. You’ll learn how to decipher what makes your business remarkable, how to create Raving Fans so you get clients to call YOU, and lots of other crucial techniques to help you fill your practice quickly, including how to put together a simple marketing plan that gets you clients and then putting it on autopilot so you can have fun again. You can read more about it and get a copy at www.TheClientAttractionSystem.com. (Why struggle when you can just attract clients easily?)
© 2006 Client Attraction LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Fabienne Fredrickson, The Client Attraction Mentor, is founder of the Client Attraction System™ and www.ClientAttraction.com, the proven step-by-step program to attract more clients, make more m’oney being self-employed, while having more time off to enjoy it all. To receive your F.R.E.E. Audio CD by mail and get weekly how-to articles on attracting more clients, visit www.ClientAttraction.com.
