Testimonials are great tools to use almost everywhere – on your website, postcards, brochures, listing presentations, and on just about any other type of marketing material.

The Challenge

The challenge is really two-fold:  getting around to asking for testimonials, and getting good feedback and sound bites that will be meaningful to your prospects.

Asking for Testimonials

If the world were perfect, clients would send you an e-mail after each transaction praising your outstanding efforts.  Unfortunately, things don’t always go that way, and if you want testimonials you’ll need to ask for them.

Everyone has their own approach to asking for testimonials.  Naturally, you won’t want to ask every client, but after a successful transaction, you might want to try this non-threatening approach:

“Joe, I’m going to be updating the Success Stories page on my website, and I’d sure like to include some feedback from you about our work together.”

Once you have agreement from your client to provide some feedback, you will need to decide how to get that information.  Here’s an idea for how to do that:

“I’d like to ask a couple questions, and then I’ll take your answers and put together a paragraph I can use on the web page.  We can either do that now if you have a few minutes, or I can send you an email with the questions, and you can just jot down some thoughts in reply.”

At this point, you’ve made it pretty easy for your client.  They don’t have to worry about sweating over coming up with something to say, and you’ve even offered to turn some of their thoughts into formal English.

I think you’ll find that some people would prefer to talk to you, and others would prefer just to write something back in an email.

Preparing Testimonial Questions

Of course, before you have the conversation with your client, you would prepare a few questions.  It’s always a good idea to have several questions ready.  If your client can’t really think of a good answer to one, you’ll have another to replace it.

The questions you ask should be open-ended, meaning that they can’t be answered with Yes or No.  And, it’s most effective if you ask for testimonials after a transaction where something about your involvement made a difference in the outcome.  Tailor your questions to each transaction. 

Here are some examples:

1. If you had a serious problem during the transaction:  How would you describe my role in handling [whatever the problem was].
2. If you helped the client identify a neighborhood that they had not been aware of previously:  How would you have felt if you’d found [that perfect neighborhood] after you’d just purchased somewhere else?
3. If you think that the home staging you provided or arranged for resulted in a quicker or more profitable sale:  What impact do you think the home staging we did had on [how long your home was on the market - or- the final sales price]?

Tailoring your questions to a specific transaction will make your clients much more comfortable having something concrete to comment on.  And, if the issue you remember from the transaction is significant, the client will probably agree and easily come up with feedback that is meaningful to them and to you.

Obtaining effective testimonials will help make your marketing more effective, too.  The other advantage is that you won’t be faced with a series of testimonials that say:  Kathleen was great.  I highly recommend her services!