How to Collect More Testimonials for your Business

One of my all time favorite books I talk about a lot on this podcast is called influence. The science or the psychology of persuasion and influence by Robert Cialdini. In that book, he outlines six different tools of persuasion and influence that we need to be aware of so we can implement and we can use them in our own businesses, but we can also be on guard from other people using it against us. Right. And one of those concepts is very simple. It’s called social proof. That is to say, we are more susceptible or more influenced by an item, a product, a service, a person who has more social proof. This is why the proxy of having a large following on social media can be very powerful for growing a business.

Because people look at you and they say, oh, you have 2 million followers. This person’s probably pretty legit. These 2 million people wouldn’t follow them if not for that, right? This is why reviews and testimonials are so important. Important. You see on Amazon, the products that sell the best typically have the most reviews. And it makes sense, because if you have two choices, they’re all things being equal, they’re at the same price point. One has 5000 reviews, the other has 200. You’re probably going to go with the one that has 5000.

You don’t know these 5000 people yet. It has social proof. So this is an idea that we, as entrepreneurs, we need to leverage within our own business. We need to be collecting social proof. Because the thing is like, if you leave people, what I found is if you leave people to organically leave their own reviews or own testimonials, as on Amazon, then you will only attract a very small subset of the total population that purchases the thing. In my experience, it’s like for one out of every hundred books I sell, a person will organically leave a review. That is not a high percentage. However, if I reach out to 100 people who’ve purchased a product, and I ask 100 of them if they would mind leaving a review or a, you know, shoot a testimonial video, then I could probably get 20 or 30, right? That’s a massive increase.

It’s just by asking. So what I want to do in this part, this episode today, is I just want to share a couple things about how to do testimonials right and how to do them wrong. And this comes top to mind, because the other day, this guy on, I’m not going to name names, I’m not going to name platforms or anything, but he effectively said, so and so took my course. Me, he’s like, oh, this guy took my course, and now look at all the results that he’s gotten out of it. He never asked my permission to say I was a student or I bought his course. I was a customer. He never asked me if I had actually consumed the course or that if it was, like, a meaningful part of my journey, if it had actually helped me. He didn’t ask me for any of that.
He just saw that I had purchased it and then took credit for all my results. And I was livid because I was like, dude, I don’t. I didn’t. It was a $50 course. I had already achieved all the results before this. I was interested. Anywho, it doesn’t matter. This is the wrong thing to do.
And I called. I called. I took him to task on this, and I was like, you guys, you cannot just say this person used the product and they got the result without asking them. You have to get permission. You have to get permission for your testimonials and reviews. That’s rule number one. Don’t just put things out there without asking people’s permission. Number two is that you do just want to ask them.
Ask them. Hey, if you had a good experience with this, would you mind just sharing some of that? It might help somebody else who’s on the fence, you know, make a decision for or against this thing. If it could help them, we’d love to get them into this product or service or whatever, because it might actually be able to help them. If it didn’t help you, then no worries. Don’t. Don’t leave the review right the way that I like to do this. And I was talking with Jamie the other day, because in the beginning, you have no social proof. It’s very easy for me at this point to say, you know, go buy this thing, you know, hundreds of thousand followers, tons of reviews, tons of testimonials, very lot of social proof there.
But when you’re first starting off and you don’t have a large audience, you don’t have a lot of testimonials yet. You have to work extra hard to go collect those. And she asked, well, is it, is it good enough just to get, like, little quotes or reviews from people? Because she’s like, I’ve collected some of those. And the truth is, yeah, you can use quotes and reviews like that, like, little text based reviews on your website. That’s fine. But more impactful is actually videos, just really quick, organic, off the cuff phone videos from your customers saying, hey, I’m Marcy. I worked with so and so. I bought this product beforehand, I had this problem, and then after taking the product in this period of time, it solved it.
And now here’s the results that I’m getting. If you’re on the fence, I would recommend that you get into this because it’s a great product. If you have this problem, this problem or this problem, it will help you. So this person’s great. Love them. Can’t recommend them highly enough. Good luck on your. On your journey.
Right. Just that quick little video coming from somebody is much more impactful than just a quote taken out of context. Because anybody can write a quote and I can send it to you and say, oh, look what Susan had to say. But you don’t really know if I didn’t just make that up. If I send you a video with this woman named Susan, who’s, like, leaving this review, and then you can go search her on social media, if she’s open to that, and see, like, what if this is actually a legit human, that’s much more impactful. So I recommend you make a point of asking everybody in who has purchased your product or had any kind of experience or positive result from you to ask them, hey, would you mind just shooting a quick testimonial video here? And then give them a script? Say, here’s the things I’d like you to hit on. Like, where were you before? Where did this product get you after? How did it work? Would you recommend this for people on the fence? Like, what problems would you recommend this? Like, if a person is struggling with these problems, what would that look like? That you would say, hey, you should definitely be into this, and then just wrap it up, be really organic. It could be awkward and weird, because most people are awkward and weird on camera.

It doesn’t matter. The more authentic it is, the better. Now you don’t have to wait until, like, you’ve gotten this big, massive from people. This is the other mistake I think we make. Sometimes with testimonials, you don’t have to wait. You know, you deliver the product. You don’t have to wait six months to ask them. You could go back three weeks later, four weeks, when the experience is still fresh and they’re in it, using the thing in that moment, and say, hey, how are you enjoying this? And if they’re enjoying it and getting value out of it in that moment, you can ask for the review.

You can ask for the testimonial right then and there. So those are some ideas. Just take those. But your goal should build. Should be to build a library of testimonials. That way, when you’re talking to people, if you’re selling them in the chat and they have a question, they’re like, will this work for me? Have you worked with these types of clients before, let’s say? Or does your product work in this context? You’re like, yeah, actually. Here’s a video from Janice, who had that exact problem. Here’s a video from Michael, who had that same exact problem.

Or here’s a problem from a video from Tim. You can just share that, and you can put them on your website. You can share them in all the places that you put social proof. You can do them on your social media once a week, just like, hey, here’s some of my success stories. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And you’re adding credibility. You’re building social proof going to make selling so much easier down the road. So go get your testimonials.

You deserve it. You’ve earned it. Now just, you got to go ask for it. I know I can feel awkward, but get out of your own way. This is what it takes to go help the world. So we’ll catch you guys in the next episode. Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.