How to get a killer testimonial from a client

If you have a website for your business, you probably have a page where you display testimonials (and if you don’t, I suggest you fix that ASAP!). A client testimonial shows future potential clients what people think about your services and products. It’s the best way to showcase people’s sentiment about your work and to build on that like, know and trust factor in your business.

Having a strong testimonial page can be the difference between a potential client filling out your contact from or skipping to your competitor.

While this post is written with the service based business in person, there’s no reason a product based business and info-product based business couldn’t use it.

You’ll see on my website that I have an applause section (that’s what I choose to call it rather than testimonials, but you can call it whatever you see fit). It shows some of my past clients from 1:1 long-term work, intensive session clients and group coaching clients.

Let’s break down the anatomy of a great testimonial: 

1.     The client describes a little bit about how they felt before and after working with you
2.     The client describes how you delivered the results
3.     The client describes what results you delivered – what changed? What happened as a result of your work together?
4.     There’s a photo, name and some identifiable information for the person providing the testimonial

You’re probably reading this and thinking, okay, but how the heck do I get my client to say all these amazing things without feeding the information to them?

First off, you have to be really willing to receive feedback. Yes, not only are you asking for a testimonial, you have to want to learn what you could have done better, what they appreciated and how things improved because of you. It takes humility to receive feedback, because you’re asking for not only the positive feedback, you’re asking also for the constructive feedback that might be difficult to swallow. However, if you take that feedback with a grain of salt, you can also grow as a professional. I’ve found that it’s a true win-win if you can get honest feedback!

Click here for your free client testimonial email worksheet!

Here’s the basic suggestion for what I’ve found successful in getting people to give me feedback:

1. In your last session (if you offer sessions), tell your client that they will be receiving a survey in the next week and that you hope to hear honest feedback from them. Ask them to tell you the good, the bad, the ugly so that you can continue to grow in your business. Your client doesn’t want to hurt your feelings so even if they have something they think you could improve, they’re probably not going to tell you, even in a survey, anything bad unless you tell them why it’s important.
2. Send them a survey and ask them questions that aren’t leading.
3. Ask them (you can do this in the survey) whether they’d be willing for you to turn the feedback into a testimonial and featured on your website.
4. Take their feedback to heart. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Hear them when you read their feedback. The constructive feedback is imperative to developing your business, to improving it and becoming a better service provider and business owner.
5. Turn the positive feedback you received into a short (3-6 sentence) testimonial highlighting the anatomy of a great testimonial (in the section above).
6. Put it on your website and be proud of the work you’ve done!

Grab the exact thing you can pop into your email to ask your client for the perfect testimonial worthy feedback! Plus you’ll get some questions you can use to build your survey by clicking below! 
I want my free client testimonial email worksheet!