Six Questions To Get Outstanding Testimonials

(This is an excerpt from The Brain Audit)

The Brain Audit—Bag 5: The Testimonials

You’ve seen résumés haven’t you?

And what’s common with all the résumés on the planet? Yup, they’re all created to make the candidate look wonderful. Yet what’s the first thing a company does when you present them with a résumé?

They check on the résumé details , don’t they?

They go back and do some digging, and the smarter the company, and the more important the job, the more the company digs. So you have to ask yourself: Why does the company check back on the résumé? And the obvious answer is: The company checks back, because they want to see the complete picture. They don’t want the one-sided résumé view.

And testimonials are like résumés: One-sided.

Most testimonials resemble résumés: They’re all sugary. No matter where you look, testimonials are stuffed with wonderful adjectives, and powerful verbs. Every testimonial seems to talk about the ‘magnificent, outstanding, and amazing’ qualities of the product or service. And after you’ve read a couple of those icky-sweet testimonials, you feel like you’ve had quite enough. If you had a big dose of wonderful testimonials, you start feeling a little sick.

And there’s a reason why.

You’re getting a massive overdose of ‘sugar’.  Those testimonials are so sucrose-laden that there’s no way on earth that you’re going to believe in them.

So what would it take to make a testimonial believable and powerful?

Just like a résumé needs both sides of the picture, so does a testimonial. When we’re considering a purchase, we feel out of our depth. We feel we somehow need some reassurance. And testimonials, sugary as they are, reassure us somewhat.

But what if you had a more believable testimonial?

A testimonial that not only shows us the ‘after’ scenario, but reveals the ‘before’ as well. A testimonial with the complete picture.

---

Presenting the ‘reverse testimonial!’

So what’s a reverse testimonial?

• A reverse testimonial is simply a testimo­nial that starts off in reverse. All testimonials start off with the praise, and continue with the praise of a product/service.
• A reverse testimonial talks about doubt. It starts with the skepticism first. It describes the fear or uncertainty racing through the customer’s mind at the point of purchase.
• A reverse testimonial works because it speaks to us, in the way we speak to each other. When we’re recommending a restaurant, or a movie to a friend or a colleague, we intrinsically lace our recommendations with doubt.

We say things like: “You know that seedy-looking restaurant, and how you don’t really feel like going inside? They’ve got the most amazing food.” Or we say things like: “You know that fancy looking restaurant that you think may be over-priced? Well we went there last night, and we had the most delicious food, and the bill was far, far less than we expected.”

We tend to coat our testimony with at least a little bit of doubt.

And when a testimonial highlights these doubts first—yes first—they make the testimonial real. And believable. They give the testimonial power and depth. And make it less like a bunch of words strung together, and more like a story. And stories don’t just fall into place. Stories have to be con­structed.

So while you’ve probably got quite a few testimoni­als from your customers in the past, you’ve probably never ‘constructed’ a testimonial before. So instead of ‘getting a testimonial’, it’s important to ‘construct a testimonial’ instead.

So what does ‘construction of a testimonial’ mean?

It doesn’t mean fabrication. It doesn’t mean you’re going to make up some fake testimonials. Con­struction means you’re using structure to get your testimonial. When you use structure, you don’t get random testimonials, but instead get testimonials that are specific and story-like.

But how on earth are you going to create testimonials that have specific details and read like stories? In the past, you’ve tried to get testimonials from clients, but it always seems like they’re procrastinating.

The reason why clients promise to write you a testimonial and don’t do so, is because they’re lost for words. They don’t have specific parameters, and so when they sit down to write, they stare at a blank screen. And then they either write something that’s kinda boring, sugary, or instead they just put off the writing for another day.

And there’s a second reason too. Often, we ask for testi­monials days, weeks, sometimes even months after the client has made the purchase. This time-delay makes it harder for a client to recall facts and results.

We have to make it easier for a client to give us a testi­monial. And easily the best way to get a pretty detailed testimonial, is to follow the steps mentioned in The Brain Audit, and ask these six core questions.

The six questions you need to ask to get a powerful testi­monial are:

1) What was the obstacle or hesitation that would have prevented you from buying this product/service?
2) What did you find as a result of buying this product/service?
3) What specific feature did you like most about this product/service?
4) What would be three other benefits about this prod­uct/service?
5) Would you recommend this product/service? If so, why?
6) Is there anything you’d like to add?

---

And here’s the explanation for each of those questions above:

1) What was the obstacle in your mind/hesitation before buying this product/service?

We ask this question because the customer always has a perception, hesitation an obstacle. No matter how ready the customer is to buy your product/serv­ice, there’s always a hitch. The hitch could be money, or time, or availability, or relevance—or a whole bunch of issues.

And when you ask this question, it brings out those issues. And it does something more. It gives you an insight into issues you may not have con­sidered, because the client is now reaching into their memory to see what could have been the deal-breaker. And there’s always an obstacle; always something you may not have consid­ered. So when the customer brings up this obstacle, it presents an angle that’s unique, personal and dramatic.

2) What did you find as a result of buying this product/service?

This question is important, because it defuses that obstacle. When a client answers this question, they are clear about why the purchase was worth it, despite the obvious obstacles.

3) What specific feature did you like most about this product/service?

Now you’re digging deeper. If you ask the customer to focus on the entire product/service, the answer gets waffly. It’s therefore important to focus on one feature/benefit that the customer liked most about the product/serv­ice. This brings out that one feature in explicit richness and detail.

4) What would be three other benefits about this product/service?

Having already got one big feature, you can now go a little wide, and see what else the customer found useful. You can substitute the word ‘three’ with ‘two’ or simply remove the number. The number allows the customer to focus on ‘two’ or ‘three’ things, and then give you those ‘two’ or ‘three’ things that were useful.

5) Would you recommend this product/service? If so, why?

You may not think this is an important question, but psychologically it’s very important. When a customer recommends something, there’s more than your product/service at stake. The customer’s integrity is at stake too. So unless the customer feels strongly about the product/service, they won’t be so keen to recommend it. And when they do recommend it, they’re saying to prospective buyers: “Hey, I recommend it, and here are the reasons!”

6) Is there anything you’d like to add?

By this point, the customer has said all he/she has to say. But there’s never any harm in asking this question. The questions before this question kinda ‘warm up’ the customer, and sometimes you get the most amazing parting statements, that you simply can’t imagine.

And this detailed construction of testimonials brings us to a very interest­ing observation.

That in fact, the testimonial is the flip side of the objection.

Notice the first question we asked the customer:
1) What was the obstacle in your mind that would have prevented you from buying this product/service? And that ‘obstacle’ the customer is talking about is really their ‘biggest objection.’ So what does this tell us about how we should plan our testimonials?

We should plan our testimonials to directly defuse each objection.

So let’s say you’re keen to sell a trip to the wildlife on the Galápagos Islands. Obviously, the trip is an exciting idea for travellers seek­ing to explore the wildlife on the islands. But even thrill seekers will most certainly have their objections.

So if you did your homework and interviewed the potential customer you’d get objections such as:
1) It’s too expensive
2) It’s too far to travel
3) There’s no comfortable accommodation.

Now let’s assume these are the three main objections.

What are the testimonials going to say?
1) I thought it was too expensive, but (here’s what I found)
2) I thought it was too far to travel, but (here’s what I found)
3) I thought we’d have to rough it out, but (here’s what I found).

Each of the testimonials are mirror-images of the objections. Sure you have already defused the objections earlier in your message, but this defusing is now being done by the customer, who is a third party. And you know what that means, right?

A third party is always far more believable to your prospective custom­ers. And because each testimonial is specifically linked to an objection, it systematically reduces the risk not once, but twice.

But how do you go about controlling the angle of the testimonial?

You may want the customer to talk about expense, or distance travelled, or relevance. And the customer may want to talk about ‘an overdose of work­shops.’

So how do you control the angle?

You don’t. You’re in the business of helping the construction of the testimonial. This means you’re giving the testimonial structure. You don’t need to control the situation.

So here’s how you go about attempting to get the angle you desire.

Let’s say you have three main objections that you need to defuse. And let’s say you call up the customer. Ask the customer if ‘expense, or distance, or comfort’ was one of their big issues.

If they say yes, continue down that track, and they’ll give you the specifics of why ‘expense’ or ‘distance’ or ‘comfortable accommodation’ was an issue. But if they disagree, and come up with a completely different issue, e.g. they say, ‘I thought the bad weather was going to be a dampener’, then hey, keep fol­lowing that customer’s train of thought.

Because that train of thought is now revealing an objection you hadn’t con­sidered. It’s talking about something you hadn’t considered. And it may be a valid objection that hasn’t come up before.

However, you may decide that the stray objec­tion isn’t worth pursuing.

And that you can’t use the objection and corresponding testimonial. Well, no problem. If you decide you can’t use the testimonial, you can always call other clients to get the angle you’re looking for.

Sooner, rather than later, you’re going to get the exact objections, and the exact testimonials, that help to defuse those objections.

Which means that the testimonial isn’t some­thing we just throw into our marketing.

It means the testimonial is doing some real grunt-work in defusing objections. The factor that makes the testimonial so much more powerful, is that it’s doing so from a ‘third party’ perspective, and doing it in a way that the seller could never do.

You could never bring out the detailed specifics that a client brings out.You could never paint the imagery and the emotion. And even if you could, it would sound like a whole lot of puffery. But when the client comes up with all that detail and emotion, the testimonial becomes rich, complex, but mostly very believable. And that’s the main job of the testimonial.

As you can quite clearly see, the objection plays a critical role in developing a testimonial that’s not only rich in detail, but is extremely relevant to the potential customer.

• Testimonials don’t exist to do the rah-rah.
• They’re not there to make your page look sweet and sugary.

 

The job of testimonials is to reduce the customer’s fear of buying the product or service.

They’re there to build trust. They’re there to make your product and service believable. And when testimonials are structured correctly, that’s exactly what they do: they reduce risk.