A Society for Marketing Professinal Services (SMPS) member posted this question on the SMPS LinkedIn discussion group:
Can you recommend best practices for collecting testimonials from clients and publics?
Testimonials are great tools for providing a reference in our marketing materials, but they are often difficult to solicit. Any tips for amassing those warm, fuzzy comments without annoying your clients or your project managers?
At least four other members responded. As I’m pulling information from a semi-public source, I won’t identify anyone here but the suggestions are really quite good and relevant to anyone who appreciates the value of testimonials.
First response
I usually write the testimonial myself then present it in “draft” form to the client/owner to approve. I also try to keep these drafts brief and to hit only one or two significant points.
Second response
From my experience, clients are very willing to provide quotes/testimonials for a job well done. To start, get a list of completed, recent stellar projects along with the associated client from your project managers and solicit the request via e-mail (tends to get a quicker response). To make it easy on the client – you can send a template, which allows them to fill in the blanks. These testimonials are fabulous for posting on your website, within proposals and award submissions etc. Good luck!
Third response
It helps to ask the the “right time” – for example when you just successfully completed a project – the client is happy and doesn’t consider this to be annoying. If you wait for a while the enthusiasm fades. With long projects or ongoing relationships, you often know it’s the “right time” when you hear your client say “you did an outstanding job, we are so happy, we are so glad we selected your firm for the project” (or something along those lines).
What helps create more powerful testimonials (rather then generic “good job!”) is to have an idea of what specifically you want each client to comment on – do you want them to comment on how smooth the process was, or how responsive the team was, or whatever it is that is important to your brand that makes each testimonial much stronger. Since everyone is busy, and depending on your relationship with each client, you may even send those bullet point along with the ask. It is often that people would ask you for the pointers anyway.
If there’s any hesitation internally on the part of those who actually have to ask for testimonials, giving then the “pointers” and explaining the importance of getting testimonials shortly after each project’s completion helps as well. But most importantly, it’s critical to communicate to the entire team why it’s critical to get testimonials (i.e., past performance is critical for future proposals and other marketing and biz dev activities).
Fourth response
For me, the challenge is to get pictures of the completed project, so I start by asking the client if it would be OK to get pictures. If they are OK with having pictures taken, then they are probably OK with give a quote.
Before talking with the client, I usually interview the project manager and account executive to ask them what was new, special and/or challenging about the project. Once I get an answer to that question, I then ask the client to comment on that specific aspect of the project. This helps to keep away from a generic comment like “they did a good job.”
Do you have your own thoughts about how to best gather testimonials? Please feel free to comment here.
