Hi, it's Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast. This season is about consultants and consulting. And today, specifically, I want to speak to you about how to get more testimonials and better ones. The story that came to mind is kind of unusual. I had a friend who had a request from me, she had a niece in first grade and they were collecting postcards from all around the country and maybe the world. And she said, can you send a postcard from Martha's Vineyard where you live? And I thought, well, of course I can. That would be fun for me to do and very easy. But what Michelle did next was really make the request simple. She included a little bit of text that I might write on the postcard. So if you think about the hard part of what she had asked me to do, it was all really simple. Like it only takes a little bit of effort to go to the post office and do that. But the sticking point is like the composing, like, I don't know what to say to five year olds right? I thought that was so masterful and considerate and ensured that she got that task done, right? She helped me to get it done for her.

This is what happens so often with testimonials. We all know that we need testimonials, they’re gold in your business. And we also know that your happy Clients want to give you testimonials. They want to say good things about you and help you to get more clients like them but the sticking point happens when it turns into a to do for them. So we want to ask for testimonials, but not delegate to dos. And the way that we do that for them is that we make it easy. So we don't just say, hey, would you send me a testimonial? And nowadays, the worst thing that we could possibly say is, hey, could you shoot me a video testimonial? Because that's not incredibly hard for somebody who isn't already using video on a daily basis right? It can be a very onerous task for them, as supposed to making it completely easy for them. So what I'm going to talk about today are the ways to break down this task so that it can be made into something that is not just something they want to do, but it's so easy and actually gets you and them both what you want.

So let's start with the first thing. We want to get their permission for your assistant to contact them. I think it's really important that a third party interviews your clients to pull that testimonial out of them. Not only are they not writing themselves, they don't have to tell it to you because it can be awkward to say a negative thing to someone's face, but it can actually be awkward to say a positive thing to someone. You know, receiving all those compliments can make people feel awkward on both sides. So let's have a third party do it, which is someone who's an assistant to you or maybe someone you've hired to do this task for you. Once they give you permission for that person to get in touch with you, then second, you're going to send them the questions in advance. We're not looking for a gorgeous style journalism 60 minutes interview here. We don't want to kind of spontaneously surprise them. What we want to do is have them think about what was significant about their experience working with you. We want them to be able to recall specific examples and stories and situations that they can share that would be meaningful.

And most of all, we want them to calculate what those results have been. So if they have to look back and get that information, we want to give them time to go back and do that so they can provide you with the most rich and robust description of their experience of working with you. It's from that transcription for you to use. And the beauty of it is the core, the core quote that you pull it doesn't have to have been said sequentially.You can just pull snippets from among all of the things that were said and compile those into a single thing because you're going to keep the meaning the same and it's going to be approved by your client. So that's actually the next step, send those snippets that you've pulled back to your client to make sure that they're OK with that being seen in print attributed to them. The next step is get that attribution, you want to get their photograph, a photograph that they like to use, job title and company name that you can use to accompany that testimonial.

They're always stronger if they have all those components. So the maximum of information in some cases, people don't want to go on record. You can use the testimonial, but they'll only use your first name and things like that, or they're an employee at X company. You know, that's fine if that's all we can do but it's ideal to have a photograph, full name, job title company if you can get that, that makes it very strong.One thing you can do if you don't have all that information from the client is pull it from their LinkedIn profile, people usually keep that up to date and that way you don't have to go back and forth trying to get all the information.

The last step is going to be to put it everywhere, right? This is your testimonial. It's the best news,it's great news. They are going to be excited to see themselves and their success shared everywhere and you definitely want to put this you can put it on your core programs and also everywhere it could be in your email signature, it can be all over your website in the descriptions and the materials you're using. Remember, people want to see that you are successful at what you do, they want proof of the brand promise like what do you do and does it really work? They want to see evidence of that. The other thing that's interesting about branding is that we want to see in a brand that who they serve is a person who looks like us or feels like us or seems like us right? So we want to feel kind of a connection relative to the other clients of this brand or customers of a brand. So when we see those testimonials, we should think, oh, that's a brand for us because they seem like people like us. So other professionals, other leaders, other entrepreneurs, other artists, we want to fit into that group. And so that's what your testimonials should reflect, is who your target audience is.

Now, all of these tips that I've discussed fit for a video testimonial, just like they do for a print testimonial. So you're going to have a third party interview them, possibly in a Zoom format that might look like this. You're going to provide those questions in advance. You're going to walk them through saying exactly what they want to say. You can pull a transcript from it so that it's easier for you to find the excerpts and then you're going to share that with them. If you edit anything in your video testimonial, you're definitely going to want to show that to them so that they can see how that came out and make sure that it doesn't change the meaning of anything. And then they approve that final video testimonial. There are some people that you can say, hey, send me a one and a half minute video about your experience working with me and that's easy for them. But there are others for whom there couldn't be a bigger, more impossible task. So in that situation, if you know that they definitely want to provide you a video testimonial, then you can make it as easy as scheduling it, conducting it as an interview, editing it together, providing it to them and then letting them approve it. And then it's all done and ready for you with a bow. I know that if you do the things that I've described in this video, that it's going to be so much easier for you to get video testimonials and regular testimonials and share them with your audience. And that's going to make you both more profitable and joyful consultant.