What's your favorite pizza place?
Think about your favorite pizza restaurant. Your go-to pizza place. The place you order from when you have out of town guests visiting.
Got it in your head?
Great, now write me a testimonial and convince me to go try it...
It's not so easy, right?
It's hard when you ask somebody to drop what they're doing and give a testimonial - so don't do that when you're asking your clients for testimonials for your business.
Your best customers may be happy with your service and want to give you a great testimonial to spread the word, but it's not easy to do.
That's why when you ask customers for testimonials you get things back like:
"XYZ Chiropractic is one of the best chiropractic offices I've ever been to, I would highly recommend them to anyone"
It's not a bad testimonial, but it's bland and unoriginal - there's so much room for improvement.
Back to our pizza example: let's say that instead of asking you to give me a testimonial, I sent you the following questions:
- What did you find as a result of trying their food?
- What specific feature did you like most about the pizza?
- What would be three other benefits of ordering from this pizza place?
- What was the obstacle or hesitation that would have prevented you from trying the pizza place?
- Why would you recommend this pizza place?
- Is there anything you’d like to add?
Not only will those questions make it much easier for you to write your thoughts and opinions, but you’ll write a higher quality review. When the pizza place gets your answers, they could easily combine everything into a thoughtful and unique testimonial.
Now imagine what your business’s testimonials would like if you provided your clients and customers with questions to guide them.