How to ask for a testimonial

Originally Posted by Gary Boye That seems like an unusual process. It surprises me. As a business owner I would want to call my clients personally to ask for a testimonial, rather than have my copywriter do it for me. It would be much more personal, and I think my clients would be more appreciative.

Gary,

I should clarify. The copywriters are calling for testimonials to use in sales copy. maybe that's why the task is left to them? Most of the people I know have found that many business owners don't want to do this.
I write copy for myself, and don't actively recruit copywriting clients, so I don't have any personal experiences to share.

Susan

Great convo. My concern is that somethimes I feel that the clients that don't respond (due to being too busy or company policy) feel bad or too embaressed to call you back for the next job. I know this sounds stupid, but i think it happens a lot.

In the past, I've asked customers for testimonials after we've done something a bit out of the ordinary for them. For example, one of my customers had been audited, and a bit of information from eight months prior was changed.... As a result, we had to re-do 8 months worth of reports for that client. We were able to do this within 48 hours, and he was amazed. About two weeks later, I told him we were proud of how we were able to help him out, and we feel our other clients and more importantly prospective clients, would be comforted knowing how we handled it. My client responded with a written thank you/testimonial. Because it was so specific, it was very effective.

Since then, I realize that there is at least one thing we do for each client that is unique, or extraordinary. I've asked each one to write a testimonial regarding that specific piece of it, as well as with our overall service of course, and have used them as part of a sales package.

One method that has worked for me very well is to do the following (which utilises some of the comments above in a slightly different way) - my industry is B2B sales so I'm not sure how this would work in B2C environment.
-when following up on a sale i ask a series of questions to ensure that the customer has achieved what i set out to achieve. Normally a customer (who is also a decision maker at the company) will respond very favorably - i make notes on what they say.

- I then prepare an honest appraisal based on the customers comments - thereby giving the testimonial that i require.

-depending on the client i then either call in or email the client and let them know i took the liberty of jotting down their responses and would they mind cutting and pasting/getting their secretary to put it onto their headed paper.

I've found that with this method i can generate a lot of testimonials very quickly. I previously found that people were too busy to take the time to write a testimonial although they would happily provide one - I just take the work out of it for them and get the testimonials I want.

Excellent point, Riad. I too have a B2B business and did this once for the owner of a particular customer, and it worked great.

The only thing I'd add is that when I get the text of the testimonial to them, I'd invite them to make changes as they see fit.