Why Some Testimonials Hurt Your Business [Archive]

toxic testimonial says you know i hired up asmr for an hour he was great thank you i'm so happy the reason why they're doing anything is because it doesn't say what happened it doesn't say the result you got doesn't say it doesn't over it doesn't address any of the main objections someone would have to hire me and therefore even i'm happy to have it because as i said before i'm more likely to get referrals because of it i'm still not going to use the testimonial on my site at least not prominently on linkedin i have 130 testimonials you only see like 50 or 40 if you come to my set because the rest of them are hidden because i'm not they're nice things but i don't like particularly the way they write it know what they say so anyway that's this is what you want to do you want to just in your testimonials therefore when you get people now how to write how to get testimonials of the following what you do is and this is going to sound not so kosher but it is kosher what you do is you write the testimonial for the person you write testimony for the person answers like this when you ask a college professor to write your recommendation letter his answer is going to be send me a draft and i'll fix it up and sign it they want to sign it whatever you send they could change it they could tweak it they could take out things they could put in things they could write different wording but essentially you no one wants to spend two hours doing something for free but the easier you make it for them the more likely they ought to do it so you want to do is you want to get you want to write the testimonies for people i had i had a consultation with somebody uh i think was like three and a half hours long or something a very long consultation with somebody and um somebody was five hours of my time and i thought they would use hour but no they just started calling it for like four hours straight um so anyway so before we hung up she said you know my family is five people one was a business four of us have mbas and i'm blown away but what we just discussed i said do me a favor i have a lot of testimonials but that testimonial is clever in writing sure i said i'll write it up for you and you could tweak it or whatever you wanna send it back and that's why i got the testimonial but essentially the way to get them and one is asking for it number two is using linkedin it makes it much easier to get number three if you don't have testimonials for what you already do then get testimonials attesting to the effect you're a good smart person meaning to say if you're applying for a new job okay you may not have exact skills in this area but the fact that you are punctual and that you are thorough and the fact that you'd you know dot your eyes and cross your t's is something that's valuable no matter which industry you're in but essentially when you do something specific you want to get testimonials you can ask your old clients with testimonials the best time to ask for a testimonial is not after you've done business with them essentially but at the end while you're still doing business with them or continuing to do that's the best time to get a testimonial you write it for them and let them tweak it sometimes they're written testimonials i've gotten them back literally without a word changed sometimes i've got in the back tweaked and sometimes i've gotten back something totally different one person wrote you know if it's okay with you i've written my own i'm like of course it's okay with me i just you know so essentially um and that's even better because when i write a testimonial i always feel that my voice my brooklynese is shining through my testimonials the testimonies given to me and since i don't want all my testimonials to parrot each other i'm very happy with someone write their own testimonial because that's a totally different angle when you put it on the head they're not going to want to have their name on it initially also it looks very very safe the more you have the better most people believe testimonials with initials that that they say they don't know who the person is okay about seventy percent but it's put this way it's definitely more believable than advertising and second of all the fact that if you're caught with a fake testimony in legal trouble helps people believe the testimonial because you're not going to risk your you know you're not going to risk criminal activity for you know for 20 dollars are always true i can't tell you always true i could just tell you that if they're not true they can be violating a couple of different laws people will believe the testimony 33 of statistics i made up but that's what i read i don't know oh and um is that a good idea of like how to advertise what making it look like uh yes but one of the big one of the biggest story this which i mentioned uh is this is something you have to know about your business very important some of you know this is the biggest you say the business who it doesn't speak english you know what mention is who doesn't know what mensch means i mean mensch okay essentially if you go after a market that doesn't have money you have a problem if you're doing if you're doing coaching you know life coaching for unemployed people your problem is you could be the best life coach out there but they can't pay you more than two three sessions because they have no money so the answer is you should be doing testimonials but you shouldn't be trying to get people to buy one table because from you and that's it that's not where your business really should be your business should be in trying to sell whether to schools whether it's hotels whether to stores the point is people like to keep buying from you replenishing for them you want to target you want to advertise you want to use testimonials but so one person is going to buy one table cause once the massachusetts someone buys fine that's not really where you it's not effective a picture is much better try test test it's different than every industry different than ever i can't possibly answer that question honestly um on testimonials okay so one of the things we do for testimonials to get someone else is we send out an evaluation people will comment either way simply say oh that's bad you might get your negative we really thank god you really do um it has happened it won't lie but it really really really do um in terms of but the question is get back to testimonials they may not necessarily answer those three issues that you have i mean i know that you've seen those now but i'm saying that you get testimonials you're right but what happens is some people will tell some people will tell you on the tour you know i was skeptical about coming on this tour because my other choice was going to masada today we wrote that down and then we asked them later on that's correct or get it on the spot get a video of them on the spot people that are touring are very happy to give a testimonial while they're in their climbing gear or whatever i'm saying in terms of the evaluation the because it's still giving us feedback is it is it still relevant feedback positive feedback has another name testimonial feedback is what you get if it's negative you want to keep it to yourself and improve your business if it's positive it's a testimonial you have to get their permission to use it you gave us one idea on how to do the number two and three and you cut it out for me you told me that i should do testimonials again again again these are not your reasons these are his reasons these are everyone's reasons no no okay but these are my reasons too okay so they don't know about you advertising it's referrals it's uh it's it's networking even with it advertising right now i'm advertising i'm not paying money for a newspaper to put an ad in but i'm advertising by basically being here speaking as an advertisement um so i'm saying you know people don't know about you the answer is advertising networking any of the ways to get more business people are not convinced that you're worthwhile um when everyone i'm not saying that you can't comment someone to buy from you but they're not not convinced doesn't mean they don't in the buying not convinced me they're not committed to the quality they're not convinced that you're giving a valuable service what is it what if somebody comes to your house and then as they come they get a phone call from their mother-in-law just put your tenth table close to new york they'll be there tomorrow you can't possibly sell to them even if you have the world's best tablecloth the best price that you know that's not what that convinced me it's not convinced doesn't mean the necklace means that they've come and they need it and somehow you haven't convinced them that this is valuable and the way to do that would be have on the wall you know a whole bunch of different thank you cards there's many different ways you could use testimonials the answer is also testimonials for both of them everything should be in testimonials no matter what your reasons are they should be testimonial and these are not your reasons