I was speaking to a prospective client who told me they receive a lot of letters from happy customers. They get so many that they have a special wall of “love letters.”
This is a smart way to show everyone in the company they’re doing a great job and making a difference. It’s a nice way to rally the troops when things aren’t going as planned, and a great way to give yourself a good pat on the back every once and awhile.
Don’t get me wrong, love letters from customers are nice, but when your customers tell other customers about you, the results are 10X more powerful.
After the prospective client had shown me the letters in stark black frames, I spent some time wading through their printed sales & marketing collateral and also their website, and found not one of these powerful testimonials in use, anywhere.
You already know that people telling other people about you works better than you telling people about you, but most of you aren’t doing enough to stimulate this as well as you could.
Here are three simple ideas I gave to this CEO on how to better use all these great letters.
Number One: Do you have a page of testimonials on your website? If not, you should. Consider ranking the testimonials from so that your most powerful and glowing testimonials show up first.
Number Two: Create a “preemptive strike” package. In the marketing world, this used to be called the “Shock & Awe” package. Consider creating a bound and printed book that contains copies of all of your testimonials and success stories. Have your sales team present this to prospective clients. Anytime someone inquires about your products and services, have this package immediately sent out. The cost to you is minimal, but the impact can be massive. It’s the preemptive strike – “shock & awe!”
Number Three: Here’s a new rule: No outgoing marketing material should be sent, printed, or published without a testimonial on it.
This is all simple stuff, but it’s not high school. There’s no reason to keep your love letters hidden from curious eyes, and your prospective customers ARE curious.
Testimonials will increase your business, but only if you use them properly.
