The hardest part of sales is getting the customer to believe you when you tell them your product is of high quality and that it will solve their problems, they have heard it all before, more than once.
But people are social beings; we innately want to be like others and want to have the benefits others have.
If we as salesmen can use this and prove that we have many others using our products and that they are happy with our service our new customers will be more prone to take the chance, since everyone else already has!
The problem though is that we often don’t have dozens of positive testimonials to show our customers.
How do we get testimonials?
You ask!
If a customer is pleased with your product they will usually be very glad to recommend you to others and if all they have to do is right 1 or 2 sentences about your product, more often than not, they will!
Making a sale vs. Asking for a referral
Why many salesmen chose not to ask for referrals is that they feel like they are giving away a chance to up-sell the customer by asking for a referral instead of a new order, which this is true!
By using the leverage you have as a salesman to get a referral instead of an order you are in fact missing a sales opportunity.
The Solution
Instead of asking yourself, send an email to all your customers after they have used your product long enough to do a proper evaluation and ask for a testimonial.
Ask them to write 1 or 2 sentences about what they thought (good or bad, you can always learn from the bad) and that their answer will be used in future sales presentations.
The response rate to these emails is surprisingly high.
If you have many happy customers you can get a response rate as high as 75%.
It is all about volume
When using referrals it is volume that counts.
It doesn’t matter if they all are just one sentence testimonials, the point here is to show the customer that lots of other companies are using your products and that lots of them are pleased.
Conclusion
Testimonials are a great sales tool if you have many.
They are easy to gather, all you have to do is send an email to your customers asking them to send you one and, the good news is that, you don’t lose any of your leverage as a salesman when it is done by email.
You can still make a up-sell next time you talk to them.
What do you think?
What has your experience told you about testimonials?
Have you found them useful?
What have you done to gather testimonials in the past?
Action exercise
To the next 10 customers you sell send an email after a sufficient time and ask them to send you a testimonial. If you find that you are getting positive responses keep it up and build a large database of testimonials. On the other hand if you keep getting negative feedback, show it to your managers and tell them to do something about it!
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Testimonials are great to have but in my experience in sales for the last 13 years is that the cusotmer wants to know that you have done and provided services to people in their industry. They love to hear that their competitor has also bought from you…Volume for sure!!!!
Hi Nancy,
Nice to have you back and thanks for your comment.
It is crucial to be able to gain their trust by showing them they aren’t alone.
And like you said, showing them what their competitor said is a very powerull tool.
Hello my loved one! I want to say that this post is awesome, great written and include approximately all significant infos. I would like to look extra posts like this .
Thanks Bobby.
I am glad you liked the post and I hope it helps you gather more testimonials for your business.
Nice read, I just passed this onto a friend who was doing some research on that. And he actually bought me lunch as I found it for him smile Thus let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!
Thanks a lot and welcome for lunch.
I hope you find future articles as useful and filling