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Steal This "Testimonial-Getting" EXCEL Spreadsheet [DOWNLOAD]

By The Leadpages Team  |  Published Feb 15, 2012  |  Updated Mar 31, 2023
Leadpages Team
By The Leadpages Team
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In this article:

Hello everyone, my name is Clay Collins, and in this episode of the Marketing Show, I am going to give you a system for ensuring that you get a flood of amazing testimonials from your customers and even non-customers, and I’m going to give you this tool that you can see for collecting testimonials and ensuring that every testimonial or potential testimonial that comes your way does not slip through the cracks. You’ve got that to look forward to in this episode of the Marketing Show. So like I said, I’m going to be giving you this tool. It’s a spreadsheet that we used to keep track of testimonials in-house. At the end of this episode, I’m going to tell you how you can download this spreadsheet for free to apply and use in your business. But before we do that, I want to outline the four parts of a killer testimonial and give you a process for ensuring that you collect amazing testimonials from your customers and from non-customer so you are never left without an amazing testimonial for your new coaching program, for your new product, for your new service, for your new software, etcetera. So here are the four parts of a killer testimonial, and you can actually give this to your customers who are looking to give you testimonials or who ask you what should be included in a good testimonial. So part one of a good testimonial is where your customers were before your product. What was their life like before they encountered you and encountered your material and your product? What did things look like on the ground? What were their frustrations? What made their life unbearable, etc., things like that. Part two, the specific transformation that your product provided. If you have a weight loss product, for example, did it take your customer from being 50 pounds overweight to having an 8% body fat level, being able to run a marathon? Do they now have six-pack abs? Are they more comfortable wearing their swimsuit at the beach? You know, do they have a lot more confidence around the opposite sex or same sex, whatever they’re inclined to? What happened as a result of using your product specifically? And the more specifics they provide the better. You want those tangible nitty-gritty details, preferably real stories from their life that illustrate what happened as a result of using your product. Part three, how does your product compare to the competition? And you’re looking for statements like, “I used every other product on the market.” This one was better. The most specific they can be again about how your product outperformed other products, about how your product got them results when other products would not, or just your product being superior. Again, specifics are absolutely key when it comes to testimonials. Finally, you want to know where they are now. What is their life like currently, presently on the ground as a result of having your product? What does their life look like now that they used and implemented and benefited from your product? And with all of these points, points one through four, you want as much biographical data as possible. So if they’re a mother, you know, with three children, who has stress in these four areas of their life, you want that to come out in the testimonial as much by graphical data as possible. Now you could edit that out later, but we’re going to talk about that in just a second. So how do you get killer testimonials? First, ask them by e-mail, you know, if it’s come across your radar that someone has had success with your product, ask them via e-mail where they were before your product, right, all the questions we mentioned before the specific transformation that your product produced, how your product performed relative to the competition, where they are. You can ask them this via e-mail or you can interview them via phone, have it recorded, and transcribed, so you can sort of dig out those details from them. So via e-mail or via recorded phone or Skype conversation, ask them these questions. Again, sometimes, phone is really great because you can tease out those nitty-gritty details. But basically, ask them these questions then either have the phone conversation recorded or take the e-mail and put everything they said together. Compose it, right. Edit out all the fluff. Get out all the stuff that does not belong in that testimonial, so it’s just a powerful stuff compressed into one succinct testimonial where every single line is effective. Remember, this is copy. Like all your other copy, this is copy. So edit that testimonial and get their approval, right. So you’re starting out with a bunch of text, you’re editing that down, get their approval for the edited version of their testimonial, and finally, send them that edited testimonial, and ask them to record a video of them saying the essence of what’s in that edited testimonial. They don’t need to read it word for word like a script, but they should look over how you edited what they said, and they should give you a video testimonial that basically reiterates what is in that edited text. So why are we asking for video, right. Why is the end product of all this a video testimonial? Well, here’s why. Video is incredibly powerful. When someone can see a real person who benefited from your product and you hear them saying good things about you, it’s much more believable, but not only that, a video testimonial can be turned into an audio testimonial, and can be turned into a text testimonial, right. You can have that video testimonial transcribed. So a video testimonial can be turned into an audio testimonial, and an audio testimonial can be turned into a text testimonial. So the first best kind of testimonial is a video testimonial because it can be turned into audio and text. An audio testimonial is the second best type because it can be turned into text, and a text testimonial is the third best type of testimonial. Anyway, since you wait into the end, I’m going to give you this spreadsheet that we use to keep track of testimonials that come our way. So if someone says something good about us or our products or anything about us on Twitter, on Facebook, in a blog, comment in one of our forums, via a private e-mail, any of those places, if someone says something good about us, that is recorded by our company. So what do we keep in this spreadsheet so that nothing slips through the cracks. The first thing is their name. What is the name of the person that said something good about us? Second, what is the date? What is the date of the testimonial? When did they say that on Twitter? When did they put that in a blog comment? When did they send this to us via e-mail, etc.? Next is the e-mail. What is their e-mail address if we have this? Often, we don’t have this e-mail address, but you know, we just hear that someone said something good, or you know, we read it on Twitter, but we don’t necessarily have this. So if we have this, we’ll put this here. Next, what is the testimonial? What did they say? And here, we’ll put the long version of that testimonial, right? So this isn’t the edited version of the testimonial. It’s the long version. Finally, where was this left? Where did they say this? Did they say this in a public forum? Did they say this in a private e-mail? Did they say on a mentorship call or during a private coaching call? Also, what was the testimonial about? Was it about, you know, for us? Was it about the interactive offer? Was it about the marketing program? Was it about the marketing show? Was it about private coaching, you know? What was the testimonial in regards to? And finally, do we have permission to use the testimonial publicly? Anyway, our entire staff has access to this spreadsheet. This is a small sample of it. There’s hundreds of things in here at this point, but our entire staff has access to this spreadsheet, and whenever anything comes across our path that we want to take note of, we put it here. And often, we follow up with people and we take them through that interview series that I showed you earlier in this Marketing Show episode. So you can download this spreadsheet by opting on the right side of this video, and I will send it to you via e-mail, and you’ll have that, and you’ll be able to make sure that no testimonial ever slips through your cracks. Anyway, that wraps us up for today’s episode of the Marketing Show. If you enjoyed this material and benefited in any way, I would be incredibly grateful if you would share it on Facebook, and share it on Twitter, and share it anywhere you feel someone would benefit from this information. My name is Clay Collins, and thank you so much for watching the Marketing Show. I’ll talk to you next week. Good bye.

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Leadpages Team
By The Leadpages Team
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