A testimonial is incredibly powerful as it provides something called social proof.

Social proof is the ability to show your customers in some way that your product or service has benefited others that have purchased from you, and that your marketing and advertising is not false or misleading in any way.

An example of social proof is the fact that you are far more likely to purchase something recommended to you by a trusted source, perhaps a family member or friend. The idea is that proof of benefits is provided from a non bias source that will result in building credibility for your business.

They come in many formats such as endorsements, written testimonials, photographs of happy customers, case studies etc.

Testimonials are seriously underrated and under used in offline marketing since it’s not always obvious how to go about getting them in front of your customers.

On the internet testimonials are always used by marketers or business that understand good marketing, since it’s very easy to show written testimonials on a website or sales letter.

But how to do this in a brick and mortar business?

I challenge you to begin immediately brainstorming how to get testimonials and other forms of social proof in front of your customers. This will always depend entirely on your business, and how you interact with your customers, and what marketing materials you use.

A good example is the car salesman that fills his sales booth with photographs of happy customers, in many cases, the same customer in many photos show additional vehicle purchases. This shows “proof” that the salesman is selling good deals and is trustworthy, otherwise why did they buy from him multiple times?

For the fitness trainer, displaying before and after photo’s of training customers in your office or training area is incredibly powerful and will result in many more sales due to direct proof of the effectiveness of your service right in front of their eyes.

With regards to advertising, you could display a written testimonial underneath or in between your advertising message, whether it be print advertising, brochures or storefront displays.

This is extremely powerful yet many physical businesses never make use of the testimonial.

So lets quickly summarize why testimonials are so effective:

• Testimonials build trust. They tell prospects that other customers had a positive experience with your product or service.
• Testimonials aren’t “salesy” or part of your sales message. They are written by someone else in another “voice” and can lend great credibility to any existing sales message.
• Testimonials overcome skepticism and can convince even your most hard sell customers who may never had made a purchase from you otherwise.

Let’s now discuss how to go about getting testimonials:

Firstly, simply start asking for testimonials. I’m sure you must know who your happy customers are, and what success they have had with using your product or service.

Simply call them up and ask for a verbal (you can record this with your phone) or a written testimonial and ask them if they would allow you to use their testimonials in your marketing. Most happy customers won’t have a problem with this at all.

Start taking photo’s of happy customers with your products. Not possible in every business type, but see if this can work for you.

In a service business, develop case studies describing how you managed to solve the customer’s problem. Make sure to use customer quotes in the case study and obtain their signature if possible.

Get a website (check here how to do this easily and cheaply) and add your testimonials there. Almost everybody has a website these days and customers or prospects find it easy to visit a website to investigate a potential business they want to purchase from.

In the health business it’s always very effective to run competitions to see who will get the most results from your product or service, or who makes use of it the most etc. Obviously the terms of the competition is making use of perhaps the top 5 winner’s results in your marketing.

Make sure you get and use the right kind of testimonials:

Here’s an example of a glowing, but ultimately ineffective testimonial:

“I love this product! I can’t get enough! I’m so glad I bought your stuff and I’ll definitely be back to get more!”

What could be wrong with that? It sounds like you have a happy customer on your hands!

But what does this testimonial really tell your visitors? Does it prove the product works, or explain exactly how your customer benefited from using it? While the feedback is definitely positive, the testimonial doesn’t provide enough detail to have any real impact on your prospects.

Here’s an example of the kind of effective, benefits-driven testimonial that’ll turn a prospect into a customer:

“I used the methods you told me to use, and in 3 weeks I’ve lost over 5lbs! The methods are easy to use and don’t even take up much time at all!”

This testimonial shows benefits from the product and speaks to the kind of results the prospect may want to see for them. I testimonial must always include as many benefits as possible.

Make sure the testimonial backs up the claims made in your marketing, as closely as possible. Inconsistencies will raise warning flags.

Next, make sure the testimonial comes from somebody or some business they can relate to. If your selling products for aging, try to include the age of the person who provides the testimonial or the type of industry you are targeting in your marketing (if the testimonial is from another business).

Make sure the testimonials are credible and that you include as much personal details as you can (with permission of course), names, location, age contact details, whatever else is appropriate.

So, why not get started right away and gather as many testimonials as you can. It’s usually 100% free and will have incredible impact on your business!

If you already have an existing business that is not entirely internet based, then this is almost always the case.

The incoming call is your first contact point with a new prospective customer and is extremely critical in obtaining the desired result.

In most cases, a sale is not made over the phone, but every business has a desired action they would like the customer to make, as a result of the conversation. Eg. Go to the physical store, got to the web address, fax an order form here, request a brochure etc).

This means your conversation needs to be scripted to maximize the number of customers that take your desired action.

A call conversation is just as critical as your advertising, or any other marketing materials you may have. There is no point in getting leads if you can get them to take your action once they have made the call.

If you are not already aware, copywriters who write advertising, as well as advertising firms get paid a lot. This is because ad writing is a skill, a unique talent that not everybody has.

Good advertising makes business big money, and that’s why business pay them big money in return.

The reason why I stress this is because you need to think of your incoming call as an opportunity to leverage a well written conversation script that gets the caller to take your action.

You need to think of it as a very valuable marketing contact point, and you should invest in it as such, exactly like you would with any advertising or marketing materials.

Its very common for a 2 page incoming call script to be sold to companies for up to R50k, simply because the ROI is worth it.

Now of course you may not be in a position to buy a custom script, or have one professionally written, but it was important for me to stress the importance of your call script, and the massive impact it can have on your sales.

Now, I’m not a copywriter myself or a professional salesman, so I won’t presume to tell you how to put together a good sales script. For now I will simply provide some resources where you can get once written specifically for your business.