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Testimonial Article:
What's the Big Deal with Testimonials?

By Lewis Prochnau

Everyone, it seems, is trying to harness the power of testimonials. Intuitively we recognize that endorsements of our company, product, or us as a person have influence. These little repositories of personal opinion have real power. A well-placed, well-written testimonial can be the magic pill that seals the deal. I invite you consider the source of this power. Understanding why they work will help us choose how to use them more effectively.

At the heart of your persuasiveness, regardless of your ethics or selling style, is the issue of trust. Your prospects won't become customers, until you secure some measure of their trust. The power of a testimonial is that it quickly channels your prospect's decision process past the issues of price, availability, or even need, to the core of their relationship with you. They engage the prospect in settling the crucial pre-sale issue: Will I trust this person? With a few lines that take only a few moments to read, the best testimonials leave the prospect with feelings of trust.

Here's how it works. When you ask someone to trust you, they're likely to feel an initial skepticism until you can prove yourself trustworthy. They're going to delay the decision until there is more evidence to base it on. You'll recognize it in the often heard, post-pitch response, "Ok, but I want to think about it." Translation: I understand your proposition, but I'm not ready to trust you yet.

However, when a third party indicates that they trust you in a testimonial, your prospect has only two possible responses. They either believe that the author of the testimonial trusts you, or they don't. There are no other factors to weigh, nothing to think about. They either accept the expressed trust, or discredit the testimonial. The "magic" happens when they believe the testimonial. A kind of vicarious trust takes root. They begin to trust you along with the author of the testimonial. There's a gravitational pull to accepting someone else's trust in someone. A testimonial works when the reader accepts that the author trusts you.

In any setting, the credibility of testimony is strongly linked to the credibility of the one giving it. Is this someone who knows what they're talking about? Can I identify with them in some way? Are they familiar to me? Do we have something in common? Are they speaking the language of my trade? Before I even read a testimonial and decide whether I believe what they're saying, I look at who is saying it. I'm looking for clues that they are like me in some way. Not that we should ignore content, but with believing testimonials, content is secondary to familiarity. People trust people. People trust people whom they know the most. People will trust people they know about and they will trust people in positions and situations that they are familiar with. But where a person can neither identify with the source or what they do, trust will be hard to come by. For a testimonial to be effective there must be familiarity.

It makes sense then, to first sort your available testimonials by source, industry, content, and any other way that will help you target them to your prospects. You want a prospect that works in real estate in Iowa, viewing testimonials from other real estate professionals, preferably in Iowa. You want CFO's reading testimonials that fellow CFO's wrote. If your website or newsletter's content is static, then target your testimonials at the prospect profile that is most likely to become a customer. If you have the capability of doing this dynamically, where every visitor or recipient receives a unique selection of testimonials targeted to their profile, so much the better. Either way, aim for establishing familiarity between testimonial source and likely prospect.

The second consideration is veracity. Does the endorsement accurately reflect what you're offering and who you are? Does the testimonial tell the truth? Mixed messages are trust killers. What you said in your value proposition, what your collateral indicates, what others say about you, it must all be content consistent. One way to check the content is to ask, "If this prospect buys on the basis of what they read in this testimonial, will they also be a good source for a testimonial after they use the product?" Better just one credible testimonial that accurately reflects you and your product, than pages of plugs that miss the mark and leave your prospect confused, or misled.

Comprehending what testimonials do, that they are perhaps the shortest route to establishing trust, makes them worth the investment of our time and effort. Testimonials have the power to create the trust we need to close deals. We harness this power to our advantage when we take steps to ensure the source is credible and the content is honest.

Colleen Francis is the Founder and President of Engage Selling Solutions - the creators of Testimonial Director. Learn the 7 testimonial strategies to send your online conversions soaring in this special report: www.TestimonialDirector.com/report.

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