Today I’m sharing a hyper-practical growth tactic you can use to win more customers for your service business, plus a few helpful links if you want to go deeper.
How to use testimonials to turn cold prospects into motivated buyers (and a downloadable template to make this easy to implement).
Big headline aside, selling to people who don’t know you is hard. One thing that consistently made it easier during my freelance days was collecting real, high-quality testimonials that genuinely built trust with prospects.
And I don’t mean the generic “I liked working with you” kind. I mean clear, specific, confidence-building testimonials that make prospects think, “This is exactly what I need,” like this:
Now let’s get straight into the goodies.
Here’s our done-for-you testimonial template that you can grab right now and start sharing with your current and past customers to get standout testimonials that convert future prospects into buyers:
👉Click here to get it (no download required)
But I won’t just hand you a fish without teaching you how to cook it. So here is a step-by-step process with what to do next:
Open the link: Click the link above to open the testimonial template. Once inside, in the top-left corner in the toolbar, click on File > Make a Copy to save your own, editable version of the template.
Contact customers: Next, send off your testimonial requests. You can either do this manually by reaching out to each of your customers individually, or send it off in mass to your entire email list. If you choose the automatic route, consider your response late to be lower, as individual, manual emails + personalization will get you more responses.
Get 3 testimonials: Continue this process of reaching out to customers until you have at least three amazing testimonials. It’s nice to have more than three testimonials, but having three solid, outstanding testimonials is all most businesses need to display to give prospects the assurance they need to hop over that credit card finish line.
Follow up: After you contact each customer, write their name and email into a spreadsheet and record the date you contacted them. If you don’t get a response, wait 5 business days from when you contacted them and reach out again by replying to your original sent email with a follow up message. Keep it simple. I like:
“Hey [first_name], I know you’re super busy so just bumping this to the top of your inbox.”
Display testimonials: Collect your testimonials and proudly display them on your website. Here’s an example:
Pop champagne: Revel in the knowledge that your shiny new testimonials mean your business is one step closer to converting prospects into real paying customers.
Link Love
Here are a few links to help you understand the importance of testimonials and why you should always be updating them.
So, swap out whatever night time murder mystery detective novel you’re reading through and check these out instead:
👉 Hubspot’s Ultimate Guide to Cutomer Testimonials: A powerfus starting point for both why you need testimonials and how to collect great testimonials for your business.
👉 Neil Patel’s Testimonials Best Practices: Straight from Neil Patel himself, check out his take on testimonials, why you need them, and how to get them for your business.
👉 The Perfect Testimonial Template: In case you missed it above, here’s our very own testimonial template that we encourage you to use when collecting authentic, trust-building testimonials for your business.
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