3 Ways To Turn Your Testimonials Into Money Magnets

There is a psychological phenomenon called the “Autokinetic Effect” and it can help you reach your sales and profit goals. The idea is simple.

Create a group of people and a person’s individuality starts to diminish. Here’s how this plays out: If it’s perceived that the group as a whole feels a certain way about something, then individuals in that group go along with the consensus of the group. The perception that most people in the group feel a certain influences the thinking of the remaining holdouts.

What this means for you is that you must make it a priority to build a portfolio of testimonials. That way you can put “group think” to work for you to influence people to feel that your product or service is worth owning. But getting testimonials is nothing new. What you may not realize is that there are certain things you can do to get more bang for your buck when it comes to testimonials.

First, you want to get quantitative testimonials. Not just any testimonial will do. A quantitative testimonial is more valuable because it’s telling people that your customer experienced a specific benefit, at a certain amount in a certain amount of time.

That’s much more powerful than someone saying, “They offer a great service!” So when you request testimonials from your customers, tell them that you’d like them to mention the specific results your product or service accomplished for them.

Another way to leverage the use of testimonials is to insert specific testimonials in your ad copy where they support a claim being made. Let’s say one of your claims is that your product works fast. If that’s an important benefit, then you would insert a testimonial that explains how fast your service worked … right after that portion of copy to substantiate it.

A third way to make your testimonials more effective is their format. For example, you want to only include the most important portions of a client quote in a testimonial. People really don’t want to read long-winded testimonial, what they want is to see is that someone achieved a certain result.

They want to believe that if it’s happening for others then it may happen for them too. On that same note, it’s a good practice to take a portion of a testimonial – the quantified result and use that as a headline over the testimonial. An example of that may look like:

“They Saved Our Firm $98,324 in Our First Quarter.”

“When we talked with Bob, he listened carefully to our needs and came up with a solution. His solution worked when everything else we’ve tried didn’t. After using their system and they saved our firm $98,324 in our first quarter. Now we’re able to put money towards building a new warehouse. We will definitely continue using this service.” – Tim P. XYZ Company, TX

– Mike