My Addicting Step-by-Step Process To Get Tons Of Glowing Testimonials From Your Freelance Clients

“There is no advertisement as powerful as a positive reputation traveling fast.” ~Brian Koslow
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Ryan Waggoner
I teach freelancers to be unstoppable.
Last updated August 14, 2016 — 10 minute read

You may read this article HERE in its entirety on Ryan Waggoner’s website

We all know that testimonials are an important part of marketing. Humans are social animals and social proof is a powerful signal that can turn a prospect from a skeptic to an enthusiastic buyer.

The problem is that actually getting good testimonials is a pain, which is why a lot of freelancers don’t bother, or have really boring, vague testimonials to share.

Well, no more!

In this article, I’m going to give you my exact process to get great testimonials from your clients.

But more importantly, this method is easy, educational, and will be a serious confidence booster.

Actually, I’d go further than that.

This is addicting.

Do this a few times and you’ll be hooked, I guarantee.

What makes a great testimonial

Great testimonials are ones where prospects can see themselves in the shoes of the person who wrote the testimonial. The closer their situations and the more similar their problems-to-be-solved are, the better.

As a result, this means that great testimonials should be:

detailed about the person writing them,
the problems they were facing,
the doubts they had about buying,
and the outcome that they experienced.

This also means that great testimonials are often long.

For example, a mediocre testimonial for an accountant would be something like this:

“Tim did a great job setting up our accounting systems, which helped us improve our bottom line. I would highly recommend him.”

Compare that to this:

“I run a small marketing agency with 15 employees and our accounting systems were starting to fall apart at the seams.

We have a growing sales team that’s racking up a lot of travel expenses, and the different pricing models we offer have grown in number and complexity.

As a result, it was becoming increasingly difficult to get an idea of how the business was doing, how the money was flowing around, and where there was room for improvement.

When I first talked to Tim, I was blown away with the level of experience he had working with businesses just like ours. It was almost like he knew my frustrations before I voiced them.

Of course, I was nervous about the large financial investment involved in overhauling our accounting systems, but more than that, I was unsure of how the change would impact our day-to-day operations. Most of all, I wanted to get it right the first time so we wouldn’t have to go through this process again.

Tim answered all my questions in a very straightforward way and really put my mind at ease that the investment would be the best move we could make for the long-term health of the business.

Now six months after the transition, I can’t begin to describe the impact that his work has had on our firm. Not only do we have the ability to pull the kinds of reports we need, Tim’s guidance and counsel helped us find a number of areas that were costing us both financially and emotionally. Once we cleaned those up, the whole business seems to run twice as smoothly now as it did when our profits were much lower.

My whole team is in love with Tim for the hard work he put into putting our business on this solid foundation for growth.”

Ok, that’s obviously much longer, but that’s because we have a much clearer picture of who the buyer is, what problems she was facing, what her purchase hesitations were, and what the ultimate outcome was.

The wrong way to get testimonials

Most people who are faced with getting testimonials from clients do one of two things:

They don’t (this was me for many years)
At the end of the project, they send a tepid email with something like this:

Hi client,

I enjoyed working with you and I hope you feel the same. Would you mind writing up a testimonial for me?

Ryan

Snooze-fest.

The problem with this approach is that you generally get back a very vague, fluffy testimonial:

“Ryan was great to work with, and I’d highly recommend him to anyone considering hiring him!”

Ok, not terrible and I’ll take it, but…

It’s really not great, as we discussed above.

What’s worse is that often you won’t even get this much. People are busy and writing testimonials isn’t fun or easy, so it often falls through the cracks.

The dishonest way to get testimonials

Due to the difficulty of getting great testimonials out of clients (or getting any at all), I’ve heard marketers actually recommend writing your own testimonials and sending them to the client for approval.

This is flat out unethical, and there’s an easy way to tell: would you want your prospective clients to know that all your glowing testimonials came out of a process like this?

I don’t think so.

A better approach

A better approach is to go to the client with a list of questions about why they hired you, how the experience was, what the ultimate outcome of the project was, etc.