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Talking Testimonials: The good, the bad, and the ugly.
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May 25, 2022
I visit with copywriter Sam Grover as we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly testimonials. Sam's Website: https://www.samgrover.co.nz/ Sam's email newsletter sign up page: https://www.samgrover.co.nz/newsletter Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sambgrover/ Sam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sambgrover
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hey everyone this is uh todd and welcome to the messaging matters show i do
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believe i'm live um if you are joining us and you are in the
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youtube chat hey uh just so that we know that we're alive
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because sometimes it's hard to tell in these things but i am happy to have sam grover from
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new zealand a copywriter conversion copywriter and sam if you wouldn't mind take a moment just to tell us a little
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bit about yourself sure um hi everyone i'm sam grover i'm a
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copywriter and like todd said i focus on
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specifically landing pages and home pages often for software companies um
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lots of sas companies and what i do is i really i really focus on the messaging and
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positioning side of copywriting and really i'm not a big tone of voice guy or um
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or a big wordsmith but rather i'm i focus more on on making sure you're
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talking about the right things that are going to actually be compelling to your audience and just getting that as clear and
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straightforward as possible i work with a lot of sas companies a decent number of professional services
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companies and i used to work with quite a lot of financial services companies but i've kind of moved away from them a bit um
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because they can be they can be hard work yeah so sam and i
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we've kind of began i don't know in the last six months or so chatting pretty
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regularly on linkedin and i'm like hey sam you gotta check this out and he's like okay and we have these really good
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conversations and so the other day a while back actually uh i don't know i
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guess i was just frustrated about testimonials and i said something to him and i think it
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resonated and next thing i know i'm like hey you want to get on a messaging matters and talk about testimonials and
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geek out about it he said yeah sure so a while back i did a
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project uh on on us on a website working on the page and the company was
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a wordpress premium plug-in actually freemium plug-in i guess what you call it where they have a free model and then
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they have the premium model and um they had
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uh so a lot what a lot of companies do were in that situation will they get a lot of um
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reviews testimonials if you will reviews in the report wordpress repository and i'm sure it's similar with other sas you
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know companies and some of the sas review platforms are out there i think sam's
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going to talk about some of that here in a bit but um so they put all a bunch of them on this
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page and also on another page and several of them were obviously from the repository because
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the the name was a username and in some cases an icon i looked like a robot or
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something like that and i just and then and then sometimes they didn't say much so
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they were obviously kind of doing the whole more is better type of thing and
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uh as well and i don't like i don't think it's very helpful to have a
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testimonial like that a review like that on a website um where you know it's like oh username
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one two three and here's my robot icon who is that why should i listen to them
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um so i was chatting with sam about it and so i'm going to let him take it away but
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we're going to talk about as i say testimonials the good bad and the ugly and he's got some
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um examples of all of those i believe uh for us tonight
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sure so yeah i think about testimonials a lot because i because they're
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something that can really make or break a landing page because they're
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because they're social proof they're they're they're somebody like your audience like
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the person reading your page telling telling you why they use the product and and what value they got out of it so
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there's actually so there's two elements to that one is the testimonials themselves and that's the the quote
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um but then there's also the sort of the numbers aspect of the of social proof which i think that's like like you were
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saying todd that's where a lot of this can kind of fall over because you might have you know
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400 people who use your you know 400 4 000 400 000 who cares people who use
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your product and actually the real value in that is to say 400 000 people use a product
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putting 400 000 vague testimonials is not going to achieve that as well as just putting a number you know joining
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400 000 other people so i think that's where people get a bit unstuck they think okay we need to show
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that there's lots of people using this product that lots of people trust it so let's put lots and lots of testimonials
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from review sites and stuff like that but it's actually two different we're achieving two different things one
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is showing that your products heavily used and the other is showing specifically why a person like you uses
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it so i think that's where um a lot of companies make the mistake of um
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you know one the social proof side of just showing a big number that's quantity and there's value in that and
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the other one the testimonial side is that's more of a quality conversation so i think you want to make sure that
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they're both um you have those split out you say on one part of your page
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x number of people use us and the other part of the page here's here's todd jones copywriter and here's
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why he uses this and then put a nice quote maybe with a picture or something like that
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yeah yeah yeah that's right and here's one of them and here's why and here's why he
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loves it um so
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i think where to go from there um let's talk about some of the the you know we talked about the the good bad and ugly
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and the first one that you mentioned in the document is vague testimonials i
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love working with x and would recommend it to anyone so can you tell us why that might not be the best testimonial for a
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website yeah for sure and i can give a i'll give an example and i hope that i hope it doesn't bother them but
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i for months i was seeing this ad on twitter for a sas company chargify
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and it was just a nice picture of one of their customers and a testimonial quote
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and the quote was i would strongly recommend chargeify to all growing b2b sas businesses
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and just every time i saw it it's like i thought all you've told me is that it's good for
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b2b sas businesses which is you know that's there's some value there and that you would recommend it but i don't know
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i don't know who you are and i don't know why you would recommend it
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and this ad just came up over and over again and so it kind of gave me a bit of a brain worm around this and and the
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more i looked around you know i saw this was so common you would get these testimonial quotes that just say
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um i use this app and i love it i use this product and i love it and you should too
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but it's not getting but i think that's not that effective unless you get into the why
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and i'm not really sure why companies do this i think it might be you know companies can get really fixated on
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on being very concise so they might have a longer testimonial quote or a longer conversation with somebody let's cut it
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down to as few words as possible but i think when you do that you kind of you kind of lose something if you cut
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out too much um and so just to continue on that i
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like i said i got a real brain warm around it so i started looking looking around charged by his website
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and actually found a whole page full of testimonial quotes and let me read you one of them
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a total game changer we turned a six-hour weekly reporting project into a
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10 second dashboard refresh that is an awesome testimonial quote
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because that is that is telling people exactly what value they
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got out of using chargify you know turning a six-hour project a full a person's full day of time
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into a 10-second dashboard refresh where you just press a button i mean that's that's huge value so
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i guess my advice for anyone trying to parse out testimonial quotes would be to try to err on the side of
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that second one and get into that real specific benefit statement um because
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even though it is more words i mean i'm not going to count them on a live but it is a bit longer
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but i think it says so much more and i think it also the other thing is
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someone saying i recommend this product unless there's somebody who whose recommendation carries weight in and of
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itself just because they're you know an influencer or something like that so that reputation doesn't do much you
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know i was going to say because i'm thinking about a client's website she's a cleaner
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and um so a lot of her testimonials and and it's not just with her but a lot of
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local type company service based companies would be like hey i recommend her or she's highly recommended whatever
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in a certain context that can have immense value right if if i'm somebody
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that you know really well and you trust really well
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then i could say you know use tennessee trending cleaning services i highly
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recommend them that can have a huge benefit uh so i think you know in some cases it could be
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fine now when i think about benefit right that's always a um
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we talked about us copywriters like talk about uni marketers unique value proposition unique sales all that kind
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of stuff and of course when you say that to the average business owner most of them their eyes glaze over
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and rightly so right they don't know the terminology but one thing that helped me a lot was uh talia wolff a conversion
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rate optimization queen i call her um talked about um desired outcome she replaced benefit
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with desired outcome fantastic phrase um and i've started calling unique value benefits or
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propositions or whatever something different to my customers is as as much as i can
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whether it's a benefit statement or something try to but but i think um i kind of got away
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from what you were talking about yeah having a benefit in the testimonial kind of lifts the vagueness but i think
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you're right in some circumstances um saying i highly recommend something
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is immensely beneficial but certainly in in some of the the people we work with
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maybe not as much as maybe for my friend crystal so yeah i think it's gonna come down also
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to who's doing the recommending so if um if it's someone who they can
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who your target customer can can relate to or someone whose name they recognize you know if one of my friends
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said i highly recommend this cleaner i wouldn't say can you be more specific i would say oh great you're my friend i know like and trust you exactly um
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but i think that when it's and i might be making a mistake about it when i'm looking at the charge if i add
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maybe the person who they're quoting is actually is that person to their target audience but i just don't know that yeah
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it does have come down to mark who's on the live i think he's still on the live um he actually has one of these
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wordpress premium products and if you go to his website some of the testimonials right up front
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and center are well-known influencers in the workplace space so that's a good example of using somebody
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that's well known it's actually a good segue into um into
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one of the other um just another good example that i came
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across which is um the time tracking website uh time time tracking product
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toggle has on their website a testimonial quote from the tennis player serena williams serena
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yeah and i um i find that kind of fascinating because
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because um toggles people who buy toggle are not
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professional test players you know it's great to have a recognizable name out there but i i i do wonder
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how much a potential toggle customer is going to connect is going to get value out of
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that testimonial quote even if they recognize the name serena williams you know i want to know more behind this
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like is serena using the product and how is she using the product it might be a very good story actually but
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because i mentioned it on twitter and i think toggle must have name searching because they replied to me and um
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and sent me a link to uh a fast company article that was all about how she uses toggle
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um and it was interesting you know she um she uses to she uses it to track you
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know she's a high performance athlete so she uses it to track essentially her every move um uh and and keeps track of how much time
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she's spending with her family and making sure she's um doing this that and the other it was an interesting article and i think it
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probably has good pr value i just wondered you know i think it was like you said
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before about um wordpress influencers and a recognizable name i think that the recognizable name is one thing but
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that also needs to be recognizable and and have um credibility in the space that you're
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that your customers are in um that sounds like
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that sounds like something you'd use for like a case study about somebody outside
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the what you would normally think uses toggle who uses it like a use case type study you know okay we're here we have a
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high performance professional athlete using toggle on this side she does that'll be a very interesting read and
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you know maybe they are trying to move into more of the lifestyle arena that's that's interesting too
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yeah they might be um yeah i do i think it is it's a really that's a
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really useful caveat for all these kind of things you know it's it's so easy to look at something and say that's that's
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wrong but i don't know their strategy i don't know what they're trying to do you know um but just at first glance i thought
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that's interesting and i think you're right that especially from a sort of pr point of view you know if you can
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get a case study about about a highly recognizable person um using your
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product you know it's going to be easier to get that into the press and and that's exactly what they did you know they got into fast company and i'm sure
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they got a lot of um brand uplift from that but i just yeah i do wonder how much that's going to
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actually work for conversion down the down the pointy end of the of the funnel
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you know unless they're uh tracking it and they report back to us i guess we'll never know yeah yeah so if you're listening toggle
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feel free to yeah give me a call let me know what's up yeah let's know what happened here um and maybe put us in touch with serena
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maybe we put her on the messaging matter show and go
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so um well i've already got you know one famous person on sam grover so of course
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yeah i have a couple lined up for the next two months and i'll remind me to talk about that as we finish up but go ahead
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go ahead with the rest of the that's your interesting one um
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one one big one that applies to testimonials and also case studies actually is um
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well if we go a step back you know when you get a testimonial you you're going to have a conversation with
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a customer and ask and you know either whether it's through email or on the phone or whatever
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and what a lot of companies do is they they have their sort of favorite customers the the ones who
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who you know they're usually early customers they they love everything the company does
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so those are really um you know it seems fairly obvious that
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those would be the ones you use for a case study or testimonial because they're going to be open to it they're going to be willing to spend the time
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and and it's a and it's a good strategy but the the downside is that you can get kind of
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caught up in this love fest where you know you have someone who loves your
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product and uses it every day and can't get enough of it and you say why do you you know why do you use our product
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that you love so much and then and they'll actually because it's such an ingrained part of their
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life and because they are so keen on it the testimonial quote actually won't be
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that good off of without digging in a bit because they'll say something like oh i just couldn't
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live without it i um i use it every day and i couldn't imagine life without it um
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you know things yeah i just i can't get enough of it i can't wait for the next release i go to every webinar oh you know just it's a
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it's a love fest and when you're on the phone with someone like that it's actually so easy for me at least
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to um to get completely caught up in it be like i'm so glad you love it tell me more tell me more and it's just and
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they're going on and on and then you hang up the phone and you realize i didn't get anything
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yeah all i got was um the fact that this person loves our product
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so what you need to do is is is go that next step deeper and just ask
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why over and over again you know why do you love it you know you use it every day why do you use it every day
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not something else what were you using before uh to solve this problem
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um what does what did your life look like before day to day and what does it look like now
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you know all these sort of deeper questions that are going to are going to unearth the real um meaty
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testimonial quotes and i i mean i'm like you know i might be highlighting my own
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weaknesses in that i have to work really hard to do that especially when i'm on the phone with somebody who's super enthusiastic and um
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and super committed to the thing that i'm that i'm writing about um
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it's easy to think the conversation is going so well because everyone's so happy but you have to think you have to think that level deeper of like okay
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what what information do i want from this um and am i getting it because otherwise
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you're gonna walk away with um with just a really enthusiastic quote but not one that gets anyone over the line
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yeah i think um in anybody who's in the sas space may may follow a case study
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buddy um with our friend joe clucky and um you know he has said in some of this
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content that hey look uh do you want to do one of our case studies and it will actually
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yield lots of benefits for you including testimonials maybe a weightier testimony
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testimonial if you will so i would think you know maybe with a superfan like that just to keep from getting caught up into
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that vortex of happiness maybe if you have the budget to
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uh allow somebody like you know joel's company to do a test a case study and
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turn it into something more i like to call them success stories uh customer success stories because i don't
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case study is can the connotation of case studies for me is like uh
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endless amounts of data with no context you know uh but you get somebody like joel's company where his uh interviewers
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are skilled in doing this um you could really you could come up with more than a case study you can come
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up with um various snippets uh of various uh micro content out of
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that so um yeah i think something like um when you have a super duper fan
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um maybe that might be a better option i don't know what do you think about that
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well i think yeah whether you're whether you're hiring whether you're hiring them to do it or doing it yourself i think if you've um
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if you've got someone on the phone to talk about your product and how much they love it you may as well go a couple levels
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beyond just the testimonial court anyway because you because it's kind of a fixed time cost of having
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a conversation with them either way so you're spending that time so you may as well create some more
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content beyond just the um testimonial yeah hey so um i'm sorry did you you wanna
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add something else oh yeah i was just gonna say that um you know it's actually a good way to think of it rather than say we need to
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get some testimonials for our website um say say we want to get some case studies
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for our our marketing material in general and then from those case studies we'll pull some testimonials
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because it's not a huge amount i mean you have to write the whole thing but you're still doing the same interview
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you're still doing the coordinating and all that stuff so you may as well get as much out of it as you can if you don't have time yet definitely
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higher case study buddy i used to do them but now i just refer everyone to joel
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especially in the the sas space that's just that's what they really uh
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major on um so getting testimonials that you know and
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that can be a challenge in and of itself i mean you know maybe a service like a cleaning
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company you know we we send a link to google reviews right to the customer the
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customer goes and leaves review that's understandable makes sense but when you're maybe doing a b2b company and you
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need a uh more of a testimonial what are some trick i almost say tricks what are some
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ways that you can get testimonials from those supervans
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yeah i mean i think the because you don't need heaps and heaps of them
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i think the key is to to have conversations with them
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and you know like we talked about before you can do a case study but even um outside of that just um
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just do customer research conversations um and and
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probably don't treat it as a to an extent don't treat it as a as a testimonial mining exercise but rather
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treat it as an information gathering exercise which you're probably going to be doing for
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your if you're putting together a new landing page or home page you're almost certainly going to be doing that anyway
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um so i think um just
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get some customers on the phone and record the conversation and and just really do that stuff i was talking about
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before of diving into the problems they had and how they solved them and things like that and and if you just have these
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sort of organic conversations the testimonial quotes will bubble up from that
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um the key is making sure you're asking the right questions to get good detailed information but it's like it's a
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balancing act too because you it's very obvious when someone is just having a conversation trying to get a
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testimonial quote you know um so treat it more as i'm trying to get good information from you about whether
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it's good or bad and um whether sorry whether it's positive or negative about our product and
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and as a byproduct of that conversation some you know i might get some some good testimonials but i think you
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just have to be have your head on a bit of a swivel for them and also be making sure you're asking
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good direct um specific questions yeah i think sometimes you ask us
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question and people tend to give short one land answers and not know and they're maybe
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they're searching for words and one thing i've decided that may make things a little bit easier
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and i pitched this to my persona friend and she thought it was a good idea as well at least she acted like she did
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tell me the story of why you needed to use our product what was going on
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when you throw the word story in there people quit worrying about the words they're trying to choose oh we're trying
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to say something professional we're trying to say something marketing like they just launching a story and when you
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do that it all comes out and you got you know that so if you give them permission
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to tell the story i think they will give you more than maybe they would because i think we
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tend to be on alert whenever you know oh well sam wants to hear some kind of you know
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cool answer in one line or less no no i'm saying wants to hear the story
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yeah we need the story because anyway that that's just something i've thought of in the last few months and
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for customer research in general but um certainly for you know i think in this context would
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work as well maybe yeah a big one i ask is
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i think that story angle is a really smart one i think the big one i often ask is you
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know tell me what was happening in your business but i think adding that word story really really helps to frame what you're
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looking for gives the permission to say everything you know it was a warm day the bird was chirping in the backyard i want to hear
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it yeah because it doesn't need to be even if you're going to end up with one line it doesn't need to be one line of content from them you know it's your job
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to compare that exactly exactly you take all the words and you go you pull out you know what was needed
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but sometimes to get to that line you have to give them permission to tell it
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all right yeah because if they're trying to come up with that line then they'll inevitably box themselves in and not
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give you what you want so if you if you use that word story another way to use
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storytelling in your business brought to you by todd anyway um i mean uh you know it's
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but but really i mean it's just like you're sitting around you know how you have a a family dinner at the holidays and you
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remember that time when we were in ninth grade and we played
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sweat band ball you know as a game my brother and i invented in the summer so past the
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summers and in northern arkansas sweat bin ball we took i mean this is a real
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deal right two sweat bands and kind of rolled them up into a ball and we used a tennis racquet for a bat and yep
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yeah yeah so you know we tell all these stories and and i think if you give permission to tell the story i tell it
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all and you'll find your golden nugget in there there so you kind of like doing the podcast right
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for sure yeah well it makes me think of another another thing that took me a long time
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to learn was um was give people
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you know when you're on a conversation a case study or testimonial conversation with somebody or just customer research
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be very cognizant of the fact that it takes time to get comfortable you know i've found in many conversations that
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you know schedule 30 minutes and then if i don't i've made the mistake of just launching
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into my sort of in-depth questions and
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it actually takes you know 20 of those 30 minutes for people to get comfortable with me and happy to to to actually
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start talking um so i think just really working on on that sort of rapport building and you
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know don't be afraid to make a little bit of small talk and stuff like that and that's what and and that's when you'll start to get
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good information because if people aren't comfortable talking to you that's when you get those you get lots of sort of chair wiggling
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and um and one word answers and nervousness and you're not gonna get anything good you need to let let people sort of
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get comfortable and then and then they'll start giving you the best so let me let me go ahead and ask you this since you brought that up what do you
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what kind of things do you recommend what do you do to help people get comfortable with you in that 20 minutes
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i feel like we're just now getting comfortable with each other in this conversation yeah it's um
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i mean i just i just really because i i can be i can be very um
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sort of goal oriented in that like i've got my 30 minutes i need this information right now go go
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so i really have to work on myself to you know don't be afraid to just chat for a few minutes you know how many kids
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you got all that kind of stuff you know spend some time doing that
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um don't feel like you need you know i'm also very conscious of like oh they've given me this time i need to make sure
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i'm not wasting their time but but there's a give and take there you know just being conscious of that um
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that you can you know ask people a question that's not directly related to what you're um
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what you're talking about on the call um you know just basic how's your day going type stuff really just it's funny like
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the kind of stuff that you would do that i would do without even thinking about it if i was meeting someone for a
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coffee or having a beer with them even if it was with a work outcome in mind but that i have to really
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really work hard to make sure i do when i'm on a zoom call it's just something funny about the about the medium
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makes it for me makes it harder so i guess yeah my answer is is um
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yeah just do some small talk talk about some stuff that's not related to the to the underlying
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goal and and keep an eye on people's keep an eye on people's body language it'll tell you a lot you know like i
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said before about turning in the chair you know if people are swiveling around in their chair don't get into your um
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into your your goal-oriented questions yet talk about something else for a little
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while just until they're you know a little bit more laid back and ready when i used to do the copy chat show
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which is kind of precursor to messaging matters if you go back and look at some of those i don't know if you have or not
31:27
but they're they're on the same channel and um i i didn't decide to do it this time
31:33
with messaging matters but um i might reinstitute some but i would do what i call getting an ou section i'd
31:41
call it a lightning round like 10 questions and sometimes i'd switch them up and they were showing like if you
31:46
were a superhero who would you be yeah what what what is your favorite dessert you know just little questions like that
31:53
which everybody has some kind of opinion on right cookies or cake would you like you know favorite musician you know whatever you
32:00
know and um actually mark and i've been talking about bruce hornsby a lot on
32:05
facebook so uh but you know when you you know it just kind of helps
32:11
open up a little bit right you know without being too inherently personal
32:16
um yeah maybe even better than how many kids you have unless they bring that up then they bring that up well tell me
32:22
about your kids what you know what are their names you know yeah um but you know someone right off the bat that's
32:28
for sure no yeah yeah so you know you got to be careful so uh you can these are kind of questions you're like not
32:33
intimidating but at the same time helps them tell you a little bit about themselves right
32:39
and um i guess maybe if you go into one of those uh meetings with three i always like three because it's
32:45
memorable um so three questions that you can
32:50
can base that part of the conversation on uh you can mix it up or use the same
32:56
ones but you might take stock of who the person is you know there may be something about them
33:02
that you know like you know based on who they are like if i was chatting with mark would
33:08
probably start with bruce hornsby in the range you know [Music] just because i know that about him if
33:14
you can say uh you know if i met with you it might be okay so what's the latest in
33:19
copyrighting news you know or something like that uh you know so
33:24
you can tailor that to the person you can do that on the fly just by observation right
33:29
um if you can tell somebody is into something or off the bat um
33:35
so you can that helps kind of open the conversation open the between you and the person up
33:41
and uh but i think the big part being obviously we're gonna get the review type testimonials right
33:47
the the ones that are gonna be vague and maybe not as good and so forth and they're going to be they're going to
33:53
live a lot of those are going to live on g2 they're going to live on facebook and they're going to live on google uh
33:58
business profile and and that's fine we still need those right but the ones
34:04
that you're putting on the website or on the main page you know maybe that unless they hand you
34:11
one right uh i've had a couple people write me off a really stellar testimony
34:17
i'm like i can't wait to put that on my website um but you know um maybe it would be
34:24
a zoom chat or a in person chat the reason i like a like a zoom or a
34:30
google chat is you can actually hit record if you can't remember what they say you
34:35
hit record transcribe it pull it up um you mentioned in the notes something
34:41
about possibly writing out a testimonial and then having to prove it i've heard of people doing that as well have you
34:48
tried that before um i've um
34:54
begrudgingly once and before i was on my own in a full-time job i do not
35:02
i'm not a fan that's for sure yeah um i think
35:08
i think there's certain times it's that it can be beneficial maybe the person
35:14
they trust you immensely and they don't feel like they're a very good communicator
35:19
and you kind of know enough about them to know kind of like what they would say and what the results were if you could put that together and get
35:26
their approval i think it's a win-win um that's not something i'm with you i wouldn't want to do that with
35:33
you know a large percentage of my testimonials but if you have a a customer who maybe
35:40
maybe is time constraint maybe they don't feel like they're the best community heck that's why they
35:46
hired you in the first place right if you're a copywriter or a content marketer um
35:51
and and you can put that together and and kind of make it sound a little bit like them and then get their approval
35:58
um i don't and i don't know whether you should like disclose that or not i'm not advanced
36:05
enough to know if that's something you should disclose but i mean it's not
36:11
it's not something i would do with most people but i think there are probably some people that it would be beneficial
36:17
for yeah you got me thinking about it a little more deeply now and i think
36:24
that's what i do i probably would do it in my own business it um because there's
36:29
because i have a number of clients who i know really well and and um and i'd be happy to
36:35
i'm sure i could write something um that they'd be happy to sign off on i think it'd be pretty um
36:40
it would be a pretty good testimonial because i'm so ingrained in in their business and what they like about
36:47
working with me i guess i was thinking more of like uh um a larger scale
36:53
um like uh like a software business or something like that where what i've seen happen is
37:00
is the marketing team needs some testimonials can't get any
37:05
so they just um you know they already have time to have a conversation so they just write something down that's essentially their
37:11
marketing messages with little quote marks around them and those i don't think are um are they
37:17
yeah it seems to me like literally better than nothing so when you're talking about a b2b software company
37:23
and if they have a marketing team that probably means they have a sales team and they probably have support staff it
37:29
seems to me like the people who would be best at getting those would be someone from the support or the sales staff
37:37
for sure they do know they're the ones who built the rapport right not so much the marketing company
37:43
um so i mean possibly that would be an option to help
37:49
people to help pull in testimonials um i i don't know the sales and support people may be mad
37:56
at me now for adding something else to their plate but yeah but i mean i agree i often tell
38:01
marketers to um they should be spending more time talking to sales people because they at at the very bare
38:07
if they just don't have time to um to get you some testimonials they can point you in the right direction
38:13
you can say i need i need to talk to some customers about this that the other problem and in these verticals for um yeah for this
38:20
cam doing you know they can they can for sure put you in touch with four or five people and that's a yeah
38:27
and that's just the bare minimum they can and they could probably reach you to them and get you on the same page with
38:32
them so that's that's an option as well for sure
38:38
yeah but um because the other thing is that you know if you are truly under the pump
38:44
and you've got to get something out there and you just for whatever reason you simply don't have the time to talk to
38:51
someone to get a proper testimonial writing your own and getting someone to approve it is
38:56
better than no testimony at all i reckon um i would say go back and look through
39:01
some of the reviews that are on those platforms because you will be amazed there will be some
39:06
good reviews in there and um you know you may find one ago that
39:12
totally ticks all the boxes that we're you know trying to uh check off and
39:18
and she didn't have to go ask him for it they already gave it to you so sure uh if you're a company
39:23
that's got a lot of reviews on you know one of the the software review sites or
39:28
google business or or facebook or linkedin even
39:34
that would be a good place to start you know because you might find something that's just stellar because you know
39:41
um so that that would also be a way to go as well so
39:46
definitely anything else we should know about testimonials before we wrap this
39:52
up um [Music] not really um yeah this is the the the
39:59
big thing is really about specificity i think specifically
40:05
as specific as possible you gave an example earlier of a cleaning company and i was i've been
40:10
thinking about that and that um you know like a really good testimonial
40:15
for a cleaning company i reckon would be something like um they they've showed up on time every week for
40:22
i've had them for three years and i haven't had to give them feedback once you know yeah i've been working with
40:27
them for six months and they've been on time every time um
40:32
yeah one thing i've learned working with that particular customer is you would be amazed how
40:39
um how it really is a emotional connection
40:46
with your ticket because you know we we think in terms of you know solutions and all this kind of
40:52
stuff and you know okay but it's very i mean how does it how it makes them feel how it makes the customer feel
40:58
when the customer comes home and you know you know a lot of people are workers they're already working right
41:04
and they come home after hard day's work maybe them and their spouse both they don't have the energy
41:10
or want to they got to do something with the kids and the house needs to be clean they come home and the house is clean
41:16
you know it's an immediate oh for tranquility you have and for those people
41:23
the money they pay them is definitely worth it so i think a lot of you know we
41:28
we sometimes especially in the marketing world want to put numbers on everything
41:34
but the reality is sometimes it a lot of times it's mostly how you make somebody feel
41:39
um definitely a lot of us markers don't want to you know especially in the the the data world
41:46
we want to put numbers behind it but my friend brittany had a real good quote on linkedin today and i don't have in
41:51
front of me so i can't quote it but you know it's basically sometimes it's not the numbers that count you know
41:58
uh it's it's it's what counts you know and yeah for sure so and and she she
42:04
talks about super fans all the time it was a very good quote i need to go back and find that and send it to you but uh
42:10
it's a fantastic quote but often really i mean yeah you know that
42:15
that particular you know that testimony about the ladies we all have to do now is a report that
42:21
took 10 hours we just refreshed screen a few seconds and well you know how does
42:26
that make them feel i would like to go a little bit further how does that make you feel that you don't have to spend 10 hours
42:34
you know doing this report because all you have to do is refresh the dashboard i mean
42:40
you know i know how that makes you and me feel but how does that make them feel i would want to know that so for sure
42:46
well that that makes me think of another example i pulled up actually where um
42:52
this company called built for teams they do some sort of hr or something or the other um and on there um
43:00
i was just looking for testimonials wasn't it wasn't reading what they actually did but anyway one of the testimonials says um
43:07
built for teams makes us more efficient with better processes which is that's fine and then it says so we're not spinning
43:13
our wheels with nine different spreadsheets and i thought that um i thought that spinning our wheels line
43:19
was just perfect i mean the nine different spreadsheets is really cool and that it and then it talks about the
43:24
before state but i think the the idea of spinning your wheels is this real um
43:30
this evocative emotional phrase about how bad things were before
43:35
and i think stuff like that is what really like you what i love about this testimonial is
43:40
that like has three different sections and it's kind of going from okay to good to great you know more efficient but it
43:47
processes that's okay not using nine different spreadsheets that's that's much better because it's
43:53
specific and then we're not spinning our wheels you know that's what takes it to that that top level of testimonial
43:59
quotes because you're working really hard and not going anywhere that's what's spinning that's right it's
44:05
frustration yes i'm i'm a hamster and a hamster wheel you know i'm doing all this
44:11
right but i'm not going anywhere so yeah i yeah you're right it's very evocative it's uh very evocative and you know you
44:19
you you can heal you can feel what they're feeling with what they say so yeah i think that's a good you know
44:25
connecting the outcome to how it makes someone feel that is a
44:31
pretty provocative i was a provocative that's pretty pro profound way of putting it i
44:36
guess yeah and i think that's just that's what's going to take a testimonial um and put it into
44:44
that top echelon of testimonial quotes that really connect with people you know that kind of dang you could put that on
44:51
a unique value proposition too on a home page but that's that's for another story
44:56
for sure i know i know a few uh copywriters would probably take that and turn it into a value prop
45:02
yeah i would just cut yeah i would copy paste that put it on the home homepage headline called not spitting out the
45:07
wheels exactly yeah yeah all right hey um thanks for coming on today uh sam real
45:15
quick before we uh let you go tell us where we can find you online
45:20
yeah so uh you can find me on linkedin that's um that's that's where i post the most um
45:25
copywriting related stuff um very active over there you can also go to my website which is
45:32
my name samgrover.codnzed and subscribe to my weekly newsletter which um every monday
45:40
i send out a a copywriting tip uh an example of
45:46
something um this built for teams thing i was just talking about it's going to go in a future one and then just a stray
45:51
thought around business or copywriting or something like that um just about to take over 400 subscribers so um you sign up and you'll
45:58
get you'll get one every week um i'm really trying to grow it so if you do one thing go do that
46:05
yeah and share it with your friends in the sas business yeah right share that that email link with your
46:12
friends in the sas business yeah sam's very active on linkedin as well as twitter uh you're just sam grover on
46:19
twitter right just sam b grover there's a there is a sam grover and that's someone else he's constantly getting tagged and stuff that's meant for me
46:26
yeah yeah yeah and he's really good about replying so you know if you have a
46:31
question for him copywriting related just uh shoot him a message in linkedin or twitter and i'm sure he'll get back
46:37
to you yeah love to hear from people yep very good thanks for coming on sam appreciate it thanks for having me