What Your Clients Say About You Is the Truth—How Testimonials Validate Your Firm
Tom Boogher, CPSM, and Richard Cilley, CPSM
Whether you like it or not, what your clients say about you, good and bad, will be perceived as The Truth.

Testimonial: A statement testifying to a person’s or firm’s qualifications, character, etc., or to the merits of some product or service, etc.; letter or statement of recommendation.

Whether you like it or not, what your clients say about you, good and bad, will be perceived as The Truth. Many people will construe what you and your fellow employees say about your own firm as bragging, or at least prejudiced evidence, but what others say about your firm is The Truth and that’s why testimonials can be so powerful. Whether it’s negative or positive, what the people who have worked with you say about their experience with your firm (and/or you) is highly prized information that can have great influence on whether future prospects become your clients. Testimonials can “sell” your firm even when you cannot.

Good Testimonials
We all know a good testimonial can be a great motivator to help people make buying decisions. In our own daily lives we pay close attention to the opinions of others for all sorts of day-to-day decisions such as the stores we shop, the movies we see, and the music we play. However, many testimonials are so bland and unfocused they don’t exploit the power that lies in a happy client’s story.

For example: “We have used the Big Top Group for our resort and amusement park designs for the last eight years, and they are wonderful.” This is the kind of bland, vanilla statement that, while laudatory and inoffensive, sure isn’t going to get anybody to pick up the phone to ask about your workload today.

What about this: “The Big Top Group helped us with some wonderfully innovative ideas to make our water parks safer and more profitable than ever before. Their reorganization of our employee prep and shift-change areas alone at our existing parks cut almost 10% off our personnel operating expenses and made our workers a lot happier. We implemented these and other money-saving elements into both of our new parks during the design phase where they helped us realize some new and exciting theme features we hadn’t looked at before. We were concerned that a new designer would have trouble integrating with the creative side of our company, but they have helped us realize amusement designs that we have had on the shelf for years because of construction problems. We’re proud of our association with The Big Top Group, and we look forward to their help in the future.
   Yours sincerely,
   Hope Springs
   CEO, Fizzy-Bubbly Water Parks, Inc.”

WOW! If you’re in the amusement or theme park business, you’re dying to find out more about The Big Top Group.

What Elements Make a Testimonial Sing?
1) Every testimonial should demonstrate specific benefits. In some way it should have a down-to-earth, tangible plus the client experienced (“…cut 10% off our personnel operating expenses and made our workers a lot happier”), a fear that was erased, or a risk that was avoided. (Example: “We were concerned that a new designer would have trouble integrating with the creative side of our company but they’ve helped us realize amusement designs that we have had on the shelf for years because of construction problems.”)

2) A good testimonial should support a goal the client achieved that the prospect also would like to realize. If that company needs your services, then the testimonial should move them to consider your firm. (Example: “The Big Top Group helped us with some wonderfully innovative ideas to make our water parks safer and more profitable than ever before.”)

3) A successful testimonial ends on a high note. Many opera arias end on a high note and most good stories end on a positive theme; a good testimonial applies the same rule. (Example: “We’re proud of our association with The Big Top Group.”)

4) A great testimonial is not accidental. You can work with your best clients to help them craft excellent testimonials, but the operative word is “work.” Get with your project managers and help them and the client craft the best and most accurate message. Try to show what sets your firm apart from others (your branding message) and how what makes your firm different really paid off for the client in tangible ways.

What Kinds of Testimonials Should You Use?
The five regular client testimonials are:

1) Direct Letters. While we think it’s better if these are addressed to a specific principal at your firm, even the old-school style “To Whom It May Concern” letter can be effective as long as the letter is credible, factual, and meets the first three criteria that we specified above. These work best in RFPs and written communications.

2) Articles About Your Firm’s Work in Print. The reprint of an article published in even a modest trade journal can be a high-impact testimonial, especially when the problems your firm addressed successfully are close in nature to the ones the prospect is experiencing. Again, what others say validates your work, and reprints are effective both in written responses as well as passed over the desk in person.

3) Video Testimonials. You can take your most satisfied clients with you on an appointment by carrying a short (less than 10 minutes), professionally produced videotape, CD-ROM, or DVD that dramatically shows, in brief segments, your clients praising the help they got from you. Plan your video meticulously and look at as many vendors’ or other professionals’ videos as you can round up to find out what you like and don’t like. Use the best video production group you can afford and don’t forget to use a strong, confident professional actor’s voice for transitions, narration, and summation.

Once you have a number of client interview segments, transitions, and summation digitized, then you can edit, package, and burn a custom DVD to fit into your appointment with the particular prospect. Don’t forget the video is a sales tool, and like all sales tools, it works best when presented in person and integrated into a larger plan. You should make it a part of your pre-call planning so you can watch the video with the prospect and reinforce it. Don’t just send your video off to a prospect like a message in a bottle; a sales tool never replaces a real, live, savvy business developer who can answer questions, explain benefits, reinforce the image, and close the deal. Remember: Letting your warmest clients tell your firm’s story and what sets your group apart from everybody else does reinforce your branding efforts as never before—but a video can’t sign a contract.

4) References. When you are facing an arduous RFP and interview process for new work, your best clients can shine for you as references. Don’t forget to tell the client when you think a prospect will call, and remember to thank them profusely and materially whenever you use them to help you get new work.

5) Direct Address. We have seen this operate well particularly at trade shows and professional society meetings. Having your clients provide direct testimonials for you at third-party events can be extremely powerful for prospects with similar concerns.

“Can I Get A Witness?”
Ok, Marvin Gaye, so how do you get clients to give you a testimonial? Like the Smith Barney ad says, you earn it by making working with your firm a great experience and developing a warm relationship with the client. Then after you earn it, you usually have to ask for it—and this can be difficult for some professionals who have been taught from childhood that it’s important to be modest about one’s successes. However, if you have earned that good reference, your relationship with the client is excellent, and your client feels properly appreciated, then you should feel comfortable enough to ask. The vast majority of clients are grateful enough to want to provide a reference for you if you will just ask directly and give them some help in organizing their response.

When you do ask a client for a reference or testimonial, don’t be bashful about offering to help them craft their letter or script their segment so that the eventual product is a high-impact piece you can use effectively. And don’t forget to appreciate your client’s efforts on your behalf—this means saying "thank you"!

If your client turns you down for a reference, you immediately have learned two things:
1. This firm won’t be a client for long unless something dramatic happens.
2. You’ve failed in that relationship somehow. You need to find out why and get to work today on serious efforts to rebuild the trust and confidence they should have in you.

Non-Disclosure and Its Discontents
In these litigious times when long strings of legal precedent lurk behind many standard operating procedures, a number of corporate clients will be constrained by their own internal corporate rules and legal counsel from offering any references or testimonials. Further, especially if you are working for high-technology, industrial, or multi-national companies, more and more of these groups not only forbid their employees from making any endorsements of contractors’ work but you will be bound as well through non-disclosure clauses in your services contract or separate non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). These prohibit you from telling anyone you have even performed work for these companies, much less receive an endorsement of some sort, no matter how exemplary your work.

While we think this is egregious over-lawyering and don’t think such provisions should apply to A/E/C services agreements, getting out of such a situation once you’ve signed a contract or an NDA is very difficult. If your firm has signed such a contract or agreement, you will be probably be stuck abiding by its provisions.

Therefore, be aware when you are negotiating your initial contract with a client that requires non-disclosure provisions or NDAs and be sure to appeal to their legal department for a waiver or modification to that section on the grounds that endorsements of your architectural, engineering, and construction services work is essential to your continuing business reputation and will not be detrimental to any of the corporation’s patented discoveries, trademarked materials, or trade secrets. If you’re lucky, you can get a waiver or modify the agreement to allow you to solicit and use your client’s testimonial.

When to Use Testimonials Effectively
The best time to use testimonials is when you are trying to emphasize your firm’s appropriateness for specific work with a specific prospect. Too many people tend to use the “Born-to-Be-Wild” approach and start out firing all their guns at once in an attempt to explode into space, and they never even make the stratosphere because the prospect is overwhelmed with irrelevant material at the beginning of the selection process.

The best time to introduce relevant testimonials is when you have identified the selection process, the prospect’s needs, and the solutions you can provide. When you are discussing how your firm is going to work with the client to make their lives better, providing the prospective firm with ways to save money or enhance sales, or demonstrating specific expertise that can help the prospect’s firm get rid of an obstacle, then specific testimonials make good sense.

The Best Evidence That Money Can’t Buy
Testimonials and references are direct and irrefutable evidence that you are profitably solving dilemmas, creating and nurturing beneficial relationships, and giving clients great working experiences. The thought, planning, sweat, and hard work it takes to create a great body of testimonials is time well spent because absolutely no other sales tool validates your professional services to prospective clients as do these witnesses.

Remember, it all begins with sales. Without sales you have no clients, and without clients you have no income, and without income you have no business. Everything else—brilliant people, extraordinary management, sophisticated systems, the best equipment, past prestigious projects— amounts to nothing if you don’t have the work!

About the Authors Richard Cilley, CPSM, is CEO of Transcendent Consultants (www.transcendentconsultants.com), and Tom Boogher, CPSM, is Executive Vice President of Professional Service Industries, Inc. (www.psiusa.com). Richard and Tom have a combined 50-plus years of experience in marketing and sales within the A/E/C industry.

Hosted by SMPS' Business Development Institute, this column provides tips, best practices, and suggestions on how to excel at sales and client development. Remember that nothing happens in business until you make a sale! The Business Development Institute is a Specific Interest Group of SMPS with the goal to promote, inform, and educate the A/E/C industry on the importance of sales and the necessity for business development best practices.

Your comments, feedback, suggestions and questions are encouraged. Please drop either editor an e-mail with any input. You can reach Tom Boogher at tom.boogher@psiusa.com or Richard Cilley at rcc@transcendentconsultants.com. [ return to top ]