Male Cupped hands

 

Recently, a small business owner asked me a pretty darn good question.

Billy Sheng, founder of a startup called Minyawns, had read a post I wrote about using customer testimonials as social proof, and wondered,

"When is it appropriate to have one of your clients write a testimonial for you? I guess I don't want to be intrusive, instead balance on aggressive and shy."

I immediately understood his dilemma. In business, you have to be aggressive, which can be difficult for those of us who don’t want to be a pain in the ass. Asking for what you need can be hard in all aspects of life, but even more so when you worry it will negatively affect your livelihood.

It's okay to ask for what you need

The simple truth, and what I told Billy, is: if you’re too shy to ask for what you need, you might not get it.

Yes, your customers will eventually give you testimonials without you having to ask — those would be good reviews on Yelp, positive mentions on Twitter or Facebook, nice thank-you emails. But if that’s not happening fast enough for you, you’re going to have to ask for some positive feedback.

Naturally, this assumes a couple of things:

  1. That you have helped clients or customers.

  2. That it was a positive experience for them.

Get those things down, and you’re good to go.

When to ask for that testimonial

So, to answer Billy’s question, “When is it appropriate to have one of your customers write a testimonial for you?” I say: “Anytime.” Anytime you’ve fulfilled the criteria above is a good time to ask.

An hour or so before Billy asked me his question, I had my own experience asking for a testimonial. Weeks before, I had sent a book I wrote to Scott Kindred, founder of design company Safehouse Web, looking for some constructive criticism. (I know this anecdote seems like a shameless plug for my book, but I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.)

Scott got back to me with a very positive review. Reading his kind remarks, I realized they would make a great testimonial for the book.

But then I got nervous. Like Billy, I didn’t want to be intrusive — even though Scott had already written the words and I was merely asking for permission to use them.

Eventually, I stopped being a weenie and sent him an email thanking him and asking for permission to use his review. He said yes, and now I have an amazing testimonial to use in my book marketing, which I wouldn’t have gotten had I been to chicken to ask for it.

If you're still too shy to ask

But what if you’re still too uncomfortable to ask for positive feedback directly? Ask for it indirectly, via an online survey.

You can use a service like Survey Monkey to create a customer satisfaction survey for either your website or Facebook page. In this case, you kind of have to hope that people will fill out the survey, so you might want to consider some kind of incentive for doing so.

The takeaway

You really have nothing to lose in asking for a testimonial. Of course, there are exceptions to everything, but if you’ve given a customer a positive experience using your service or product, they should have no problem with offering a kind word or review.

Do you have a different idea about when to ask for a customer testimonial? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.