If I tell you I’m good… well I would say that wouldn’t I. But if someone else tells you I’m good… well it’s probably true.

There are many ways we can tell prospective customers about our product or service in the hope they’ll choose to buy from us. We can advertise in magazines, newspapers, or online. We can create brochures and websites. We can give out business cards or even meet people face to face. But no matter how well we do any of these things they fall down in one important respect: We probably won’t be believed.

Recommendations or testimonials from other clients of a potential supplier count much more than a glossy advert. So it’s important that you include positive client feedback as part of your marketing. There are many different options for doing this, depending upon your type of business. In most cases, especially if you provide services, getting recommendations on LinkedIn is a great strategy. I always check people and companies on LinkedIn before dealing with them. The LinkedIn system shows the real person that recommendations have come from and the date when they were added, both points ensuring they’re likely to be genuine. So if you don’t have at least a dozen recommendations on your LinkedIn profile – start requesting them. There are several services such as Check-a-trade, Disc Directory, and many others that gather feedback scores from customers, validate them and publish the results.

Or for companies doing e-commerce sales you could use TrustPilot. Again these systems are good because they validate feedback and create averaged scores, but even if you don’t use these, at least include testimonials with real customer names on an area of your website. Even better, include case studies that explain how you helped customers so that other prospects get a better understanding. Waiting to get good feedback is a poor strategy. Make sure that you take steps to gather good customer feedback. Send emailed surveys, request feedback a few days after successful completion of an order or work completion, provide feedback forms, and use LinkedIn’s own system to request recommendations.

Have a plan and be deliberate – perhaps aim to gather and publish one good testimonial per week, and stick to the plan.

Regularly publish good client testimonials and you’ll see an increase in enquiries and a higher conversion rate to sales.

Do you have any good examples of strategies to gather customer testimonials?