Peer pressure doesn't end after high school. It affects everyone to a greater or lesser degree, even in the business world. And it makes an effective sales tool for the salesperson who knows how to use it.
Testimonials are a powerful way to prove your product's worth. If you have a few testimonials in hand, you can show a prospect how “someone just like you” bought the same product they're considering, and benefited from it. In fact, testimonials help you sell by operating on a number of levels.
First, there's the aforementioned peer pressure issue. People tend to imitate the people they see around them as part of the natural instinct to fit in with the group. So if you can prove to a prospect that other people similar to him own your product, he'll be more inclined to buy it himself.
Second, testimonials help build trust. They demonstrate that your product improves its buyers' lives in some way. Here in the Age of Skepticism, the more proof you have to back up your claims, the better. A few solid testimonials will make your sales pitch much more believable.
Third, testimonials paint a clear and vivid picture of the exact benefits that your product offers, and how they can affect the prospect. Using stories is a common sales and marketing technique because it's so successful. And a good testimonial tells a real-life story that can help draw the prospect in.
There are three basic types of testimonials: customer testimonials, expert testimonials and celebrity testimonials. Customer testimonials are from your average customer, talking about their experiences with your product, and are generally the most useful in generating sales. Expert testimonials are written by a person or organization who is a recognized authority in the field. Celebrity testimonials are probably the least believable of the three types, since your prospect will be well aware of the fact that your company paid the celebrity to endorse your product. Still, with certain prospects the celebrity testimonial can be extremely helpful in raising sales.
As a rule of thumb, the more specific a testimonial is, the better. “Your widget works great” isn't nearly as effective as “Your widget lasted twice as long as the competing brand and saved me $632 in energy costs.” But don't give in to temptation and re-word your collected quotes to make them sound better. Paraphrasing is all right as long as you make it clear that that's what you're doing. Altering direct quotes is not only dishonest, it will also tend to make the testimonial sound less believable.
