BTW, I was laughing in class #1 every time you said “there are 3 points to this, no 4…5.” Do you know the famous Monty Python routine The Spanish Inquisition?

“NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our *four*…no… *Amongst* our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise….”

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Aarrrrggh.

Let us know when the home study version’s available, won’t you?

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@Mahala – Fantastic question. Love it. I will make sure to cover it in class #3… and if for some reason I don’t seem to be getting around to it, please poke me loudly. :)

I’m moving out of working one to one & beginning to create programs & telecourses. I need Why you should trust me / listen to me kind of testimonials, and Hey you should do this program! testimonials but they’d be from people who haven’t yet taken the courses (since the courses don’t yet exist.)

Hope you have some ideas how to make that work.

Sign me up.

Selma is your duck and second in command and Stu is your voice recognition software.

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@Tim – wow. That is ballsy. Awesome. My ways are way less scary. :)

And you’re right that some don’t mind at all. The problem is more that the ones they do give are crappy and have to be edited and people don’t know how to edit them to make them readable and useful.

And many people *kind of* don’t mind but they still feel incompetent and then resentful for having to feel incompetent, and even if it’s happening under the surface, having that rub off on you if it isn’t necessary is kind of a shame since it doesn’t need to happen.

@secretagentgirl (best handle ever!) – The first class is testimonials, the second class is referrals and the third is “answering all your questions and applying to your particular thing”.

I’ve worked with a lot of therapists as clients and we’ve found some brilliant workarounds to the no-testimonials thing, and there’s so much more you can do than just hoping for/counting on word of mouth. You can be very, very strategic without at all seeming like you’re strategic, and in a way that makes people feel completely happy to refer you without having it be uncomfortable or weird.

Hope that helps.

In terms of answering some of the other stuff that’s come up here, I think I’ll probably write another post. Because I realize I’ve been pretty unclear.

Because this is an issue my clients deal with so often, it hadn’t occurred to me to take the time to explain *why* getting really good testimonials is such a big deal and what’s involved in getting the good ones.

Seriously, if my advice were something like “just ask” or “make it easy on them”, I would not even think about offering a course or charging money for this. The reason it’s a class is because the stuff I’m teaching is mind-blowingly great and it changed my life. Not common sense. I don’t charge for common sense.

So I’ll do a better job of explaining the what and the why. Or I’ll just wait until the course is over and then you can read about what it did for people.

I once worked with a guy who after the sale was closed would slide a piece of paper across the table to the buyer and say something like:

“There’s 5 boxes on there, if you could just fill in the names and numbers of 5 people that you know would benefit from our services like you have done, that would be great”

You need to have brilliant rapport building skills and huge nads to do that, let me tell you!

OTOH, In my experience I really don’t think most people mind giving testimonials at all. I’m sure some do, but a great many don’t.

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