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Leonard Shen

Leonard Shen

@2024 Leonard Shen

How to do testimonials right

How to do B2B testimonials right

Most businesses small to large are smart enough to have customer testimonials as part of their marketing arsenal. When you have other people endorsing you, your prospects feel far more comfortable making the first contact with you. This is especially true if you are in B2B.

There are two problems I need to point out:

  1. All your competitors have testimonials.
  2. You might not be using your testimonials in the most optimal way.

From my experience, most companies are are making at least one of two mistakes:

  • Make video testimonials that are too long.
  • Testimonials that are too complicated, too detailed, and too customer specific.

These two objections above don't make sense, you are probably thinking. Length is good, you think, because it proves authenticity! And details are good, it really shows people how exactly you were able to help your customer!

Yes, logically speaking, you are 100%. The problem is, logic only works to a certain extent, even in B2B transactions.

There are several very important reasons why you actually don't want long and detailed testimonials.

  1. If the video is too long, it demands too much effort and attention from your prospects, effort that you have not earned.
  2. Everybody thinks their business is unique. So, all the details your customer spoke about in your testimonial videos might not get absorbed by your prospects. Worse, they might even dismiss your service, erroneously thinking that since your customer's business is different from theirs, you won't be able to help them.
  3. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak" - you might be better off keeping your testimonials intentionally high level. At the end of the day, your prospects only need to know that you have successfully helped others, and your customers trust you to solve their problems. Your propsects will want the details of how you can help them directly from you, once they've engaged with you.

All of this does not mean that detailed testimonials don't have their place. Not exactly.

Details are good, when they are focused on your specific offer:

  • "The new version of your software sped up our processing time by 30%, because the specific upgrade in..."
  • "The event you organized really helped expanded our network. The main speaker gave us really great advice by..."

You really want the details to be about your offering, so your prospects can litararily imagine, in details, how you can help them if they were to use the exact same product or service. However, this might be a rarity in B2B services, when much of ther effort and attention is focused on customized solutions.

If you want to avoid complicated and detailed testimonials, just use short, plain text. The best part about them is that they require little to no effort for your prospects to digest.