This is a shortened transcript, lightly edited for readability, with off-topic conversation removed and the substance of the discussion preserved. Clarifications added during editing appear in square brackets.

Why recruitment agencies need client testimonials

Kirsty Ames: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Mike Ames Recruitment Show, where we're gonna be talking about how to get compelling client testimonials. I'm gonna talk to you about the things that you can do to reinforce your key messages.

The reason I want to talk about it now is we are in a very different market than we have been a couple of years ago. At the moment, clients have way more choice. Also way more time. The urgency that people had is way less, and so they have more time to do their due diligence. They have their time to check things out. They have their time to do research instead of being, "I need someone yesterday. I don't care who gives it me."

Now people have choice. People are checking out your claims that you're making, and everybody's making similar claims. Recruitment, Pete—

Pete Ames: Don't even start me. I did an exercise a couple of years ago where I went through a lot of recruitment websites. This was before AI, so I went through this manually. Went through a lot of recruitment websites to see what are the different approaches everybody takes. Eighty, ninety per cent of them said basically the same thing.

Kirsty Ames: Recruitment is, if you think about it, very difficult. It's like 95% of it is the same everybody does. It's just a 5% around the edges. That 5% around the edges is where the real difference comes in.

The problem is, like Pete said, you've got a lot of the "I'm Brian" problem, "I'm Spartacus" problem. Testimonials can really help with that because the point of them is to get a more believable voice.

That's not to say that I think you're lying, or really that your potential clients think that you're lying. But what is more that everybody's saying the same thing, so why am I supposed to believe you, essentially? A testimonial of whatever form is going to help you do that.

In this next forty-five minutes, I'm gonna talk a lot about video testimonials, mostly for two reasons. One, they're the most likely to be believed.

Pete Ames: If you can see a human being, you're very good as human beings at reading the authenticity of what is being said to you.

Kirsty Ames: You don't just have the words and the voice, but you also have all their mannerisms. You have their face. You have their hands. It's very clear that someone hasn't just been reading them off a script. It's very clear what they're saying. So they're more likely to be believed.

Also, they are the harder ones to get. If you use all of these skills for video testimonials, if you only wanna do a written one or if you wanna do an audio or something, then the things still apply. There's just less of them because you don't have the visual.

Pete Ames: I think everybody at some point in life has requested a testimonial and has been told, "You write it, and I'll sign it off." It's not the same. Whereas a video, you can't, "You record it. Just put my name." It doesn't work, does it? A video is compelling because you know it came from the person you say it came from.

Kirsty Ames: Exactly. That's why this works really well.

What makes a video testimonial believable?

Kirsty Ames: Pete, the thing that you just said, I wanna pull out a little bit, which is that authenticity piece. Because we have all done it. You ring someone up and say, "Will you do me a testimonial?" They say yes. It comes from a place of being helpful. I know where it comes from, and making it more likely to happen, where you say, "I'll just put something together. You review it, edit it how you want, and then send it back to me."

I would say nine times out of ten, people just say, "That's fine to use." What happens is, number one, you don't get what they think. You get what you think they think, which isn't that helpful. Number two, all of the testimonials start to sound the same. They all sound like you.

Pete Ames: I've noticed this, actually. Temu always has reviews, and I read them religiously because I love picking them apart.

But you read them, and they all say variations of the same thing in the same way. That's not people. People don't all speak the same. It's amazing how good the human subconscious is at detecting fake.

Kirsty Ames: Especially nowadays where scepticism is high. We talked a little bit about it. The whole point of getting a video is it's very authentic. It's very difficult to manufacture that. But if something happens where you see it, it can almost skew you the other way and go back to being a negative. So we wanna make sure that we are capturing real clients' words, and we're capturing them with real examples, I suppose, is the whole point here.

Pete Ames: I know you've had this a few times. When you're imagining client testimonials, some people may be imagining that jingly-jangly music, cutscenes. The Netflix sitting down—

Kirsty Ames: Big lights.

Pete Ames: Very well lit, very well edited. But that's not actually what you want, is it? Because the authenticity comes through in the way it's captured.

Kirsty Ames: Because humans are inherently imperfect. This is the biggest thing that, when I do this with my clients, this is the thing that I get across, because they want it to look almost very polished.

Especially in the UK, I think America slightly less, but the British are inherently sceptical of perfection because everybody knows you can't be. The Americans like a bit more polish, I think, perhaps, but still not a lot.

When I do a testimonial for one of my clients, their end client repeats themselves or gets a little bit rambly for ten seconds, they think, "It's so clear then that it's authentic." Because if you ever see AI, everything's perfect. Whereas if there's a spelling mistake in there, you know it's written by a human. Although people are starting to do that anyway.

You want that really authentic, "Oh, yes." You want that kind of reaction because it makes it more believable. The whole point of this testimonial is to encourage somebody to use your service over somebody else's.

So we want to be believable. We want them to say good things, and I'm gonna talk about that in a second. But that authenticity of mistakes, of human imperfection, is incredibly powerful and should not be underestimated in this, if that makes sense.

Building trust with hiring managers and talent acquisition teams

Pete Ames: It makes perfect sense. It goes back to that bit about why we use it. It's occurred to me, you rattled off the reasons it's necessary. The market's changed. One of the things I've seen in the market is people are more risk averse about letting a recruiter in, either potentially for the first time, if you're trying to get someone to use retained for the first time, to give exclusivity. They're afraid that you will be a mistake that backfires onto them.

That, I think, is one of the biggest challenges in recruitment at the moment. To be able to say, "Here's three people just like you, boss, all saying these things authentically," it just gives someone the confidence to let you in. That's where I think it's powerful.

Kirsty Ames: I think that's even more powerful when you're dealing with TA [talent acquisition] departments. It frustrates me as somebody who loves recruiters, who's grown up around recruiters my whole life. I think recruiters are brilliant people. But amongst TAs, they have this reputation of being pushy, of going around them. They have this reputation of not being somebody they wanna work with, essentially.

Let's say you kept coming up against TAs, and the TA's like, "We've got somebody." But then you had three testimonials from three different TAs or heads of TA in an organisation saying, "They fully respect me. They know when to leave me alone, but they also know when to be helpful. They also offer me help when I've got no jobs on for them. They're just somebody that makes my life easier."

Pete Ames: The most common thing I've heard is somebody will crack open an account, crack open a potential hiring manager. Hiring manager goes, "You've got to talk to the TA." We all know what happens. They send the email, TA ignores you.

But they are much less likely to ignore you if the thing you send is, "Here's four people just like you saying that I'm the real deal." Little-known fact, I've heard this from several sources: TAs are all in WhatsApp groups together. The single most common request in a TA WhatsApp group is, "Does anybody know a recruiter who's good at X?" They don't want to not use you. They just only want to use people that are good.

Kirsty Ames: They're looking for that credit—

Pete Ames: And respect them, and they're looking for that credibility. These testimonials are that credibility.

Where to use testimonials in your recruitment sales process

Pete Ames: We've talked about this a little bit here, Kirsty. Effectively, we want authenticity because it's convincing to the people who are watching it that what we claim is true. Where do we use them? We've just given one example specifically around TAs, but there's lots of places. Where do testimonials fit? Do we plaster them all over LinkedIn?

Kirsty Ames: LinkedIn is a funny one. When I first start speaking to people, they very much want to use the testimonials all over. "I've got this nice thing. It's a great way of me posting a video testimonial or someone saying something great." I have two hesitations.

Number one, how powerful is it really? Because a testimonial for me, your testimonial is not beneficial to me. It doesn't add me any value.

Pete Ames: It's not interesting.

Kirsty Ames: Most people aren't going to be, so they're gonna scroll past it, which means LinkedIn's gonna park it. They just don't want to.

Pete Ames: The algorithm will crush it.

Kirsty Ames: I think if you're a B2C organisation, if you're selling to consumers at large, potentially more powerful. But if you're doing B2B, I think the power that it gets you isn't as much as you would guess.

The other negative to it is, particularly if you're dealing with larger organisations, if you're dealing with people who have departments, they have to get approval and stuff like that. A lot of people say, "I need to get it approved by HR or so-and-so." If you're gonna be plastering it around on LinkedIn, they're not gonna wanna do it, and they're gonna use that as an excuse, or the department's just gonna say, "No. We don't want it on there."

For me, LinkedIn isn't the place that I would put this. You could put written quotes on there, if you want, in a document that's in your saved areas, but I wouldn't be posting as posts.

Personally, I think there's two incredibly powerful places to post them. Number one would be a wall of testimonials, essentially. You would have a page on your website that's not navigable. So you can't find it from the dropdowns, but essentially it would have all of your testimonials that you've received.

You could break it down by product or by service if you're a larger organisation who does different areas. But it essentially would have all in one place, and you could send that to people, say, "Listen. I say this. Here is a wall." You almost bombard them with, "I've got all of these names with fairly decent job titles of fairly decent companies saying all of these things that are just like you."

Pete Ames: They don't even need to watch them. We have one of these, don't we? I do our Google analysis, and there's only ever one or two watched. It's very clear. People scroll down to see how many there are, and then they watch one.

There's a simple benefit of all of these people cared enough about it to let them video them. That's the other thing, there's a reluctance to video, isn't it? So the fact you've got the video, that must be a pretty good relationship. You must be doing a pretty good job. That's the subconscious at work.

Kirsty Ames: Exactly. That one is incredibly powerful, and it's something that's not difficult to knock up, to just embed a video. You can host it on YouTube and keep it as private so that people, again, can't find you on YouTube, and you can do that. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy.

[Editor's clarification: For testimonials that anyone with the link can watch, the intended YouTube setting is “unlisted”. “Private” restricts viewing to selected people. Unlisted videos can still be shared by anyone who has the link.]

Kirsty Ames: The second place that I like is in your pitch deck, in your 3D pitch deck. Anybody who's listened to any of the times that Mike's talked about pitch deck will know that for every claim you make in your pitch deck, you should have a dynamic page where you can click through to offer you some proof. That could be numbers. It could be data, or it could be a testimonial.

You could play the video, but I think it's probably going to make things a lot slower. I wouldn't recommend it.

Pete Ames: It's very hard.

Kirsty Ames: Instead, I would take a quote from that testimonial. You post it, and you have it as a page on a PowerPoint page. Then what you would do is you would say, "By the way, every single testimonial I've got in here is part of a video testimonial. If you'd like to see those testimonials, let me know, and I'll send them through to you."

Again, it's not necessarily that they watch it. It's that you are confident, and you know that you have it, and you can back it up.

Pete Ames: It reminds me of a story Mike's told a few times about when he sold his first business. He went with somebody because they walked in, and they literally threw a little black book on the table and said, "That's everybody I've worked with. I can arrange a call with anybody."

They didn't actually take a call with loads of people, but the fact that they were confident enough to do that made them clear, "There's probably some truth behind that." To be able to say, "I've got every single one of these backed up. Do you wanna watch the person's [unclear]?" No, but the fact you said that—

Kirsty Ames: And that they might do it anyway, or you might say, "In the documents that I send across after this, I'll put a link to all the testimonials, and you can view them if you'd like." Anything that you do, but you would pull it out that way.

For me, that does the best of both worlds. Number one, you are offering evidence to your client to back up the claim that you just made, which during the pitch deck is so incredibly powerful, so dynamic. It's so different to what a lot of people are doing with more static pitch decks.

But also, it makes those people who are going to give you a testimonial know that it's being used in a very specific way, not just bombarded everywhere. I think it benefits both the prospect that you're going to, but also your client relationship. So I think it's a best of both worlds there.

Pete Ames: You've touched beautifully. To me, its key function, as you say, is to convince somebody that what you just told them is true. It's used quite late. I think that's the key thing. Quite late in the outreach and BD [business development] process.

As you say, you can put your page as one of your saved links in your core bit on LinkedIn. That's great. I think that does a good job. But really, this is to be used later, one-on-one.

How to get clients to agree to a video testimonial

Pete Ames: You touched there a little bit on getting people to agree. I know this because I've tried to do this several times with people. Some clients are hesitant to do testimonials, especially larger organisations. Some people are hesitant to get on video. I know that you help people walk through this. What's the challenge here, and how do you overcome it?

Kirsty Ames: One of it, we've briefly touched about, which is people's reputation. They hold it very close to their chest. It's very important to them. They wanna know that you're not using them.

If you say, "Listen. I don't post it all over LinkedIn. It doesn't go there. I use it in these two very specific places. These are what they can do. If you ever want me to take you off it, I will." That comes down to basically the core of this, is that you make sure that your client knows that they're in control.

It's the easiest way. There are multiple ways of doing it. Whenever I do this for my clients, my clients are the ones who are requesting the testimonial. I say to my client, "I won't release your testimonial to you until your client tells me I can."

Straight away, that end client knows, "They're not gonna put words in my mouth. They're not gonna edit me funny. If I want to get it approved by HR, I can. If I say something and I think, 'I shouldn't have said those numbers. Take them away,' I can 100% take them away."

Straight away, a lot of the objections that people are going to have are wiped out. Those of you who are watching, I can already hear the question in the back of your heads, which is, "What's to stop them from just taking it away and not letting me use it?" That is a possibility.

But I will tell you, in the eight years that I've been doing video testimonials, maybe nine years, I can count one testimonial where they said they didn't want me to use it at all. That was because of how they looked. I got them in a quick moment. They were like, "I don't like the way I look, so no."

Then I think I've probably had less than five edits, and I have to tell you it's normally to do with numbers. They've said ten million or something, and they've gone, "I don't wanna say that." I'll take the number out. It's been normally that I've removed a ten-second snippet, and the rest of the testimonial is still very powerful.

It doesn't happen very often, because knowing that you're not gonna take advantage of it, or that their reputation isn't at risk, or that it couldn't backfire on them—that thing that you brought up earlier, Pete—is something that is so powerful to take away a lot of nerves.

That's mostly to do with an individual. If you're dealing with owners of organisations who have all of the power, normally owners of SMEs or leaders in SME relationships, they normally can do what they want.

If they're in a large corporate, that does go a long way to getting them to do it. Because sometimes they'll ask for forgiveness rather than permission from their HR team, which is fine depending on how senior they are. However, it doesn't work for everybody.

Helping clients get internal approval

Kirsty Ames: What I do with my clients, and I work really closely with my clients to do this, is I create a one-pager. The one-pager is to send to your client after they've agreed to do the testimonial. It's designed for them. It's saying, "I won't use it until I've got permission from you. I won't tell you the questions in advance because I want really authentic answers. I don't want you to write something and rehearse it. The questions are very much on me and your experience with me rather than you and your organisation."

All of these things, and I put it on a one-pager. Depending on the client, they have slightly different things in there, but it's normally those kinds of things. You answer the objection before they ask it.

The benefit of that is they can send that to whoever it is they need to get permission from. Whether it's HR, whether it's the TA team, whether it's senior management, whatever it may be, they then have your written words down, which say, "This is how they use it." Does that make sense?

Pete Ames: The hardest thing, isn't it? I know this from working with people when they're doing sales work, and sometimes you just cannot get to the decision maker. You have to get to an influencer. You realise you're not actually trying to sell to the influencer. You're trying to coach the influencer to sell on your behalf, and that's really hard.

To have an asset that, like at the bowling alley, puts some guardrails on how they internally pitch this situation, that actually makes a huge amount of sense. Because it's where it goes wrong. It's like, "What did you say?" "I said this." "Of course they said no."

Kirsty Ames: Exactly. You can also have a link to that testimonial page if you want, to be like, "Look. I've got some big names in other organisations." They can watch the other video testimonials to be like, "This is about them. This is about their service. This is about how they made me feel, not specific questions about my organisation and what our plans are."

Pete Ames: Or claiming part of your success.

Kirsty Ames: There's none of that. It's about me and how I make you feel, and really what it should be focused on anyway.

There are lots of really small things that you can do. I don't have the time to go into them. But realistically, if you can make the actual person you're asking the testimonial to feel in control, and you have a way for them to clearly and accurately describe what's going to happen to anybody they need permission from with this one-pager.

What if a client won’t appear on video?

Kirsty Ames: There are going to be some people who will never agree. There just are. There's not as many as you would think. I think it's probably about 10%, 15%. For those people, you would downgrade it and go, "Will you give me a written one?"

For the written one, what you do is you go on a Teams meeting. You ask them the questions. You then, verbatim what they said, write it back, and then send it to them to confirm.

It's still their words. It sounds like them. But you get the right questions, and you ask the questions in the same way that you would ask a video testimonial, essentially.

Pete Ames: It's a good tip.

Kirsty Ames: Thank you.

Asking testimonial questions that support your sales claims

Pete Ames: The key thing about a testimonial, we've said this earlier, is that it's supposed to reinforce something you've claimed earlier. How do you get the clients to say—

Kirsty Ames: What I want them to say.

Pete Ames: Without them just reading off a script?

Kirsty Ames: This is much easier than you would think. There is some skill to it. There's some practice to it. But it's actually quite simple.

Number one, out of everything, you need to know what you want them to say. They can say as many times as they want, "Pete's great to work with. He's a really good guy. I definitely recommend him." Doesn't really teach me anything.

But if I was like, "Pete's so good at creating processes from the stuff that's already in my brain, and he made it in a really simple way that made sure it worked for me," that's very powerful. You have to know what you want them to say.

This, Pete, works really well off the back of a VOTC [Voice of the Client] project. We've spoken about VOTC before, but in a VOTC, you should be asking for positive things as well as constructive feedback, what they liked, what worked. You should already have in mind the kinds of things that they find valuable for you that match your USPs [unique selling points].

Pete Ames: That's the beauty of the VOTC. If you do it with enough of your customers, they'll tell you the things they value most about you, and the odds are pretty good that others would value the same things.

Kirsty Ames: Exactly. That is the first thing. Any claim that you are making in your pitch, any claim, you need to have backup for. Particularly if it's something that everybody says, or when you're pitching someone and you see someone's face go, there's a little scepticism there, whatever it may be. You need to make sure that those are the things that you are going for the testimonials on.

That's the first thing you have to do, is you have to make sure you know what you want the client to say. Because if you go in there going, "Just get what I get"—

Pete Ames: Those are the worst ones. "They're great. We love using them."

Kirsty Ames: It's not as deep as they think.

Pete Ames: It doesn't land.

Kirsty Ames: First thing is you have to know. Second thing is do not send them the questions in advance. I say this again: please do not send them the questions in advance.

Particularly if they're nervous around video, if they are somebody who is not as confident. It's happened less. Everybody's much more comfortable with video now because most people are using Teams and Zoom or whatever. But before, people were more nervous about it.

However, if you send them the questions in advance, they will write something out, and they will try and read it. Or they'll rehearse it, which gets rid of all that authenticity that we spoke about at the beginning.

Pete Ames: They'll get AI to write it, even worse. So it'll sound like AI wrote the script.

Kirsty Ames: I've had it before where I've done it with people, and you can see the eyes move as someone's reading, and you think, "That's ruining everything." So we do not send the questions in advance.

The key thing is, and this is gonna sound so stupid, you give them the answer in the question.

Let's say you had been working with somebody, and part of the deal was process. If I was gonna ask the client this question, I would say, "A lot of people, when they start working with Pete, they really want more structure and process in the result. What was the biggest thing that you got working from Pete?"

Pete Ames: "I think we've got a lot of structure in our process."

Kirsty Ames: The benefit of this is twofold. Number one, I get what I want them to say, because I've given them. Most people, when they are offering a testimonial, this is why you would offer to write them in advance, it's because they want to help you. They want to say the thing that you want. They've agreed to do this thing for you. "I just don't really know what to say."

If I give them the prompt, it triggers something in their brain. They go, "Yes."

When I say this to people often, and I wonder if anybody—tell me in the comments if you thought this when I said it. You often get, when I teach this to people, "That seems a bit dishonest, that I'm feeding them the answer." I will tell you this: nobody says what they don't mean.

Nobody's gonna say something they don't believe in. They'll find something else, or they'll say, "I don't understand the question," and you'll have to rephrase it. There are loads of different ways that humans will avoid it.

Because it's not pressurising, it's just prompting, they don't feel forced in any way. I've done hundreds of testimonials, and I wonder if you spoke to any one of them, they wouldn't feel pressured. If I ask it once and they say—I've had people say, "I don't think that question's relevant to me." I make the question go away.

Pete Ames: I think that there's an enormous truth in that. I see it in a different space, just to really reinforce that it's okay. I work with a lot of people to put together content. The first thing that many of them say, "I'll ask people what they want." That's the meanest question you can ask anyone. Anyone's on the receiving end of it: "What should we do more of?"

Then your brain goes, "What?" That's a huge question. Whereas if you go in and say, "We're thinking of doing X and Y. What do you think of that?" Quite often, the answer is, "I don't like either of those. But actually..."

Even if they don't pick it up, by giving them something to latch onto, you're making it much more comfortable for them to answer that question. Their comfort is important.

Helping clients feel comfortable on camera

Pete Ames: In fact, you said something, because I'm gonna move us on now. You said something a minute or two ago about people can be nervous. Nervous people don't make for great recordings. Do you have any practical tips on how to get somebody comfortable on that camera so the testimonial captured is usable?

Kirsty Ames: To recap, some of the things that you've already done help people feel more relaxed. Making them feel in control. It's the main thread that goes through everything.

Letting them know that they're not gonna get in trouble if they do this, because they have ultimate sign-off on it. Making sure that they know that this isn't about them, their job and their process is one thing, but that they can still have all of this flexibility around what they say. Like Pete just said, helping people have a little bit of guidance on the kind of thing that you're looking to get from them. This will help them feel more relaxed.

However, no matter what you do and no matter what you say, I've had people who have happily spoken to a room of five hundred people, but you put them in front of a camera where they're gonna be recorded, there is an element of nerves that comes in. No matter who they are, people still get nervous.

There's a couple of things. The key thing is, as Pete mentioned, you want them to feel relaxed. You want them to feel loose. You want to have a good time. You want them to feel happy, and you want them to feel connected to you.

My biggest thing is, I would recommend that you do this on Zoom because you get more editing options, but Teams is fine. No matter what happens, as soon as they get in the room, as soon as they have come and you can see them, start recording immediately.

You have a little bit of prep to do at the beginning. You have to do some things that you need to speak through in the process, reinforce what I just said. But you start recording straight away. I tell people I'm recording. I always say, "I'm gonna start recording now because what if I forgot? Could you imagine how awful it would be?"

The reason I use that excuse, by the way, is because I have once done a testimonial and forgot to record it.

Pete Ames: It happens to even the professionals, everybody.

Kirsty Ames: So now there's another reason to start recording straight away, because you know that you're doing it.

You start recording as soon as you enter the room. This does two things. Number one, it makes you happy.

Pete Ames: You can relax. You can't relax someone else if you're nervous.

Kirsty Ames: Exactly. Number two, there is about a ten-minute conversation that happens before you start asking your testimonial questions, where you do various things. In that time period, they get really tense when they see the little record red light or whatever it is, the obvious that it's recording. It's very difficult to stay that tense for that long.

For ten minutes, you're having a conversation. The whole purpose of this conversation is to make them feel chill. Make them feel in control. Make them like you as well, because the person who they are giving the testimonial about may not be the person asking.

If you've got a marketing person, they're excellent at asking the testimonial questions. You can have an external consultant, someone like me, to ask the questions. Or if you've got a business partner, you could ask his, and he could ask yours. Because people, sometimes, especially if you're British, complimenting someone to someone's face—

Pete Ames: Oh my God. Terribly uncomfortable.

Kirsty Ames: However, complimenting someone behind their back, much easier. You would start recording straight away, and then you have ten minutes to essentially help their central nervous system just chill out.

There are a couple of other things that you can do for that. I like to be incredibly self-deprecating. Works well for me. I always take the mick out of myself. I try and make them laugh. I try and explain some things that are going to happen.

For example, whenever I do a testimonial, I say this specifically, and I would say nine times out of ten, someone says back to me, "What you said happened actually happened." You say, "I'm gonna ask you a question, and you're gonna listen to my question. You're gonna listen so hard, you're not gonna hear a word I said."

It happens all the time. Think about it when you're like, "I'm paying attention to this," and then someone asks you a question, you go, "I was listening the whole time." When that happens, which it will, you just tell me, I'll ask the question again.

When I start asking the question, it's normally the second or third question that it happens on, and they go, "That thing that you said happened just happened." I go, "I know. I've done hundreds of these, and it happens every time."

This does two things. Number one, when it happens, they can have a bit of a laugh and a joke about you. They're not stabbing themselves in the heart because they can't do a simple testimonial. But also, it proves that you've done this loads of times. You see lots of things that are helpful for them.

If you can bring up the things that they can expect to happen in advance, say, "When it happens, do this instead," you're absolutely hunky-dory. Or, "If you lose your train of thought, just tell me, and I'll start again," because almost everybody loses their train of thought. You have to pre-empt what's going to happen in that session beforehand, and then when it happens, they don't feel bad.

Finally, my final thing that I do is to make them laugh, and I do this every time. I've gone through all the prep work. I've made them laugh. I've relaxed them. We've been recording for about fifteen minutes, and I go, "Right. Gonna start a testimonial now."

Immediately, their throat starts to dry up and their heart starts beating a bit fast. I go, "To get it out of the way, I'm gonna ask the hardest question first." They go, "Okay." You go, "Can you give me your full name and job title, please?"

I built it up to be this thing, and then their body just goes, "Oof." It gets rid of a load of the tension.

I need their full name and job title because often what they have on LinkedIn isn't what they wanna be called, and they'll have something different on their email, and then they'll have something different somewhere else. So I know exactly what they want to be called and their full name. Some people have Michael on their LinkedIn, but they wanna be called Mike on the testimonial, or whatever it might be.

But the whole point is that final joke, and then I'm in the banter. It just keeps things chill. The whole thing to get the best testimonial from someone is you need to make sure that they're in a good headspace. They're obviously probably gonna answer my next question with a smile on their face.

Pete Ames: Nobody wants a grumpy answer. "Are they good?" "They're alright."

Kirsty Ames: Or a nervous one. "They're okay." It looks like I'm forcing them to do this, otherwise I'll keep their dog hostage or something.

If you can make them laugh, that first question, the name, job title, works a treat every time.

Video testimonials, LinkedIn recommendations and online reviews

Kirsty Ames: Liz asks, "Do you think that getting them to do a Trustpilot rating or review is worthwhile?" Pete, you have thoughts on this. Do you wanna go first?

Pete Ames: The immediate answer is yes. Of course it is. Any social proof is valuable.

I think I am now massively cynical about any online review. I'm a cynical person. We don't judge everyone else by ourselves, but I get the impression that a lot of people are a little bit eye-rolly about it, especially if it's just stars and a simple line, which you've fed them.

But you did get somebody to put their name out there and on it, so that counts. I had one client who spent an enormous amount of time getting a lot of reviews on Google. He did used to say, "We've got 4.9 average on sixty, seventy reviews from candidates and clients." That is useful. That does make people feel a little bit of trust.

Where it doesn't tend to get you is what we talked about the use at the start. Quite often, the ratings don't help at all prove that you have access to a hidden database of candidates. It doesn't prove that you are better, more experienced at selecting and qualifying. It's just a star rating. It doesn't say anything about how, and you need the claims to be backed up. So it doesn't help with that.

Quite often, the review will be, "They're great." I would definitely do it, but I would say it's not as functionally useful in the sales process as what we're talking about here. What are your views, Kirsty?

Kirsty Ames: Took the words right out of my mouth. I agree with everything Pete said. The only other thing that I would potentially bring as well is often you only get one chance to ask them for something, or you only feel comfortable asking them for one thing.

If I was to offer the benefits of, would I ask for a video testimonial or would I ask for a Trustpilot rating, I would go video because I think it's the most powerful. Then I would probably go LinkedIn recommendation over Trustpilot, to be honest with you.

I think a recommendation on LinkedIn, where it's their name and their job title, is so much easier to be linked back to them. Their reputation is a bit more tied up in it.

Maybe you did a video testimonial a while ago, you've already got a LinkedIn testimonial that you got two years ago from them, and you just wanna ask for another one, by all means. But I think if I was going to use my designated ask, you would probably get more from another version of the testimonials rather than the Trustpilot rating. It's never gonna be a bad thing, I don't think, but I think you can get more.

Pete Ames: A fallback position as well. It's definitely, "I can't do video. I won't do video. I don't have time for video." "Could I ask this instead? It sounds like a timing issue, but you don't have a problem with us. Could I ask at least for this?"

Kirsty Ames: One hundred per cent. You can put it down the list, but hopefully, Liz, that answered your question.

Deciding which sales claims your testimonials need to support

Kirsty Ames: Hopefully, I've given you a decent amount of things that you can take away from today and get your own testimonials. However, the thing that you need before you do any of them is you need to know what you want them to say. You can't ask for a testimonial and go back.

You need to know what your USPs are. What are you selling on? When you're having your pitches, what are the things that you're repeatedly saying to people that make you different over everybody else that they could work with? Those are the things that you need in your head and written down before you start getting the testimonials. Simple one, I think.

Pete Ames: Very important. It's amazing how much people don't know their USPs, or have USPs, so unique selling points, but they're not unique or even uncommon. I find that quite a lot. That is something that's well worth a bit of work on.

Kirsty Ames: I agree. VOTC project is always helpful with that.

Pete Ames: If anybody actually does fancy seeing an example of one of those testimonial landing pages, we have one.

We have one for our PLW workshop that we run, which is a free workshop for people that wanna understand how to build a business that works around them and for them rather than them working for the business. We've got an example with loads of people who've been on it, and it gives you an idea for how powerful it can be.

Kirsty Ames: If you're watching the recording, just put a seven in the comments, and I'll make sure that you get sent the link. There you go. Nice and easy.

A useful testimonial backs up a specific claim you make about your recruitment service. “They’re great to work with” is pleasant feedback, but it gives a prospective client little evidence of what makes you different.

Before requesting testimonials, identify the claims in your pitch that need supporting. A Voice of the Client project can help uncover what clients value about your service. Those are the benefits you want testimonials to explain, in the client’s own words.

Kirsty’s approach is to introduce the relevant benefit in the question, giving the client something to respond to. For example, she describes mentioning that other clients wanted more structure and process, then asking what the client gained from working with Pete.

The aim is to prompt their recollection while keeping the answer their own. If they say the question is irrelevant, drop it. Kirsty also recommends withholding questions beforehand so clients don’t prepare scripts or rehearse their answers.

Make sure they feel in control. Explain exactly where you intend to use the testimonial and confirm that they can approve the finished recording, request edits or ask for it to be removed.

Kirsty also uses a one-page explanation that clients can forward to anyone whose permission they need. It explains the process, approval arrangements and intended use, and reassures them that the conversation concerns their experience of your service rather than confidential information about their organisation.

Kirsty starts recording at the beginning of the call, tells the client she is recording and allows around ten minutes of conversation before the testimonial questions. This gives them time to become accustomed to being recorded.

She explains that losing their train of thought or needing a question repeated is normal. Humour also helps. Her opening joke is to announce the “hardest question” first, then simply ask for their full name and job title.

The episode recommends two main places: a dedicated testimonial page that you can send to prospects, and your sales pitch deck.

In the deck, use a relevant quote to support a specific claim, then offer the full video or send a link afterwards. You don’t need to play every recording during the pitch.

The discussion places their strongest use later in the sales process, in individual conversations where a prospective client needs confidence that your claims are true.