Step 10: Endorsement

Written by on December 11, 2015 / 60 Second Sale

The next step in the free sales course is step ten. This is titled: Endorsement.

Step Ten: Endorsement

Welcome to Step 10 in the 60 Second Sales process. This step is the endorsement step. Although we’ve put this at Step 10 in the 60 Second Sales process, this is something that should be ongoing in your work with your clients. Endorsements are simply testimonials. They are you and your client agreeing with the client, as long as he’s thrilled with the work you are doing and believes that you are providing phenomenal value, the client will endorse you to other people, which means he’ll accept phone calls from people who want to interview him on behalf of the work that you are doing with him. Also, he will write a letter or produce a video endorsing your work and saying how great you are.

We talked about using these testimonials in previous segments, and I love the use of testimonials all throughout the sales process. Now I’m going to help you set the process up. There’s three different times. There are three different times when you need to talk about getting endorsements, getting testimonials from your clients. You need to introduce this concept very early on, right at the outset of your time with your client when you are sitting down in the meeting, and the client says, “Well, what is this going to cost me?” You introduce the concept of an investment and you ask about his budget, you discuss the budget, and you also say, “In addition to the financial commitment, I’m also going to ask you for an emotional commitment. I’m going to ask that as long as you are thrilled with the work we provide you, you will endorse our work to other people.”

Let me explain what that means, Mr. Client. That means that on occasion, maybe two or three times a year, I’ll give out your phone number to a prospective client and I’ll ask them to call you, to interview you about our work together. I want you to be straight forward, forthcoming, and tell them the honest truth, but you are going to give me permission to do that. The second thing I’d like is at the completion of our work or at different points during the time that we work together, I’d like you to write a letter on your letterhead just discussing how the work is going, and how you feel about the work, and how you feel about our relationship. I’d like to use this letter from you in my marketing material. I’d like it to be on your letterhead, and I’d like folks to be able to contact you with follow-up questions.

Again, people will probably contact you on average twice a year. If it gets to be too much, we’ll remove your letter and letterhead from our marketing material. You say that right up front. This way, the client knows when he invests in working with you, he’ll also be investing on an emotional level. He’ll have to provide you with that endorsement, with that testimonial. The second time you introduce this concept is when you present your engagement agreement, when you present your contract, when you present your ultimate proposal to the client. It will include an investment, and the investment will have three options as we discussed in the last step. The investment will also have an emotional part, and the emotional part will be to agree to endorse you as long as everything goes exactly as expected, and you exceed your client’s expectations.

Setting this up as part of the investment is critical to getting people to do it. Compliance always goes up when people know about it in advance and then you put it in writing in the proposal. You put in writing in the contract that as long as they are completely thrilled, if you ask them, they will do it. You have to be smart about who you ask. You have to be intelligent about when you ask them. That’s the third time. The third time when you go back to them and you say, “It’s time for us to talk about that endorsement we discussed a couple of times previously.” You should bring that up right after you’ve delivered some fantastic results. If you’ve delivered outstanding results for your client, that’s the time to say, “Mr. Client, as we discussed, there’s an emotional component to our work together. That emotional part is the endorsement. I would love for you to write just a quick letter on your letterhead outlining what we’ve just accomplished together.”

You can even put down some bullet points. Do it handwritten on a note card and hand it to your client. Don’t write the endorsement for him. It should be his words. It should come from him, but you can give him some notes to highlight your work together, and he can take those notes and put them right into the testimonial letter for you. Also, he should be ready. You should coach him on what to say when you are going to give out his phone number to connect with people and to be a reference on your behalf. You should do that in advance of giving out his phone number, but he should be prepared to do that at any time. The third time you discuss is right after you’ve delivered some outstanding results for your client, and he’s admitted that those results were phenomenal.

Now here are your action items for the endorsement step. Action item number one; go through your client list right now and pick the top five people you’d like to endorse you, and sit down with them, and have this very frank conversation. You may not have set it up in the past and that’s fine, but I’d like you to go back to them now. Take them to lunch, and have this conversation and say, “Mr. Client, as you know, we don’t spend a lot of money on individual advertising for me, the sale rep. What I’d like to do is I’d like to be able to offer your name out to people twice a year as a reference for folks who would want to work with me. Would you be willing to serve as a reference for me?” Most people will say yes, then you discuss with the client what he should say when you set up the call.

You are going to also say, “The second thing I’d like to do is I’d like you to write a letter on my behalf, and I want to put it on my letterhead. You can just address it to whom it may concern. Here is what I’d like you to say in the letter; highlight some of the work that we’ve done, some of the results we’ve achieved, and how we’ve been successful over the years. I’ve taken the time to write down some notes for you. Here are the notes. If you wouldn’t mind writing that letter, I’d be happy to swing by your office and pick it up, say on Friday.” That’s what I’d like you to do with your top five clients. That’s the action step here for this segment. Go out and get those endorsements right now from your top five clients.

Action step number two is for you to build this endorsement into your process. Your sales process right now, build it into the upfront, build it into the conversation about the investment, and then build it into the presentation of results when the client says he’s thrilled with you. I’d like you to put that in your sales process right now so that you can go out and get endorsements as quickly as possible. Action number three is for you to get one new endorsement each and every single week. That’s your goal; one new endorsement each week. At least 50 a year. When you have those 50, you will have a very nicely filled-out shock and awe package that you can send out to people before they meet with you.