How to get testimonials on autopilot, using MemberVault

In this episode, we have the honor of hearing from Carrie Wilkerson - a mentor, strategist, and trainer helping other business owners increase their 3 Margins™ and live a Fully Leveraged Life. Tune in as she provides actionable tips and strategies on how to get testimonials on autopilot, using MemberVault. If you're looking for an easy way to supercharge your business with effective social proof, this episode is a must-listen!

Key Topics & Highlights

• Importance of Testimonials and Social Proof
• Implementation of specific questions to gather targeted social proof
• Using questions to prompt testimonials without incentivizing
• Prompting customers to provide feedback through email follow-ups
• Leveraging automation for continuous social proof collection
• Examples of specific questions related to material, implementation, and value
• Highlighting ways to address objections through tailored questions
• Emphasizing the importance of specific questions for better answers
• Using testimonials for sales pages, emails, and social media
• Adapting and changing questions for dynamic testimonial gathering
• Cautioning against generic testimonials and encouraging specific feedback
  
  

Noteworthy Quotes
"As you probably know, good questions lead to better answers, and vague questions lead to vague answers and specificity prints cash."

Click here to check out the Questions that Convert Action Lab Carrie mentioned in her episode!

This Action Lab is included, for free, as part of our All Access membership, or you can purchase it for $9.

Get it for 50% off using code CARRIE. No expiration.

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Episode Full Transcript

Carrie Wilkerson [00:00:00]:

Hello, this is Carrie Wilkerson. I'm a business mentor and speaker, and I've spent the last 24 years creating an executive income from home in models ranging from services to speeches to courses and coaching. I started out at home in sales after the adoption of my eldest, two. Yes, I had immediate toddlers. Over the years, I've evolved into a mentor, strategist, and trainer, helping other business owners like you increase their three margins and live a fully leveraged life. Today, I want to talk to you about testimonials and social proof and people raving about specific and good things that they're learning from you. And the reason? Let me just go back for a minute and say for 20-something years, I have really dropped the ball on this.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:00:56]:

I either felt like I had enough social proof with my professional accolades or people saying nice superfan things, but I neglected to get specific results-based testimonials, case studies, et cetera. So let me encourage you. You can still have a really amazing career even when you do a lot of things wrong, right? Even if you miss a lot of steps. So recently, I decided to follow MemberVault's lead when they did the Questions that Convert Challenge. And I thought, okay, this is a way that I can jump into my courses, jump into my programs, jump even into my lead magnets, put in some really specific questions to pull out of people what other people might be wondering before they buy. So I did that, and it was really pretty amazing. I've only done this on a couple of courses now just because I'm trying not to overwhelm myself with the responses. But what's happening is I'm asking questions about their obstacles, or their immediate takeaway, or what they loved most about it.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:02:12]:

And then I'm also asking them for permission to use that as a testimonial if I want to and asking for a photo or a logo. And it's almost as if magic, they're populating and they're showing up and they're providing these good testimonials. I'm doing it in three and four parts of a quiz, meaning three or four questions instead of just, oh, hey, tell me what you loved about this. The reason is that then it seems more doable, more achievable, more specific. And then I can take either all four questions, or all four answers, or I can pick and choose from those phrases and use them in different places. I have loved it because I can then send my copywriter, or my team, or even myself into quiz answers for that specific product and or service and pull out of there what I need. It's almost too easy and it's dynamic because I can change the questions, or add a question or ask in a different way in another place.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:03:17]:

You do need to be cautious and careful about incentivizing them because you can incentivize people to take a quiz. We cannot incentivize for testimonials because of FTC regulations. So I would say know the regulations and be careful and cautious with that. We always want to do the right thing. But I love the insight on these. One way you can prompt them to do that is obviously in your email sequence. They get a delivery email and how to stay connected, right? Well, depending on how many consumption emails you send out, like hey, how's your course going? Or you should be partway through or whatever. The truth is you can do your delivery email and then a week or ten days later, depending on the length of your course, you could send an automated email that's in your autoresponder so you don't even have to think about it, pointing them to the quiz and saying, hey, don't forget to do the quiz at the end after you follow through.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:04:21]:

Sometimes this will be the prompt people need to go back in and get busy on the course. Sometimes it'll just let them know you would love some engagement with them. And it also just helps them feel seen, heard and known instead of you just dropping off after the initial transaction. So those are just some of the immediate ways that you can do that. Some really specific questions. Let me go ahead and I can pull mine up and walk you through what some of the questions are on one of mine. And I'm not saying this is perfect, absolutely not saying this is perfect.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:05:03]:

If I go into my MemberVault, gosh, they make it so easy. Let's go to the Sticky client system. That's one of my favorites, Sticky Client System. Here are some of the questions. Are you ready? Let's see, it is 'which of these tactics would get your attention as a customer?' That's just basically related to material and making sure they have understanding, et cetera, and getting them excited about something. 'What will you implement first and what kind of difference do you think or hope it will make?' 'What is one aha or or yes, please from the Sticky Client System?' And then the last one is, 'May we use this as a testimonial in email sales pages or social?' If yes, and this was a drop down.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:05:54]:

Yes, but I prefer initials instead of a full name. No, I prefer not to share. And then if yes, they can upload a photo and their business name. Now this is for a low-ticket product. If I were digging into a higher ticket product and asking for testimonials, I might say a quiz question might be something like, 'Why do you feel like this was worth your investment?' And then give them a couple of drop-down answers or make it an essay. 'Did you have any hesitation about doing this? And why are you now glad that you did?' 'What would you say to your best friend if they asked you if they should take this course or not? And why?' do you see I'm leading them into some answers that I may or may not be able to use now? You have to also be prepared. You might get some negative feedback and that's okay. We're grown-ups.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:06:53]:

We can handle negative feedback. We can take it on board and either make tweaks to our course, reach out to someone or just know that they weren't a fit maybe in the first place. But I would say this has been the simplest, most low-lift way to gather specific and targeted social proof more than anything else that I've done. You could also use a general quiz when people get on your list with different things. However, I really like it based on product and I don't have it for every product, but I like it per some of the products that are helping me gather some testimonials so that I can then use them over and over and over again if I want to. And again, it's dynamic. I can change the questions at any time. You can set an action so that they come directly to your email or to your assistant's email.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:07:53]:

Or you could probably set up an automation where it can go into an Airtable or something else for you to use when you're information gathering. It will probably give you an idea for future projects or what's next, et cetera. So some things to watch out for are fan girl and fanboy testimonials. Oh, I always love everything you do. You're so amazing. That's not super useful. We love it. We love to hear it.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:08:18]:

But the ego doesn't convert, right? So I would say ask specific questions so that you can get specific answers that are ideally overcoming objections of why you think people might not be buying. So ask a question related to cost. If you think people are going to say, will this be worth my money? Ask questions related to time invested. If you think people are going to say, oh, I don't have time to do this, ask questions that are related to market specificity, you see where I'm going with that? As you probably know, good questions lead to better answers, and vague questions lead to vague answers and specificity prints cash. So I would ask very specific questions. I wouldn't necessarily nag people if they don't do it. I might do one reminder. If you're on a deadline or something, obviously you want to assign little celebrations or engagement points to it, and that would be useful.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:09:25]:

Okay, so again, let's recap. How can you do this? Number one, go into your MemberVault account, choose one product, and add a quiz. On that quiz, add three or four questions, asking them to give you feedback that you can then use as testimonials or improving your course, social proof, et cetera. Okay? Then you go into your email autoresponder, and two weeks after purchase, you set up an automated email responder so that you only have to remember this one time. You only have to remember it the day that you program it, and then your automation remembers it for you. That's perfect, right? That's ultimate leverage, which is what I work on with clients. So then two weeks later, after they buy, they'll get that. It'll remind them, oh, hey, I need to go in here and do this.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:10:17]:

I need to go finish my course. I need to go take this quiz. As long as people are going through your products, you're going to have constant social proof. Will everyone do it? No. And that's okay. You don't do every phone survey you're asked to. You don't answer every postcard survey you get.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:10:36]:

You don't fill in every email testimonial you're requested to. Right? So just know that you'll only have a small percentage of people that do it. But it's way better than getting ready to do a sales page or an email or a promotion and saying, I have to go find some testimonials. This way they kind of populate for you. All right, so if you found this valuable, and I believe you probably found at least one or two things valuable or aha-worthy, go into MemberVault collaborative and tell us what those were, and make sure you tag me so that we can have a conversation about it. You can also find me at Carrie Wilkerson on Instagram, Facebook, and all the major platforms.

Carrie Wilkerson [00:11:22]:

And if you want to hear more, you can also Google my name and the word podcast, and it will populate all the other podcasts that I have guested on as well as a few that I have produced. So I look forward to hearing how this was useful and I cannot wait to see how you automate your social proof using Questions that Convert.

Click here to check out the Questions that Convert Action Lab Carrie mentioned in her episode!

This Action Lab is included, for free, as part of our All Access membership, or you can purchase it for $9.

Get it for 50% off using code CARRIE. No expiration.