In This Issue

Customer testimonials too risky?

New clients on both hemispheres

When you look at your company’s story, there are important people, there are extremely important people . . . and in North Star’s case, there is Fred Keller.

His company Cascade Engineering was our very first client back in 1999, and that was only part of how he helped make our founding possible. But Fred’s impact on North Star is far down the list of the things that make him noteworthy.

From the building of a successful plastic injection-molding company to his determination to improve the lives of others, to his dogged focus on finding ways to make the systems under which we live function more compassionately and efficiently, Fred has never stopped thinking about the next thing he can do to improve the lives of those around him. And he doesn’t just think it. He does it.

Now retired and happily living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Fred is still on the case and looking for ways to improve the world for as many people as he can. It’s truly an honor for us to have him as this month’s guest on Six Questions with Dan and Michelle.

The Customer Testimonial: Powerful Proof of Your Value, or an Invitation to Poaching?

We are big fans of the customer testimonial. Every time we get to write one for a client, we know it’s going to be a powerful presentation of our client’s excellence – as told by someone who benefited from it, gladly paid for it and understands the difference it made.

If we wrote nothing but customer testimonials all the time, we could deliver excellent value for our clients. And the best ones are those that name the customer and include quotes from the person who worked with our client and can explain in detail what our client did and why it made such a big difference.

Yet we have found somewhat to our bewilderment that some clients see a potential downside to customer testimonials. That is the fear that our clients’ competitors might see the testimonials, find out who our clients’ customers are and contact the customers in an attempt to poach them.

Is that a reasonable fear?

We’re in no position to say it never is, although it seems unlikely to us that a customer who is singing your praises one moment is going to bolt for a competitor the next just because the competitor had the temerity to reach out.

But we’ll acknowledge there could be a scenario in which it happens: The customer waxes rhapsodic about the great service and results they just received from our client, only to get a call from a competitor asking how much the service cost – and then offering to provide the exact same service and results for much less money. If the customers are a lot more fickle than those testimonials made them sound, we suppose it’s possible they might bolt.

But we don’t think the fear of that is a good reason to eschew a marketing strategy as powerful as the customer testimonial that actually names and directly quotes the happy customer. There are few things you can put in front of a prospect that are more powerful than that. If you’re trying to succeed to prospecting and signing new deals – and you’re confident in the power of what you do – why would you hold back such a powerful tool on the off chance that a fickle customer gets a tempting phone call?

Sometimes clients want us to split the difference by still writing the testimonial, but not naming the customer and instead referring to them as “a leading provider of” whatever. We have to respect their wishes, but that robs the testimonial of so much of its power.

And really: How often do you think a customer who’s happy enough with you to sing your praises on the record is going to turn around and leave you at the first temptation? Is it possible? OK, sure. Is it likely enough to water down or walk away entirely from one of the best marketing materials you can possibly have?

Let’s put it this way: We don’t think that’s what a confident company would do.

Last week we studied a series of passages that focus on the importance of acknowledging that Jesus is the one we serve.

Matthew 10:9 and Luke 12:8-11 tell us that, if we acknowledge Jesus before others, He will acknowledge us before the Father. We talked about the people who make big audacious signs or get megaphones and head to the town square to announce that Jesus is Lord. That is . . . one way to go about it!

But our focus was more on the everyday situations in which it would be natural to give honor to God – such as when someone mentions something positive in our lives, and we can mention how good God is . . . or we can say somethign like, “I’m lucky.”

Getting those situations right is the key, and definitely satisfies what Jesus was telling us to do.