Testimonials

I have frequently encouraged you, in these articles, to treat your partners in the same way as you would your customers. Be honest with them, follow through on commitments, keep to agreed schedules, have an escalation process to ensure that any problems are dealt with quickly, and so on. You are, after all, entering into a partnership for the long term. You want the relationship to last, and to be mutually beneficial – exactly the same aims as for a traditional customer/supplier relationship.

I have also advised that you should be easy to do business with, be "partnership ready", have all your key people aligned with and supporting the objectives of the partnership, make sure that the resources necessary to making the relationship a success are allocated to the partnership. If you do this properly, your partner will recognise the planning and effort you have expended in developing and managing the relationship. Your partner will acknowledge your contribution to the achievement of the partnership's objectives.

It is also true that very few partnerships are "one-offs", totally exclusive. As the business world becomes more global and increasingly complex, organisations are finding that they need to establish a multitude of partnerships to address different opportunities. It is unlikely that these partnerships will overlap greatly in terms of their target markets and/or mutual aims.

So, my message to you in this article is for you to consider how you can take a leaf out of the sales handbook and obtain testimonials from your current partners to help you to secure future partnerships.

You only have to ask

Sales literature is replete with advice as to how you should obtain testimonials from customers, but it essentially boils down to four things:

1. Do what you said you were going to do
2. Do it well (including on time and to budget)
3. Deliver the customer benefits you said you would deliver
4. Ask for a testimonial

It is amazing how many organisations manage to do steps 1 to 3, but find it difficult to carry out step 4! Or, they are too busy moving on to the next project. Or, it is nobody's responsibility. Or, when the time is right to ask, no one remembers.

In my experience, if you successfully complete steps 1 to 3, then most customers will gladly provide you with a testimonial – provided you ask for one!

Testimonials from partners

The same principles apply to a partnership, but there are a few differences that need to be highlighted:

Firstly, it is likely that the testimonial will need to refer to one or more projects on which you and your partner worked together. Clearly, rather than just singing your own praises, the testimonial should acknowledge the contribution of your partner, and any other partner organisation involved in the project(s).

Secondly, the right time to ask for a testimonial may not be so obvious. It could be that the partnership has been established primarily to focus on one large, initial project, in which case a successful completion of that project would be a good time to ask. However, it is becoming increasingly likely that your partnership will have been established to address a number of (as yet undecided) projects over a period of time. This is why it is important to establish key milestones for the partnership, with joint aims and objectives set at the start and an agreed means of measuring progress. At one of the regular partnership review meetings, it will become clear that your partnership has achieved some or all of its objectives. This would be a good time to ask for a testimonial. In fact, it is a good idea to include a discussion point at every review meeting which prompts the question: "Should we be asking now for a testimonial?"

Thirdly, whereas in the case of a customer/supplier relationship it is normally the supplier that drafts the testimonial and gets it approved by the customer, in a partnership it may be that your partner wants to take on a more active role in the drafting of the testimonial. Although this can be helpful, it can also slow down the process of getting the testimonial written. Be prepared to ask for time commitments if the partner wants to become involved in this way.

Finally, there is a "quid pro quo" element here: if you ask your partner for a testimonial about how great you are to work with, it is likely that the partner will want a similar testimonial from you. Hence, you should only ask for a testimonial from partners for whom you are prepared to reciprocate. If you don't think your partner has done a good job, or you believe the organisation is difficult to work with and you wouldn't recommend it as a partner to others, then don't ask for a testimonial, no matter how well you believe you have performed.

Advertising your credentials

Once you have the testimonial written, and it has been approved by your management and the partner, make the most of it. Turn it into a press release, lodge it on your website, convert it into a brochure that can be handed out at exhibitions. Make your salespeople and business development staff aware of your achievements and what your partner thinks of them. Write a success story or case study based around the testimonial. Include references to the testimonial in your dealings with potential partners. Ask one or two senior people in your partner's organisation if they wouldn't mind taking a few calls from your prospective partners, should they wish to follow up on the testimonial.

As more and more organisations (and in particular, your competitors) wake up to the fact that they must partner to be successful, it will become more difficult for you to find the right partners you need. You should start thinking now how you will make yourself stand out from the crowd and be noticed. Having good testimonials from partners you have already worked with is one way (and a relatively simple way) to help you to achieve this.

Partnering Points on testimonials

• Keep testimonials short and to the point. An A4 page of text enlivened by a small relevant picture and/or your partner's logo is enough.
• Draft and lay out your testimonial for printing on paper. Get this version approved. Only then start re-purposing the text into other formats (e.g. for the web, as a press release etc).
• Share early drafts of the testimonial with your opposite number in the partner's organisation, to ensure that what you are writing is likely to be acceptable to the partner's senior management.
• Make sure that your management approves the text of the testimonial before you ask the partner to approve it.
• Try to ensure that the testimonial is approved by the right people within the partner's organisation, so that there are no "surprises" after publication when the partner's senior management sees or hears about the testimonial for the first time.
• Finally, treat this publication in the same way as you would a brochure, or other marketing or sales support material. If you generally use copywriters or other external agencies to help you produce polished marketing and sales collateral, then do the same for the testimonial.

You are free to use material from istarisArticles in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including website link. Please also send an email to enquiries@istaris.co.uk, notifying us where the material will appear.

Next article
Previous article