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Testimonials are a great way to prove to prospects that your product or service is a worthwhile investment. People don’t like to be the first to try something out, especially if it’s over-the-top, risky (or risque…), or just too new. Seeing some no-hype testimonials from actual, down-to-earth people can ignite your sales effectiveness. But often you don’t need a testimonial written by a customer. What would really make your product shine is a testimonial written by YOU!

In some industries (I’m looking at you, “Crappy-Sales-Page-Every-Heading-Bright-Red-And-Capitalized” Internet Marketing industry), testimonials are considered required material for sales sheets and pages. Business owners go to great lengths to seek out these “golden” testimonials from customers by offering their product for free or heavily discounted. But before they look outside their network, they should be looking inward. The first testimonials and last testimonials a product ever receives should be the product creator’s.

Customers (satisfied as well as disgruntled) are helpful to point out flaws and downfalls of any product. But you know your product better than anyone else–what do you truly think about it. You can’t lie to yourself–is that crappy plastic part going to be enough to hold the battery pack to the RC car? Will your clients notice that those shiny knives go dull REALLY quickly?

Come on, be honest–that last ebook you wrote wasn’t your best work. The website redesign you recently finished “cut corners” a little bit, but the client will probably never notice. Most of what we do isn’t perfect. Sometimes it’s on purpose, sometimes it’s just the best we can currently do. The challenge, then, is being honest enough to admit (even to yourself) that it can be improved. Maybe you can’t improve it the way you need to right now, and that’s okay. But write a testimonial for your product that includes its successes and failures, and you’ll be more than ready to tackle the issues and problems your customers bring up–because they’ll probably be the same!

37signals, a Web 2.0 software development company, doesn’t even listen to their complaints in their support forum. All the members of the company are users of their software, and therefore are perfect “customers” for feedback–they understand their software better than anyone, and they know where its strengths and weaknesses lie. Only when loads of people begin asking for the same features do they begin to implement them. By following this protocol, their software is hailed as lean, effective, and so functional it’s scary.

So do yourself, your company, and your customers a favor and write a testimonial for your product. Save the effort of having everyone else tell you why your product or idea sucks, and you’ll come out ahead.

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