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Speaker testimonials: how to ask so you get a usable one · Speaker Hub
Speaker testimonials: how to ask so you get a usable one
Great session, thanks so much is not a testimonial. The difference is when you ask and what you ask for, and both are fixable in one email.
•6 min read
Most speaker testimonials say nothing. "Fantastic session, the team loved it." Attributed to a first name, or nobody at all.
That is not a testimonial. It is a pleasantry that got promoted.
Why they are all the same
Two causes, and both are on the speaker.
You asked too late. A fortnight after the event, the organiser has run three more things and is reconstructing a vague good feeling. Vague feelings produce vague sentences.
You asked an open question. "Would you mind writing a testimonial?" gives somebody a blank page and a task they do not know how to do. Faced with that, everyone writes the same generic praise, because it is the safe thing to write.
Fix the timing and the question and the output changes completely.
Ask within 48 hours
While it is still the thing they were doing yesterday. The organiser is warm about it, the specifics are still available, and answering takes them four minutes.
Put it in your post event routine alongside getting the recording and writing down the event details, which is the whole capture list in .
This is the change that does most of the work. Instead of requesting a paragraph, ask three specific questions and offer to turn the answers into a quote they approve.
Hi [name],
Thanks again for having me on Tuesday, I enjoyed it.
Would you mind answering three quick questions? I would like to quote you, and I will send you the wording to approve or change before anything goes anywhere.
What made you decide to book a session on this topic?
Was there anything in it that surprised you or that people have mentioned since?
What kind of event or audience would you tell this session suits?
One line each is plenty.
Jane
Three short answers instead of a blank page. People reply to this, and the answers contain the specifics that make a testimonial worth reading.
Question two produces the quotable line more often than the others, because "what people have mentioned since" is a memory rather than an assessment.
Then draft it
Take their answers and write the quote yourself. Send it back:
Here is what I took from your answers. Change anything, or rewrite it completely, and I will only use what you send back.
Almost everyone approves it with a small edit. You have removed the work without touching the honesty, and you have got a testimonial that is specific because it came from specific answers.
Never publish anything they have not confirmed.
What a usable one contains
Four elements. Missing any one weakens it, and the first is not optional.
The name, role and organisation. Anonymous praise is worth nothing, because a reader knows the speaker could have written it. If somebody cannot be named for policy reasons, "a director at a large NHS trust" is a distant second best and better than nothing.
A specific claim. Something that happened, not an adjective. "Three teams changed their handover process the following month" beats "truly inspiring."
The audience. Whoever reads it wants to know whether their room is like that room.
Something that is not pure praise. A note that the session was challenging, or provoked disagreement, makes the whole thing more believable. Uniformly glowing testimonials read as curated, because they are.
Where to put them
Next to what they prove, not in a pile.
A testimonial about your workshop belongs on the workshop page. One about how you handled a difficult audience belongs near the video. A wall of fifteen quotes on a dedicated testimonials page is read by nobody, because a reader who has gone looking for testimonials already knows they were chosen by you.
Three well placed ones beat fifteen collected in one room. The rest of that argument is in nine speaker website mistakes.
The ones you already have
Go through your email for the past two years and search for messages from event organisers after their events.
You will find several that already contain a usable sentence, sitting in a thread. Write to those people, quote what they said, and ask whether you can use it with their name attached. Most say yes, and it takes ten minutes to recover material you already earned.
That is also the fastest way to fix a page currently carrying anonymous quotes.
Within 48 hours of speaking, while the event is still the thing the organizer is thinking about. Ask a fortnight later and you are asking someone to reconstruct an impression from memory, which produces the generic praise that makes testimonials useless.
What makes a testimonial worth publishing?
A name, a role, an organisation, and a specific claim. Anonymous praise proves nothing because anyone could write it. A named person saying what changed as a result of the session is evidence, and the specificity is what makes it believable rather than the enthusiasm.
Is it acceptable to draft a testimonial for someone?
Offering a draft they are free to change is normal and widely appreciated, since it removes the work rather than the honesty. What is not acceptable is publishing words they did not approve. Send the draft, ask them to edit it however they like, and use what comes back.
Most speakers spend their editing time on the headline and headshot and never look at the form underneath. Here is what that form actually does, and the four choices on the page that decide whether it works.
The one-sheet score splits 100 points across five categories, and design is not the biggest one. Here is what a planner is actually deciding when they read your page, and which category to fix first.
Published fee ranges are mostly marketing. What matters more is the four questions that move a number, and what to say the first time somebody asks yours.
