TESTIMONIALS

A powerful gift that we can give to other businesses is the testimonial. There are a few elements necessary for a testimonial to be effective. It needs to be brief, specific and based on personal experience. Testimonials can be given in writing or in person

These days, people just don't spend a lot of time reading or listening to others. So get to the point. Was it the service, the price, the quality, the uniqueness that you appreciated? What, briefly, about the service, price, quality, uniqueness is causing you to give a testimonial? If appropriate, how many competitors did you previously do business with or make contact with before finding the great product/service you are raving about?

When giving a testimonial, some people want to be grandiose, therefore miss being specific about the products/services they wish to tout to others. If your mechanic provided over the top customer service, be specific about the aspects of customer service in which your mechanic excels. Don't discuss the quality of the tools or convenience of location.

A good testimonial is based on personal experience. When the buying public finds out that actors are hired to play doctors selling the newest miracle weight loss product, the legitimacy of the cure is called into question. However, when actual people who have benefited from the weight loss product talk about their results and show their true, untouched photos; then the product flies off the shelf. Well supported statements about how someone's product/services have benefited a close family friend or relative is okay as well.

We all want to buy, we are waiting for legitimate reasons to trust the people/products where we will be spending our money. This is especially true for products/services we all must pay for eventually like car repairs, home repairs, etc. A testimonial we believe in and trust can make the decision for us.

I would like to give a testimonial for one of my trusted auto service suppliers. I live in Lodi, California, and Giant Discount Tire Centers is right down the street at 100 S Sacramento Street, Lodi. I originally found them because of their convenience to me, but it is their customer service that keeps me coming back. I have a Kia Sedona. I (or my new teenage driver) hit a curb a little too hard and knocked the car out of alignment. I didn't realize how critical this was until my front tire went flat. Jeff Williams and his crew replaced my two front tires and did an alignment for me. The job was completed on time and for the price I was quoted. It was the follow-up service that seals the deal for me. I ordered two more tires. When the tires came in, I didn't have time to take my van in. They held the tires, prepaid, for nearly a year for me. I just had the van in when I got a screw repair done on one of the front tires. Only one tire was replaced that day, and Jeff told me he would come and get the van from me at work and have the second one replaced and the van returned to me without me leaving my office. I protested that I could certainly get the van in, but my van was just picked up about an hour ago and returned twenty minutes later. THAT is customer service! At no time have I ever received excuses from Jeff for work not getting done on time or according to the cost I was quoted. Even more, Jeff understands how busy my days are and made sure that my car was serviced even at his inconvenience. If I hear anyone saying they need tires for their vehicle, I won't hesitate to send them to Gian Discount Tire in Lodi.

PEOPLE PROFITS

Was that profits or prophets? No, not the ones who can see the future -- but wait, yes, the ones that can see the future. The future that is full of profits.

Business networking is primarily about relationships and secondarily about transactions. Relationships are ongoing, growing, vital and easily damaged. Transactions occur and then cease to be anything more. In today's economic climate, it becomes more important than it has for years that we business people understand the difference between transactions and relationships. The quick and easy spending that has marked the last two decades of business lent itself to transactions. Now, we are in a more conservative economic climate. There is still plenty of money being spent, but it is being spent more carefully and with more thought. That means we businesspeople need to cultivate long-lasting, ongoing and mutually beneficial relationships that support the spending that is going to happen.

How do we find and create these relationships? Networking. BNI, Business Network International, is an organization that exists to connect business people with other business people for mutually beneficial relationships. In the Lodi Founders Chapter of BNI in the Central Valley of California, we have forty members. Our core group was fourteen people who started this chapter four years ago. We still have the majority of those members and they are still active members. Why? Because for four years we have spent the time and energy to get to know one another and to learn how we can help each other in business. Sometimes that means we are engaging in business directly with one another; always it means being on the lookout for potential business for one another; for the luckiest it also includes business mentoring to foster our relationships and enhance our reputations. All of our activities can be summed up in the motto of BNI, "Givers Gain!"

Being in business alone can be frightening and financially deadly. Look to other people. Help to creat profits for them and this prophet can honestly, and from personal experience, reassure you that those people will help to create profits for you as well. People Profits from a people phrophet.