Many of us are great at what we do and the very fact that you are reading this article demonstrates your desire to continue to grow.

However, many of us do a great job of keeping our fantastic track record a secret from our potential customers.

Sporting greats are judged by what they achieve, and clubs recruit new managers based on their previous results. The same can be said when looking for new suppliers.

If you can demonstrate that you have done a fantastic job for others in the past it goes a long way towards suggesting you will do a good job for them too.

This is more than having testimonials hidden away on your website, in a filing cabinet or in a folder in your bottom drawer, along with your customer letters.

In today’s age, social proof is one of the best convincers you have and growing your social proof can be a huge contributor in helping you win more business.

Now, the distribution of your social proof is important. However, before you can showcase it, you must ensure that you collect it.

The first bit of advice I would give is that if you don’t ask then you don’t get. We are all busy people and taking the time to say nice things about each other in a usable way is rarely top of the list; therefore, we have to help jump it up the list.

Asking after you have delivered your product or service is likely to bring you a better response than after that moment has passed.

Asking in a format that makes it easy for them is also highly likely to bring a better return. The two forms that have worked well for us are video and of course, LinkedIn.

Just asking will bring you huge results but being prepared will help even further. The ability to record video on the spot will have you leaps ahead of your competition and asking at every opportunity will give you heaps of great video to showcase what others say about you.

Once you get good at asking you’ll have so much content that you’ll want and need to get in front of people.

This is some of the stuff that we do which has had fantastic results, and could work for you too:

• Point people from emails to your Linkedin profile to read recommendations

• Leave written testimonials in a folder in the office reception

• Photograph written testimonials and post on Facebook

• Distribute video testimonials across the social networks

• Encourage others to post their positive comments on Facebook and Twitter

• Update website testimonials as often as possible and ensure they are easily visible

• Utilise the words of others in marketing literature

The simple lesson in all of the above is to put your social proof in front of as many people as possible. However, the real trick is to ensure that every testimonial can be traced back to its source.

Ensuring that your future customers can see the credibility in the source of your social proof will add to its effectiveness which is the bit that makes it all worthwhile.

-Phil