The Ultimate Guide to Life Coach Testimonials That Sell Themselves
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Are you a coach exploring how to get awesome testimonials for your coaching business? You came to the right place. In this ultimate guide, we’ll offer pro tips on how to secure top-quality life coach testimonials—including how to ask for them, edit them, and publish them for the world to see. The best part? It’s really quite simple. Let’s get right into it.
What Are Life Coach Testimonials?
Life coach testimonials are firsthand accounts from individuals who have benefited from the guidance, strategies, and insight provided by a life coach. For coaches, testimonials play a pivotal role in persuading prospects to take the next step towards becoming paying clients. When someone reads an effective coaching testimonial, they are more inclined to believe in the potential of the coach’s process and envision similar results for themselves.
Life coach testimonials also act as stamps of credibility in an industry where trust is everything. By showcasing the success stories and achievements of past or current clients, coaches can substantiate their claims and expertise. Great testimonials bridge the gap between a coach’s promise and a potential client’s expectations, solidifying confidence and credibility.
Formats for Life Coach Testimonials: Written & Video
Before getting into the testimonials themselves, let’s consider the various ways to create them. For most coaches, the decision comes down to written vs. video testimonials. No surprise, the written format is more straightforward to create and obtain. Written testimonials are also quick to scan for potential clients, making it convenient to gauge a coach’s credibility.
Beyond written testimonials, if you find a client brimming with enthusiasm and willing to sing your praises on camera, don't miss the opportunity to ask for a short video endorsement. Although they may be more difficult to produce, video testimonials bring a depth of emotion that's hard to replicate in writing. When potential clients see the genuine joy and transformation on a person's face as they recount their coaching experience, it can be incredibly persuasive.
Most of this article discusses best practices for written testimonials, but the underlying ideas can be applied to video testimonials, too.
Must-Have Components of Great Life Testimonials
Great life coaching testimonials involve some predictable elements. Think of these elements as a template to help you create, ask for, and edit client endorsements.
Define the problem
A great life coach testimonial is a lot like a great startup pitch: Both clearly define a problem for the audience then go on to address a unique solution. Your client testimonials should touch on the problem(s) your clients faced when they came to you for support.
Keep it focused
Testimonials should supplement and confirm what your broader marketing messaging is trying to convey. Remember, a testimonial is a credibility mechanism. Why do clients choose you? In which coaching niches do you thrive? As we’ll show in some examples later in this guide, a great testimonial stays focused and avoids jumping around too much.
Good writing matters
It may seem obvious, but good testimonials are easy to read. That means proper punctuation, grammar, and pithy sentences. Especially in the digital age, people don’t want to read a huge chunk of text! Instead, they want the quick hits, particularly if they are just looking for that extra boost of trust and credibility.
Think about User Experience
There is no magic number word count for the perfect testimonial. Generally, you should aim for a short paragraph because that makes for a positive reading experience for your social media or website users. If it’s a longer testimonial, break it up into a few short paragraphs.
To keep them shorter, remember that your testimonials probably don’t need to mention the exact details of your services, methods, and coaching ideas. The rest of your web content should communicate those things–and you can bet that any serious lead will find that information if they need it.
3 Keys to Asking Clients for Life Coaching Testimonials
With the best practices from the previous section, how do you go about securing testimonials that actually match our suggested template? After all, if the client is writing the testimonial, they may not adhere to these suggestions at all…right? Not quite. With a bit of strategy, savvy coaches actually have lots of control over their testimonials. Here’s how.
1. Make a Strategic Request
When reaching out to a client to ask them for a testimonial, you should always prompt your ask with some direction. For example, offer some starter content to get the testimonial headed in the right direction and to convey to the client what you’re looking for.
You should also consider the bigger picture with your testimonials. If you’re positioned as an expert in 2-3 coaching niches, your testimonial requests should have different goals. For example, while you may prompt one client to highlight your ability to coach C-suite executives to optimize performance, you may ask someone else to provide an endorsement for your ability to help working professionals restore better work-life-balance.
2. Always Edit
Just because a client sent over a testimonial, by no means is the work done. You should always edit the provided content if needed, then run it by them again before publishing. You may be surprised just how willing a passionate client will be to let you tweak their quote as needed. In their eyes, they are doing you a quick favor. The specifics probably aren’t so important.
When making the initial ask, always make sure to tell your testimonial targets that you expect to edit whatever content you get in return. This sets expectations accordingly and gives you some built-in wiggle room to change the content as you see fit.
3. Anyone is Fair Game
Anyone you’ve helped as a coach should be viewed as a potential testimonial target. This includes anyone you’ve coached for free, temporarily, or in an ongoing capacity. As long as they can offer a first-hand account of their experience, consider them fair game. Even if someone can’t publicly attach their name to an endorsement, anonymous testimonials are still valuable. Just credit their quote with a broad descriptor, like, “Executive at a major a healthcare company.”
Examples of Good & Bad Coaching Testimonials
Let’s put it all together. What really makes the difference between good and bad testimonials? Looking at some examples, we can break down the key differentiators.
An example of a bad testimonial…
“Ben was such an amazing coach. I learned the power of breakthroughs and we worked on optimizing for success. By the end of our time working with each other I had a greater sense of purpose and I even got a raise at work. One of my favorite parts of coaching sessions with Ben was that we always started with a centering and breathing exercise which helped me get present to talk about the road ahead. I recommend Ben to anyone.”
- Satisfied Client
Why it’s bad:
At first glance, you may think this testimonial packs a punch! The client offers so many tidbits on their coaching experience. Yet, the reader may be left with more questions than answers. Why? Because this testimonial fails to deliver some of the must-have components covered earlier in this guide.
Undefined problem: No problem was stated by the client—why did they need a coach in the first place? With no context around the problem, the reader immediately doesn’t have the context to understand your specialties as a coach.
Lack of focus: The testimonial covers optimizing for success, purpose, centering and breathing, the road ahead, session details, and more. With no segue between topics, the testimonial generally lacks focus and instead feels like a hodge-podge of ideas.
Too broad: At the end, the client recommends the coach to anyone. The problem there? If you are good for just anyone, then no one will see you as a specialist, making it difficult to connect with a target audience.
Too wordy: This testimonial isn’t egregiously long, but it’s probably longer than it needs to be. With today’s average attention span hovering at around 8 seconds, it’s unlikely someone will read the entire paragraph closely.
An example of a good testimonial…
“I hired Ben because I was struggling with executive presence, decision-making, and owning my role as a leader. I found Ben through a fellow colleague who also worked with him on executive and C-suite coaching. He is simply elite at getting the best out of top business professionals.”
- Satisfied Client
Why it’s good:
Clearly defined problem: The testimonial clearly states why the client needed a coach: “struggling with executive presence, decision-making, and owning my role as a leader.” This gives readers immediate context into the types of niches you serve as a coach.
Good focus: The testimonial effectively builds credibility for the coach in the business realm, particularly amongst high-level executives. It doesn’t try to do too much, yet it communicates key highlights quickly.
Not too broad: The client clearly states that other business professionals stand to benefit from working with this coach.
Not too wordy: The testimonial consists of just three short-medium sentences. It takes no more than 10 seconds to read, which is great for digital formats where users tend to scroll quickly.
It’s not a perfect science, however the contrast of these examples hopefully helps you see that some key elements do make a difference. Fortunately, as a coach, you have plenty of control over those elements.
Presenting Hard-Earned Testimonials in Your Marketing
While obtaining great testimonials is a major chunk of the work, don’t forget to follow through with the presentation of them. You should leverage great endorsements as much as you can on your website, on your social media profiles, and even in emails with prospects who may need a little boost of confidence that you’re a fantastic coach.
Creating a strategy for presenting your hard-earned testimonials ultimately comes down to your greater marketing plans. Where are you trying to build an audience? Does your website have a dedicated page or section to present testimonials? Do you have graphic design support for creating simple graphics for social media platforms? Your bespoke answers to these questions will help you shape a plan for making sure the world sees all the great things your clients have to say about you.
For help with your greater marketing plan, consider drafting up a simple life coaching business plan to get your ideas and strategies in order. Also consider reading up on key pillars of successful coach marketing on the CoachRanks blog. Finally, to make sure you’re the first to receive industry-leading marketing insights specifically tailored to coaches, subscribe to become a CoachRanks Insider below!
