How to Get Testimonials That Actually Sell (Without Awkward Asking)

Grab the 90-minute workshop, Effortless Testimonials here: https://learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/proof

Testimonials are one of the most powerful assets in your business…
and also one of the most avoided.

In this episode, I’m breaking down how to create a simple, regenerative system for collecting testimonials that actually convert — without awkward asks, chasing clients, or scrambling before a launch.

Because here’s the truth:
If your marketing feels like it’s working too hard… it’s often a social proof problem.

Inside this episode, we cover:

• Why most testimonials don’t convert (even if they sound “good”)
• How to collect testimonials in a way that feels natural and aligned
• The difference between passive feedback vs. high-converting proof
• Simple systems to gather testimonials consistently (even when you’re not launching)
• How to turn client wins into powerful sales assets

This is about building a body of proof that sells with you — so your launches feel easier, your offers feel obvious, and your audience can actually see the transformation.

If you’ve ever thought:
“I know testimonials matter… but I don’t have a system for this”

This episode will change that.

Grab the 90-minute workshop, Effortless Testimonials here: https://learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/proof

Want strategy that respects your nervous system—and business growth that feels like a spell, not a sprint?

Join the Regenerative Business Ecosystem: my entire library of courses, live monthly calls, personalized onboarding, and a whole community of magical misfits building world-changing businesses—without selling their souls to the algorithm.

🎟️ Grab your spot now at https://learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/rbe

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Welcome back to the Regenerative Business Podcast. Today's episode is a really practical one. We are talking about testimonials and specifically how to get testimonials that actually turn into paying clients and students. Because most testimonials, honestly, they sound nice, but they don't actually sell anything. And after being behind the scenes of over a hundred online course launches, I can tell you testimonials are one of the most underutilized conversion levers in your business. So in this episode, I'm walking you through the exact two questions I use in every single survey to get testimonials that are specific, story-driven, and that you can literally paste onto your sales page today. Let's get into it. In this video, I'm going to show you the two questions that I ask in every single course feedback survey that get me testimonials that are so specific, so vivid, that I can paste them directly onto my sales page and they do the selling for me. Because let's be honest, if you've been in the online course game for a while, you know that a lot of times your clients and students, even if they get incredible results from you, most people, unless they're a marketer or copywriter themselves, really suck at giving testimonials. Like they say, like, oh, it was so great, highly recommend. Or Sam is amazing. And then you post that and you wonder why no one buys. And of course, we are grateful for all the feedback that comes in, all the testimonials. You probably already know why social proof is so important in your online business. And the cool thing is you can absolutely be in control of getting amazing testimonials. It can start on your end, but does require you to request for testimonials in a different way. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this video. So as someone who has built a multi-seven figure online business and someone who, in a past iteration of her business, was a marketing agency owner and did a ton of copywriting for clients, I know that language matters. And choosing the right language, the right words, the right messaging is and can be the difference between people just scrolling right past you versus people actually buying from you. I also have ADHD, so if I don't have a system around it or a very clear trigger and it's it's super simple, it's just not gonna happen. I'm going to forget to do it. So everything I share in this video is designed to be so simple and obvious in front of mind that I actually do it and you can actually do it too. And automate it enough so that I don't even have to remember to do it. By the end of this video, you are going to know the two questions that get you usable, specific, story-driven testimonials and the kind that actually convert, not the like, oh she's so great. The kind where someone's actually telling a real story and sharing about their real results. And I'm gonna show you exactly how to ask for it so you get specific before and after in their own voice every single time. So here's what we're covering today. We're gonna talk about why most testimonials don't convert and what actually makes a good testimonial. We're gonna go through the two questions that I love asking and I've found to be the most impactful when it comes to amazing testimonials and also why they work. We're gonna go through what to do the second you get a testimonial, whether you've asked for it or it came in organically, so that you don't forget about it, so you actually have this vault of testimonials and they don't just like disappear into the ether. And then we're gonna talk about consent. You know it's important. So how to actually build it in. So starting with why most testimonials are the problem, isn't that your clients are bad at giving testimonials. Okay, I already said it. Your clients are bad at giving testimonials, but you can be in control of this. The real thing is they don't know what you need, they don't know what you want from them unless you tell them or you ask these hyper-specific questions that we're gonna be going through today. People will default to incredibly vague phrases. Like they won't even tell a story, they'll just be like, oh, Sam is so great, highly recommend. And as I said before, like, yeah, well, we welcome those all day long, but testimonials have the potential to actually do the selling for you. Let's go through these stats right now. So you can have the best copy in the world, but 92% of people still trust recommendations more than your words. So, you as the seller of the thing, what you say about it actually matters less than what other people are saying about your thing, about your offer, about your course, about your digital product, about your services. And then 72% of people will not buy from you or anyone without reading review. That number has gone up over the years. It's gonna continue going up, especially when reviews on websites are becoming more and more common. Like if you go on Amazon, most people only buy products if they're side by side comparing products. They're gonna go with the product that has the 4.8 out of five stars instead of the 3.5 out of five stars, but also the one with more reviews that seems more trustworthy. And then adding testimonials can increase conversions by up to 380%. So getting testimonials should be an incredibly high priority for you and your business. It directly impacts your sales, it shortens the amount of time people need to actually think about it before they're ready to actually jump into working with you. That 380% could just be the starting point for you if you actually learn how to ask for testimonials and feedback from clients and students in a way that actually converts. So, what we're looking for is specific external results, even if they're super duper tiny results. We want to ask for more than just what was their experience in your program. Maybe they had a lovely time and they got the quote unquote got so much out of being in your program for three months. But we want to be able to ask them what is that so much that they got out of it? We're also looking for a story, not just a review, and we want it in their voice, not your voice. And honestly, in 2026, I've been seeing small, real, believable results work so much better than big, vague, unbelievable results. So I think the shocking, like I made a million dollars in three months after doing this program, that has worked really good in the past, like more so in the 2020 era of online courses and coaching. But a lot of people have been burned by people lying or misrepresenting their work. So actually, you sharing small, real, believable case studies and testimonials are working even better these days. So instead being like I made my first sale within 48 hours, that's one sale, that's not like a million dollars in 30 days or whatever example I just gave, but those feel more tangible and realistic for people. And of course, this doesn't just apply for business and money-making examples, this applies for if you help people with healing, their health, their relationships in parenting, in dog walking, in garden or like whatever actual niche that you're in, this applies. And as I said, why this matters, even more now, people have heard the big promises and they have been burned. You might have been burned in the past. So specificity is the new social proof, and the more granular, the more real it feels, and true it feels. They're not just these big false claims that people are making. So let's look at these questions. Now, this is the first question I ask in every single survey. Not like literally the first question on the survey, but I always make sure I ask this question because it forces people to get clear on external results, even if those results are small. Now, this is if the work you did in your program, and I'm sharing a screenshot from a survey that I sent out to my copywriting alchemy students, if the work you did in program has already manifested itself in external results, financial visibility or otherwise, what are they? And if I was teaching on marriages, for example, I would change this to like if the work you did in your best marriage has already manifested itself in external results in your relationship, in your intimacy, or otherwise, what are they? So we're actually saying what specifically we're asking for. So why this works is the word manifested opens them up. If that is too out there for you, or that is off-brand for you, you can use another word, but I am using manifested specifically because it's not demanding a huge result. It also acknowledges that they might be small, right? I literally say, even tiny ones count, and it gives them categories to work with. So in my example, financial visibility otherwise. So they're not staring at a blank page, and it gets them out of things like I feel better, into here's what actually happened. And let's look at an example of what this question actually looks like in response. So here's an example of the type of response I get in response to that question. So this student responded: I used all the frameworks in RCS, copywriting alchemy used to be called Regenerative Copywriting Studio, hence RCS, to write sales pages and specifically ads, social posts, and mini offer pages for a massive pivot from done for you devices to group voice and visibility catalyst programs together. This enabled my business to shift from $4,000 to $8,000 months with done for you services to 18 times that monthly income. Mind still totally blown. So this is a bad example in the sense that these are really big results from this client. So let's look at a different one to show what tiny ones can also do. So here's an example from a different program of mine, Launch Alchemy. I sent out pretty much the exact same survey for all of my digital courses, just changing like slight variation on words. So this student said celebrating my mini launch of a five-day challenge with an order bump had 60 register at $11 with a further 25 people purchasing my $27 upsell. So this is not as flashy as 18Xing your income, like the other example, but this one is so relatable for people. And this first question of asking specifically for external results and if they've manifested gets responses like these. Okay, on to the second question. This one gets me every time. It works even better than the first question because it forces people to go granular and specific. And what comes out of the other side is a testimonial that reads like a story. And if they don't tell a story, because sometimes people don't tell a story, all of the answers are just immediately like you're able to just screenshot it, put it directly on a sales page. And that is what is a short story about the one exercise or resource from the program that positively impacted you the most. So what makes this question so good is we're specifically asking for a short story. It gives them a frame, they know what to do, they know what you want. And the words one exercise or resource, it forces specificity. They can't be vague. You're encouraging their brain to look for one specific thing and positively impacted you the most. It's asking for a highlight, not a review. And it encourages them to actually tell what that impact is, and it bypasses the I don't know what to say freeze. So what's happening in their brain is they're essentially going on a fact-finding mission. What is that one thing? What is that one exercise or resource? They have to remember a specific moment, which means they re-experience the result. And when we ask better questions like these, we get better answers. That's really all it is. And so let's see this in action. Okay, back to my copywriting alchemy sales page. So in my what's included section, I have listed out like all of the features of the program, the nuts and bolts of what's inside the program. But under each section, I was able to include specific testimonials because of this question. So under six plus hours of deep dive trainings, I have, I've always been a pretty good writer, but the concept of my words creating new realities and therefore using them as sacred spells to call in soulmate clients has elevated my copy out of this world level. So grateful for quick RX copy fixes. There's someone who specifically talks about this. I loved the hyper practical tip section. There was so much gold in there. Like this isn't them telling a story that didn't actually follow my directions, but the fact that I have someone praising this one specific section of the program, gold. Now, under the copywriting and action section, I have someone who highlighted that because of the question. I learn so much when I see an example, not a hypothetical one, but a real one. Just watching Sam respond to real people's copy, noting what worked and why, what could use more clarity in why, what the audience needed to hear, see, understand in what order this helped me more fully get it. I could notice the patterns and apply this to my own copywriting. Blah blah blah. And then for the templates and resources, there was a call out specifically for one of the specific resources. So I'm now able to do this for every single one of my sales pages because I asked this question. So please go ask your people this question. So if you have ADHD like me, or if you're a highly sensitive person, or like you're a woman or a minority, and the idea of getting feedback from people really scares you, and there is a symptom of ADHD called rejection sensitive dysphoria, RSD. And this is when it's a part of ADHD. It's when you experience severe emotional pain because of a failure or feeling rejected, and it is an intense, often overwhelming emotional response to perceived rejection or criticism, most commonly experienced by people with ADHD. So a lot of times this is in our head. And I don't think this is just for ADHD. I think a lot of people are really sensitive to this fear of being cast out of the tribe. But if you're neurodiverse, this is like just off the charts. And so asking for testimonials, asking for feedback is really fucking scary. Like I absolutely the whole process gives me heart palpitations often. And so this is why I automate the process. This is why I have an email that goes out after someone joins my program asking them about it one month in after the program's over. And I just send automated forms. And at the beginning of my business, I didn't even look at the responses, but I knew there was importance in banking the responses. Then the next step was, okay, I'm going to assign this to my virtual assistant. She's gonna go through it, she's gonna give me the highlights real of it, and pull out things that we can use on pages. And now I've like conditioned myself well enough to actually be able to go through it. But if you're at the point where the idea of getting feedback is like, you know the value of social proof, but the idea of asking for and getting feedback makes you want to barf, still ask for the feedback. You don't have to go through it yet. This is a way for you to actually build this bank that will be such gold for you in the future of your business. And another thing I do with this to keep this really, really simple process is if I get a message from a client or a student or someone DMs me giving me feedback on something, I will immediately in that moment screenshot it. The trigger, and if you have read Atomic Habits or you know the concept of essentially having a trigger that initiates a habit, the trigger for me is someone sends me some feedback. It's an external trigger. And what I do in response to that trigger now, I cannot put it off. If I put it off even one minute, it's gone. Like that testimony will might as well have not been sent to me because I will forget about it 100%. But in that moment, I screenshot it. If I'm on my phone, I screenshot it and I put it in my Google Drive folder of testimonials on my computer, screenshot it, drag it into my Google Drive folder of testimonials. Or if it's like in Instagram, I will usually immediately put it up as an Instagram highlight. I'll anonymize it, but I'll put it up as an Instagram story that I'll put in the highlight of that program. So if it's like someone giving me feedback on mini offer madness, I will put that up as an Instagram story and I'll put it in my mini offer madness highlights section. Just doing that, because of the way my brain works, I literally like it passes through me. Like I don't remember a thing so often. So by actually capturing it somewhere immediately, then when it's time to relaunch something or create a new ad campaign, or I want to do a promo around something, I can go and look in the folder of like okay, this was RBE membership testimonials. I can just go see this vault of testimonials that I've just captured semi-passively because of habits over time and pull from there. Or I can go look at the Instagram story highlights for that program, be like, oh, I completely for like this literally just happened because we did a launch for Launch Alchemy last month. And I didn't remember any of these testimonials that were sent in, but I was looking at the Instagram story highlight reel from Launch Alchemy and being like, oh my gosh, look at all these nice things that people said that I completely forgot about. So doing something that is semi-passive like this, of course, you're manually screenshotting and putting it somewhere, but it takes about three seconds to do, and it's just stacking, stacking, stacking over time. Okay, so before I let you go for today, there is one thing that I see people skip or get a little too obsessed about is consent. And of course, it is incredibly important to ask for consent when you're using people's words. If you're sending out a survey just asking, are you willing to have your questions quoted for our future promotional materials? I always include that in my survey. Now, the thing that I do differently that I think is a game changer is I give them three options in response to that. One, yes, you can quote me. Uh the second option, yes, but please use a pseudonym. And then the third one's pretty obvious, no. This is just private feedback for you. The yes but use a pseudonym, I don't see many people doing, and it's going to open up so many, like at least 25 to 50% of people who fill out my surveys, will choose the pseudonym option. And I would have 25 to 50% less testimonials if I didn't have that option. Because a lot of people don't want their name out on the internet for like whatever reason, and like maybe your ego could get heard of like, why don't they want to be like associated with my stuff and whatever. I personally don't care. Like, I think sharing people's results, even if it's anonymized or even if I'm using a pseudonym, like that's just as powerful. Like it's it's their true words, it's their true experiences that I get to share. But just being able to anonymize them or give them a pseudonym makes it so that people feel safer to share. I know I've been in programs where the leader of the program or the face of the program, they don't ask for consent and they will just like screenshot things with your name, screenshot Zoom Zoom calls, share it publicly. And I'm such a lurker. I'm actually like very, very private, and I don't want people to know what I do. Even though I'm like I share about things very, very publicly on the internet. Um, it's a paradox. But you better believe that I stopped sharing in that person's or those people's groups and programs. Because it would have been just as easy for them to like cross out my name or like take out my picture, but instead they chose to keep the name and picture. And I'm sure it was a part of their terms and agreements that I said yes to. But recognize that some of your people are like this. If someone wants to be flashy and like have their name associated with you, that's amazing. That's such an asset. But don't out people that don't want to be publicly associated with you and your business. Take the ego hit, like it's not about you at all, it's about them and respecting their privacy. So if you're gonna share, like the example of me sharing screenshots, I always cross out names, I cross out things that are identifiable with the people. If you want to share their details, always ask them first and respect their responses. If this episode clicked for you and you're realizing your testimonials might be a little too vague, start with those two questions. This is one of those small shifts that can genuinely change how your offers convert. And if you want help actually implementing this, I have a 90 minute workshop called Effortless Testimonials that is $47, where I walk you through the exact scripts and automation I use to collect high converting social proof without awkward asks. The link to that is in the show notes. I'd love to see you inside, and I'll see you in the next episode.