When I signed on with Verizon Wireless this week, I discovered that they Net Promoter idea very seriously.  In fact, it’s the only question on their new-customer survey:

1. How likely is it that you would recommend Verizon Wireless to a friend or colleague?

I clicked on “extremely likely” and added a comment why:

Great signal.  That’s the one important reason.  The surprisingly friendly and efficient service was a bonus.

After I submitted my response, I got a Thank You screen that said, “may we quote you?  And if so, how would you like your name to be written?”

End of survey.  Cool.

The advantage of doing one’s praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

– Samuel Butler (1835-1902), from The Way of All Flesh

“You will be thrilled if you hire ABC Corp.”

“If you work with the marketing team at XYZ management, you’re guaranteed to see better revenues.”

“Clare is the best graphic designer in Phoenix, hands down.”

Testimonials from enthusiastic fans are absolutely wonderful.  But when they say things they can’t back up, they lose credibility.

If your clients offer sentences like these, say “gosh, thanks!” Then do a minor edit.  Adding an “I believe that” or “I’ll bet that” or some modest qualifier that lets their enthusiasm for you shine through, without inserting unnecessary doubts as to whether their comments are trustworthy.

Here’s another testimonial that I produced for Red Cap Communications*. Three things to like about this testimonial from Canton Capital’s managing director, Brian Redman:

1. The “$10 to $30+ million” mention shows that Canton Capital is a serious business, which adds instant credibility to their testimonial.
2. Redman shows how Clare is better than others. “I have worked with other designers, and I’ve been frustrated when I couldn’t find anyone who really “got it” and understood what I needed…” also shows that he understands the pain of working with a lesser agency.
3. Redman tells what kind of clients would be happy to work with Clare at Red Cap, in short, quotable sentences that are easy to excerpt for a portfolio caption or proposal blurb.

Without further ado, Redman’s tight, strong testimonial for Clare at Red Cap:

When we founded Canton Capital in 2008, we began with experienced investors and a clear focus on the kinds of businesses we wanted to work with. What we didn’t have was a good “visual brand” to use in telling our story to the public.

Fortunately for us, we found Clare Dagin at Red Cap. On a remarkably right schedule, Clare helped us identify the image we wanted to project. And then she created a logo, look and feel that perfectly represent who we are.

As a business communicator — not just a graphic designer — Clare knows that creating a strong visual brand isn’t just about making something that looks good on paper. That’s why she spent a lot of time at the start learning where we’re coming from and what we’re trying to do: We invest in regional companies with $10 to $30+ million in revenue and good growth prospects. Our firm will only look to invest in a company in which a majority of the management team will remain in place post-acquisition. While we will consider all traditional businesses, we are especially interested in companies focused on health and wellness.

In the beginning, Clare asked questions about the words and language of our business, then she helped us simplify and focus our messages. She helped us brainstorm different messages and concept statements, took the ideas we liked best, and created a set of visual designs that would best express these ideas.

We loved what Clare came up with: our logo, our brochure, our presentation portfolio and our stationery. She really brought out the best for us with a look that’s strong via understatement. It’s a look that has been well-received by our target audience, and we’re very pleased. Based on her experience and her dialogue with us, Clare quickly understood our market and our need for a mature image. And she helped us realize that we didn’t have to be fancy to show our strength and stability.

At Canton Capital, we recommend Clare to any client who needs a professional image: financial or professional services, or any organization that needs to convey a sense of trust. Clare isn’t like many other designers out there. I have worked with other designers, and I’ve been frustrated when I couldn’t find anyone who really “got it” and understood what I needed. In contrast, Clare took the time to understand what we were trying to do before she started proposing her visual solutions.

We also recommend Clare to clients who really want to understand their communication needs from different angles. Clare helped us brainstorm from our point of view, and then she gave us an outsider’s point of view that we didn’t have because we’re so internally focused. She was a good sounding board for our different ideas, and she shepherded us through the process with both speed and flexibility. Clare is a communications professional we can trust.

Canton Capital
Brian Reading, Managing Director

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*names changed to make sure that web searchers don’t come to this site when they should be going to my clients’! Ping me for the real names of Red Cap Communications and Clare Dagin. I’ll be glad to let you know.

In What Makes You Different?, we got to look at some great words from EMF Film about Clare at Red Cap, emphasizing her two big differentiators: (1) a systematic approach and (2) responsiveness. But what about the other nice things Jayne Winch had to say about Clare Dagin? Do we just throw those away since they don’t fit into a single, flowing letter?

Of course not. Instead, we put them into a “snippet” pile for Clare to pull from any time they’re the right fit. Short blurbs work well as captions next to portfolio pieces, in website sidebars, or next to project summaries in a proposal.

Industry experience builds confidence:

• Clare’s TV/media background really helped. She brought an understanding of our business, and that really made a difference when we first started talking. She knew what I was talking about, and that made it easier for her to give us what we need.

The client-engagement was challenging and yet quickly successful:

• We had a wacky/nontraditional set of wants, and Clare magically came up with exactly what we needed. I saw what she gave me and said “Wow — this works”. She really made it easy.

• From the beginning, it’s been fun, easy, and productive to work with Clare, and I’m amazed at how she’s been able to pull things together with as little guidance as I’ve given her. For example with our brochure — I gave her some random things I wanted to achieve: communication points, feel, attitude, elements… I told her I didn’t want a standard tri-fold. I told her I wanted cool. She ran with it, and through some kind of magic she came up with exactly what I wanted: cool prototypes, features that communicate, and polish to our text that was “good but not quite there.” When I got her first mockup, all I could think was “Wow — this works!”

Clare is fun, patient, and productive:

• [Unlike working with other agencies] With Clare, it’s like sitting with a girlfriend grooving — not like work.

• Clare is patient. Sometimes I don’t get things done as fast as I ought, and she deals with that.

More praise for the creative results that work well for EMF Film’s industry — great info if Clare ever wants to do more for others in the movie business, or anyone else who needs a simultaneously “grungy and professional” feel:

• People love our t-shirts. They are highly sought after and I like that. It makes me happy.

• Clare helped us leverage our business card with useful information on both sides, presented in an eye-catching way. She helped us identify the things we wanted to say in that tiny space: Wireless camera control! Sony 900 on a motorcycle mount! If you’re in the biz, and you read this stuff, you get the idea fast about what we can do. It may sound like a little thing that she figured out how use parts of our logo as eye-catching bullets on our business cards, but little things like that made me happy. They make us different, and they help us sell.

• I love our new brochure. It’s creative and appealing, it’s novel in a way that gets noticed, and it’s very effective for telling our story. With its distinctive shape and unique folding format, no one’s going to get this and toss it without looking at it at least once. Clare’s very creative and she somehow came up with a look that is simultaneously grungy and professional: exactly what I wanted. Same goes for everything else; from the business cards she redesigned to really tell people what we can do, to the updated logo treatment she gave us for putting on T-shirts.

Here’s a testimonial that I produced for Bold Online*, a client and partner in online marketing. I interviewed their client, Pro-Alarm, Inc., and collected the words that counted the most. And what almost always counts the most? Money.

Pro-Alarm, Inc. is an innovator in fighting theft and vandalism in the construction industry. When we introduced our Omni Guard Tower in 2007 , we knew that our mobile security system was more effective and more affordable than anything our competitors had to offer. But as brand new company with a brand new product, our first marketing challenge was to get that message out to the thousands of major construction contractors in our home state of Texas. That’s why we hired Alan Schultz and his team at Bold Online.

First-year results with Bold Online have far exceeded our expectations.

The Pro-Alarm.com website that they created from the ground up is actually our top performing sales agent for Pro-Alarm, Inc. and we’re tracking toward a >400% return on investment at the end of our first year. In dollars, that’s $250,000 in sales – contracts, not just leads – and that’s fantastic for a $60k spend, especially when you consider that we were still getting up to speed. We’re expecting even greater results in the future. As Pro-Alarm builds its track record in the construction arena and as Bold Online gets even stronger as our industry expert in online marketing and sales, there’s no near-term limit to our ability to generate sales via the web.

Truth: I would absolutely not go to any other company for any reason.

Online marketers call me every week to pitch me on a different website and online marketing strategy. They have no chance. Nobody can do it better than Bold Online.

When it comes to online marketing for Pro-Alarm, Alan Schultz and the Bold Online team get it. They made themselves instant experts in our niche market. They came up with an online marketing strategy that put us front and center for organic and paid search. They built a website and web presence that really sells Pro-Alarm’s security solutions to our target prospects, and they never quit improving. They are committed to me and my company and I trust them implicitly. No matter how big Pro-Alarm gets, I will always be our company’s point person for working with Bold Online.

That’s how important they are to our success.

Jason Waite, CEO
Pro-Alarm, Inc.
www.Pro-Alar*.com

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*names changed to make sure that web searchers don’t come to this site when they should be going to my clients’! Ping me for the real name of Bold Online and its awesome CEO. I’ll be glad to let you know.

Here’s a testimonial I produced for Red Cap Communications*, on the work they did for EMF Film. I asked Red Cap’s CEO, Clare Dagin, “what’s the most important thing we need your client to say about you?”

“Systematic thinking my big differentiator,” said Dagin. “Too many designers create one-offs without thinking of how they’ll work with other existing or future collateral, or with the text. ” So we asked for — and received — comments on this topic from Jayne Winch, EMF Film’s COO. We also nailed down one more big differentiator: responsiveness.

EMF Film for Red Cap

“Wow — this works.” That’s what I said when I saw our new brochure…

EMF Film, Inc. is in the wireless camera business. We’re pioneers at what we do, and we’ve got credits in dozens of award-winning movies like Memoirs of a Geisha, The Bourne Ultimatum, I Am Legend, and Spider-Man 3. We’re serious about our business, but we’re far from uptight. So when we went looking for some marketing communications help, we were psyched to meet Clare at Red Cap.

Clare is fun to work with, creative, and professional. For years we had plain business cards and a brochure that I always hated. Everything was piecemeal. Now we’ve got a system.

We’re growing steadily but we want to grow exponentially. In the entertainment business, our reputation grows one person at a time. On every project, we meet and work with new people: a photographer, a director, a producer, or a crew member… We want to make it easy for them to notice us and remember us, and that’s where the marketing collateral comes in.

In the movie business, people are moving around constantly and it’s hard for producers and creative artists to keep track of what they did just one or two projects ago. “Who were the folks that did that great camera work on that movie with so-and-so?” It’s easy to forget the details. So that’s why we have a distinctive look. We had our skull and cross-bones logo before we worked with Clare, but she helped us see the need for including our name with the logo, and she gave us a single look that now covers our business cards, our stationery, our website, our t-shirts and now a great brochure… It’s a thread that gives continuity to what we present, whether we’re in LA or New York.

I’ve worked with some big design firms before, and they’re awfully formal and uptight. They don’t get it. We don’t work in a formal industry, so the uptight approach doesn’t work. Other designers wanted to make us look all buttoned-down, but that’s not us. (And they call themselves “creative.” Ha.) They didn’t like it when we suggested different ideas. They didn’t like it when we didn’t go along with their plans. Well, we didn’t like it when they didn’t listen to us. Clare is great at listening. She’s great at creative communications that help us sell. We’re psyched that we have her.

Jayne Winch, COO, EMF Film.

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Note: stay tuned for a part II on Jayne’s testimonial — Take All the Words You Can.

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*names changed to make sure that web searchers don’t come to this site when they should be going to my clients’! Ping me for the real name of Red Cap and Clare. I’ll be glad to let you know.