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Most freelance comms consultants have worked with clients who were genuinely pleased with the work and would happily say so. Most of them have never been asked. The testimonials page on a freelance website is usually either empty, or populated with things clients said in passing that the freelancer quietly repurposed because they felt wrong asking directly.
The awkwardness around asking for testimonials comes from treating it as a favour rather than a normal part of wrapping up a project. Reframing it, to yourself, and in how you present it to clients, makes a significant difference.
When to ask
The best moment to ask for a testimonial is within a week of the project ending, when the work is fresh and the relationship is at its warmest. Waiting until months later, when both of you have moved on, produces vaguer responses and lower response rates.
If you’ve done a good job and the client has said so, an end-of-project testimonial request is not an imposition. It takes the client five to ten minutes and costs them nothing. Most clients who’ve had a good experience are genuinely happy to do it, they just need to be asked, specifically, at the right moment.
How to make the ask easy
The most common reason people don’t respond to testimonial requests is not that they don’t want to, it’s that they sit down to write something and don’t know where to start. The fix is to make the ask specific.
Rather than “any feedback you have would be great”, ask them to comment on one or two concrete things: how the project went, the quality of the strategy document, the way you managed the brief, whatever is most relevant to the work and most useful to showcase. Give them a sense of length (three to five sentences is enough) and reassure them that you’ll format it before using it.
A brief, specific email that tells them exactly what you’re asking for and why takes less effort to respond to than a vague request. Higher specificity, higher response rate.
Testimonials, LinkedIn recommendations, and referrals are different asks
A testimonial is a piece of text you can use on your website, in proposals, or in your portfolio. A LinkedIn recommendation is a testimonial attached to your professional profile, visible to anyone who looks you up. A referral is an introduction to someone who might become a new client. These are three different things and worth treating separately.
The testimonial ask and the referral ask should not happen in the same email. Combining them makes both feel transactional. A better approach is the testimonial email first, then, if the response is warm, a separate conversation about referrals a week or two later.
A template to work from
The testimonial request email templates cover: the initial testimonial ask, a follow-up for non-responses, a LinkedIn recommendation request, and a referral ask. Four emails, each short and specific. Comes as an editable Word document and a PDF reference version.
Testimonial Request Email Templates
Editable Word document with four email templates, plus a PDF reference version.