Potential prospects may not always believe what you have to say about your products or services, and they might not believe all that your marketing has to say. However, most will believe what your satisfied clients have to say about you and your organization. That is why using testimonials in all of your marketing will magnify your success rate in converting prospects into clients. Add video testimonials to your YouTube channel and your website. Not only will video testimonials help you gain more business opportunities, they will also help you to gain more visibility from the various search engines. Now is that a win/win, or what?

When it comes to getting endorsements for your book, you’ll need to get a bit shameless and write them yourself. Yes, you heard me correctly – write them yourself. Now that doesn’t mean that the person endorsing you will actually use the statement you wrote, but it will give them some ideas to follow as a guide. Most people are too busy to read your entire book before endorsing it – especially other busy experts.

You must make it easy for them to get an endorsement back to you quickly. If it’s not easy, you probably won’t get the referral.

If you’ve done well at building quality business alliances and connecting with other experts in advance of writing your book, you’ll have a great lead source for joint venture partners. Joint venture partners will not only endorse your book; they can promote it for you, too.

Here’s how to get great endorsements fast:

Write out a very good one-page detailed description of your book. Think of this as a short book proposal written strictly for the benefit of gaining testimonials. In your testimonial proposal explain what the book promises to deliver to its readers, what makes your book unique and why you are the expert to write it.

Below your description (or proposal), list some suggested endorsements. Who knows your book better than you do and who could write a better endorsement than you? Often they will pick an endorsement from your suggested list and add their own spin to it, making it even better. You just need to give them something to start with. Either way, it will allow them to take quick action and get that great endorsement back to you fast.

For example, even before writing my latest book, my publisher asked me to get some endorsements for their pre-publication marketing piece. The book wasn’t completed, and I needed quick endorsements based upon my reputation and experience in my industry as an expert. I asked other high-level experts to endorse the book who already had a trusted relationship with me. This made it easy to get a lot of great endorsements within just a few days. I put a great testimonial proposal together, along with some suggested endorsements, and emailed them to business alliances and high level experts.

Within just five minutes I received my first endorsement from world-class marketing expert, Joe Vitale. Joe is one of those very high-level experts who’s made millions from sharing his expertise. He is most well-known for his books and for also being featured in the movie The Secret. I got to know Joe first as a mentor by reading ALL of his marketing books and then one day we met at a live event. The event was a movie premier for The Compass that we were both featured in. We made a great connection and stayed in touch over the years. I continue to support Joe’s successful bestselling book launches, and in return he supports me back. This is just one example of how expert alliances can continue to refer and endorse each other at very high levels.

Asking for endorsements is a powerful way of connecting with key players in your industry. People are often flattered to be asked to endorse a book. And the people who end up endorsing the book will then have some small sense of ownership because their names are in your book and they’ve endorsed you. This gives you a reason to go back to them after the book is out and ask for help to spread the word.

That’s when their referrals will also help you sell books. And when you sell books – you sell your expertise and your services. It’s all about getting the word out about your expertise and playing a much better game in business and in life.