Most manufacturers have a customer who would say yes. Nobody has asked them, or somebody asked in a group email that was easy to ignore.
People are bad at guessing this. In a 2008 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake found people underestimated by as much as 50 percent how likely others were to agree to a direct request for help.
The people asking also assumed an indirect request would work better. The people being asked said the opposite. They were more likely to help when someone simply asked them.
So ask directly. Here is how to make it easy to say yes.
Pick the person, not the logo
The biggest name on your customer list is not always the best person on camera. You want the person who made the decision and can say why.
For JD Paint Pros, a Greensboro painting company, we interviewed the person at EcoFiber who hired them to paint a 50,000 square foot former machine shop in Colfax. Not someone who heard about the project later. The person who chose them over several other quotes.
Good candidates have a clear before and after. They switched from another supplier, they had a launch that could not slip, or something went wrong and you made it right.
How to ask, in plain words
Ask in person or on the phone, and have the person with the relationship do it. A call from someone they trust is hard to turn down. A marketing email is easy to archive.
Make the ask small and specific. Something like: "Would you sit down with us for about twenty minutes and tell us what changed after you started working with us? No script, and nothing goes out without your approval."
Each part of that answers a worry they will not say out loud. Twenty minutes is about how long our interviews run. No script means nothing to memorize. Approval means they cannot be embarrassed.
Mean the approval part. When we filmed first tastings for Naturally Nectar, one taster called the drink different, and her face said she was not sure she meant that as a compliment. It opened the first cut. The founder flagged it, she was right, and we cut it.
Do not pay for praise. The FTC's rule on reviews and testimonials, announced August 14, 2024, bars incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment. Ask your attorney how it applies to your situation, but the principle holds. Ask for honesty, not compliments.
Ask what changed, not whether they liked you
After every project, we ask our own clients the same question: what changed for you? Not whether they liked working with us. What happened afterward.
That question is also the heart of how we make a testimonial video for our clients.
On camera, asking whether they are happy with you gets a polite yes. Asking why they picked you over the other quotes gets a real answer.
That is what we asked at EcoFiber, and the answer was specific: response time, the detail in the quote, the prep work. In his words: "I was impressed with the details of the quote. I didn't have to come back and question him about it because he was very specific on the paints he was going to use."
Ask for the story first, then the numbers. When it started, what was going wrong, what is different now. A buyer believes a customer's numbers in a way they never quite believe yours.
Make it believable
Buyers lean on peers more than on vendors. TrustRadius surveyed 1,862 technology buyers for its 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect report. 74 percent consulted customer reviews. Of those who spoke to a peer during the purchase, every one found it at least somewhat helpful. Vendor marketing collateral ranked dead last among the resources buyers consult.
Here is the honest limit. A testimonial on your website is still on your website. In TREW Marketing and GlobalSpec's 2025 survey, 66 percent of technical buyers said product reviews are most valuable when they come from an independent source.
Make it checkable. Full name, title and company on screen. Filmed where they actually work. Then give them the file to post on their own LinkedIn, where their network sees it coming from them, not from you.
Keep it short. The two client films on our testimonials page run 23 and 24 seconds. More than thirty clients have also reviewed us on Google, which is the written version of the same ask.
The short version
- Plenty of customers would say yes. Most have never been asked directly.
- Ask the person who made the decision, for about twenty minutes, with approval before anything goes out.
- Ask what changed and why they picked you, not whether they are happy.
- Never pay for praise.
- Make it checkable, with a real name, a real workplace and a copy they can post themselves.