How to get testimonials for a new business with no clients yet

You opened in March. The truck is lettered, the website went up over a weekend, and halfway down the homepage there is a heading that says "What our customers say" with nothing under it. Or worse, with the three sample quotes the template shipped with, from a Jane Doe who loves your attention to detail.

Everybody who scrolls that far learns the one thing you hoped they would not: nobody has said anything yet. So the question is fair. Where does a brand new business get its first testimonials, without making any up?

Usually closer than that.

The work you did before you opened

Hardly anybody starts a service business from zero. The electrician who went out on her own spent eight years wiring houses for somebody else. The bookkeeper kept the books at a firm in Peoria before she rented the office over the hardware store. The customers from those years remember the person who showed up, not the name on the invoice.

You can ask them. A homeowner whose panel you replaced in 2023 can write about that job, as long as the words are honest about when it happened and who you worked for. "Tom rewired our basement in 2023, back when he was with Hanson Electric" is true, and it still tells the next customer what they need to know about Tom. What you cannot do is let that job read as if your new company did it. And do not take your old employer's customer list out the door to go fishing. Ask the people who know your name and would be glad to hear from you.

The same goes for people you worked alongside. A general contractor who has handed you tile work for five years has a lot to say about you, but he is not a customer, so label him as what he is. A line from somebody who has hired you forty times reads as a reference, and a visitor will weigh it as one. That is fine. It is still a real person vouching for you by name.

Your first paying customers, all of them

When you have three customers, you ask all three. Not the one who seemed happiest. All three, the same day the work is done, while the new faucet is still the most interesting thing in the kitchen.

A new business has something the established shop down the road lost years ago: the owner does every job. The first dozen customers dealt with you, in person, and a lot of them know they took a chance on somebody new. People who took a chance like being asked how it went. The post on how to ask a client for a testimonial has the wording. The one thing to add for a new business is a question about the decision itself: what almost made you call somebody else? The answer is usually the exact doubt your next customer has, answered by someone who had it too.

Friends and family, carefully

Your cousin's deck counts as a job. It doesn't count as a testimonial unless it says she's your cousin. The FTC's rules expect a connection like that to be disclosed, because people read a cousin's praise the way they read a mother's, and they are right to. "My cousin Jen, who paid full price and still made me come back for the railing" is honest and even a little charming. "Jen K., homeowner" is not.

Honestly, family is better used as practice. Send them the same ask you will send customers, see what comes back, and fix the wording before it matters.

A founding price, without buying the words

Plenty of new businesses run a founding customer price: the first ten jobs at a discount, in return for a chance to prove themselves. That is fine. Making the price depend on a testimonial muddies the testimonial, because a reader deserves to know it was part of a deal, and making it depend on a good one is exactly what the FTC's rule forbids. The post on discounts for reviews goes through why it backfires even where it is legal.

Give the price because they are early, say so up front, and ask for the testimonial afterward like you would from anyone. If a testimonial comes from somebody who got the founding price, a short note next to it saying so costs you nothing.

Proof that is not a testimonial

Until the words come in, the rest of the page can carry some of the weight. Your license number, and proof of insurance a customer can check. Photos of your own work, with the owner's permission. The year you started in the trade, which is not the year the LLC was filed. A written guarantee, if you are willing to stand behind one. None of it is a customer talking, but all of it is checkable, and checkable is most of what a testimonial is for.

What not to put there

No invented testimonials, not even "just to get started". I'd rather see an empty page than a made-up one. No stock photo faces either, and nothing lifted from your old employer's website or a competitor's. The post on fake testimonials covers how readers spot them, which is faster than people expect.

And no empty section. If you have nothing yet, take the heading off the page until you have one. A section with no testimonials in it is louder than no section at all.

How many you need to start

One. One testimonial with something specific in it and a first name under it beats a carousel of five that say "great service", and the second comes quicker than the first because by then the ask is a habit. There are examples by trade for a sense of what a strong one reads like for yours.

I built Exalted for this stage as much as any other. You send one link when the invoice goes out, the customer writes a couple of lines on their phone, and you pick which ones go on your site.