How to Ask for a Complete LinkedIn Recommendation?

LinkedIn is a professional social network for business people. I’ve heard some successful stories from friends who’ve used LinkedIn to get connected to the person in charge. Some of which have turned into successful dealings. Hence, LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network to be precise.

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And recently, a client of Simpleet joined LinkedIn. They provide online printing services from business cards to large format printing. All at an affordable rate you’d second think, “how do they make money?”.

The last part was a snippet of the recommendation I gave them on LinkedIn. And if you’re in business, you’d know (or read) testimonials are a very powerful marketing tool to have in your profile and portfolio. Plus, it’s free!

This was the full recommendation I gave them:

You can only expect the best quality at affordable rates from Colourman. More so, you’ll want to ask him “are you sure you’re making enough money?”

He’s well-versed in printing and has now gone into saving the world by recommending recycled paper for business cards. Only one of the providers I know and will recommend to my own friends who need printing done.

After acknowledgement of our recommendation or reference, he decided to recommend us too. Now, that’s great to hear. Because when clients or people recommend you, it means they like your work or services or product.

However, something was missing. He didn’t describe what inspired him to recommend us. It was a missing the story.

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And I was pondering on what to do with it. I could’ve accepted this recommendation without any description. Or, I could’ve accepted but hide this recommendation because it felt incomplete. The latter wasn’t an option because what if he checked my profile and didn’t see his endorsement there.

So the next best option I had was to request a replacement. However, in my request for a replacement I explained how this LinkedIn recommendation is similar to a testimonial.

Thus, I decided to help him start on the testimonial for us on a neutral level.

Danny and his partner; Hawk, didn’t only provide the expertise and solution for us to setup our online printing business. They’ve also given us insight to available opportunities of doing business online and have continue to advise us along the way.

Nothing fancy. General and simple. And seriously, this is a recommended method from a book. It’s an initiative you take to help the client kick off their own testimonials for you.

But of course, it has to be approved by the client. Falsifying an endorsement is easy to spot and is the worst crime to your ‘webutation’ – as Hani calls it.

And after I requested a replacement, my thought was “never settle for second best”.

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