We use client testimonials in all our advertising and promotional activities. These are clients who have succeeded in taking our hypnosis program to lose weight, stop smoking, reduce stress or undergo painless childbirth or surgery.

We calculate that each client who shares a personal success story about using our product helps grow our business by bringing us four new clients.

Verbal testimonials figure in "Ask the Experts," a twice-monthly local radio call-in show I host. These experts — all satisfied clients — share their experiences with hypnosis as I interview them on air. Then they answer questions from callers who may be skeptical but want to learn about hypnosis from someone who has been through the process.

Our enthusiastic client-experts also tell listeners about our free hypnotic-screening process, which is designed to determine whether they'd be good candidates for our services. And because they're sharing personal experiences, there's no hard sell.

We've also had great response with newspaper advertorials. These special advertising features use photographs of happy clients along with their written testimonials.

We've collected more than 300 letters of endorsement, which we keep in three-ring binders in the reception area. Sometimes we ask these letter-writers to tell their stories in our advertorials.

Clients we feature must be upbeat-looking people who will appear happy in photographs accompanying the testimonials. We also tend to use average-looking people rather than superstars. When you use stars, people think you've paid them for endorsements. We want our testimonials to have credibility with ordinary people — the ones our product is geared to help.

We want people to check out our testimonials and say, "This is an average person just like me, so maybe I can benefit from this product too." That's the kind of response that will help us keep growing our business.

Your Peer Connection: Patrick Porter, Positive Changes Hypnosis. patrick@ihypnosis.com