You ask a happy customer for a testimonial, and instead of a yes or a no, you get a question back: "Sure — what do I get for it?" It is an awkward moment, because the honest answer for most companies is "nothing," and that feels like a bad thing to say to someone you just asked for a favor. But how you handle this question determines two things at once: whether you get a testimonial that is actually worth publishing, and whether the one you get is honest enough to survive scrutiny. The instinct to sweeten the deal is exactly the instinct to resist, because the moment a testimonial has a price, it stops being the thing that makes strangers trust you.
Understand what the question usually means
Most of the time, "what do I get in return" is not really a demand for payment. It is one of three things wearing the same words. Sometimes it is a busy person's way of asking whether this is worth their time — they are weighing the ten minutes against whatever they imagine they get back. Sometimes it is a negotiator's reflex, the same instinct that makes them ask for a discount on everything; they do not expect a reward, they are just checking. And occasionally it is a genuine expectation, usually from a customer who has been paid for reviews before and now assumes that is how it works everywhere.
Your response should be the same in all three cases, but knowing which one you are dealing with helps you read the room. If it is a time question, the answer is to make the ask smaller. If it is a negotiator's reflex, the answer is a warm, honest "nothing, actually" — which usually gets a laugh and a yes. If it is a genuine expectation of payment, that is the one case where you need to be most careful, because a paid endorsement carries obligations most companies do not want to take on. In every version, the safe move is to keep the request low-effort in the first place, the way you would in how to ask for a testimonial without sounding desperate — a small ask rarely triggers the "what's in it for me" question at all.
The honest answer is usually the best one
The strongest response to "what do I get for it" is a version of the truth: nothing, and that is the point. You can say it warmly — "Honestly, nothing — it just genuinely helps us, and I asked because I thought you'd say something we'd be proud to show." This does three useful things. It is disarming, because most people do not expect a company to admit that out loud. It flatters the customer, because it frames the ask as a compliment rather than a chore. And it keeps the testimonial clean, because a quote given freely is worth far more than one given in exchange for something.
If you want to offer something without turning the testimonial into a transaction, offer visibility, not value. A link back to their company, their name and title credited prominently, a share of the published quote to their own audience — these are things the customer benefits from that do not compromise the endorsement, because they are not payment, they are exposure. A B2B customer often genuinely wants the backlink and the logo placement, and giving them that costs you nothing and taints nothing. The line you are protecting is simple: you can give them reach, but you cannot give them a reason to say something they would not have said for free.
What you can offer — and the line you must not cross
There is a real difference between a thank-you and an inducement, and it is worth being precise about where it sits. A small, unconditional gesture of gratitude — sent after the testimonial, with no strings, and not contingent on the content being positive — is generally fine and is how many companies say thanks. A payment, a discount, a gift card, or free service offered in exchange for a testimonial, or offered only if the testimonial is favorable, is a different thing entirely. It converts an endorsement into an advertisement, and in most jurisdictions it triggers a disclosure obligation: the customer, or you, must clearly state that the testimonial was incentivized.
That disclosure is not optional and it is not fine print. Regulators treat an undisclosed incentivized endorsement as a deceptive practice, because the reader is trusting a voice they believe is independent. If you do decide to offer something of value, the incentive has to be disclosed on the published testimonial itself, in plain language a reader will actually see. Before you go down that road at all, it is worth reading whether the incentive is even a good idea in the first place — see should you offer an incentive for a testimonial — because the response-rate bump is almost always smaller than the credibility cost, and a page full of quotes marked "in exchange for a gift card" persuades no one.
Keep the testimonial credible whatever you decide
The whole reason a testimonial works is that a stranger reads it and believes a real person said it because they meant it. Every incentive you attach chips at that belief, even when it is disclosed and legal. A quote you paid for reads differently than a quote someone volunteered, and readers are better at sensing the difference than most marketers assume. So the default should always be to ask for the endorsement on its own merits, make the ask small enough that time is not a barrier, and answer "what do I get" with honesty rather than a bribe.
If a particular customer will genuinely only participate for a reward, the right question is not how much to offer — it is whether you want that testimonial at all. An endorsement that exists only because you paid for it is not social proof; it is an ad with a customer's name on it, and it belongs in a different bucket with different rules. The testimonials that move prospects are the ones given freely by people who had nothing to gain. When a customer asks what they get in return, the most valuable answer you can give — for them, for you, and for the stranger who will one day read the quote — is the true one.