What I want to talk to you about: how to drive more positive client testimonials to drive more sales and more income. The reason why this is so important is that as you probably know, we’re increasingly in a world where people buy based on recommendations, reviews, and testimonials of other people that have worked with that person, with that professional.
And increasingly people are doing their homework and searching us. Going to Google, Zillow, et cetera, to see what other people are saying. Before they even call us, contact us, or agree to meet with us in an appointment to potentially work with us as a buyer’s or a seller’s agent.
Focus on getting a positive testimonials from every client you work with
So increasingly if you’re not hyper-focused on getting positive testimonials from every client you work with you’re missing out. You’re missing out on creating and growing your brand equity. On building your reputation on growing that, which proceeds you. Because reputation proceeds revenue. Your brand will precede you before you ever make it to actually talk to a client face-to-face. So a couple of tactics and ways that you can do this, that we’ve done that are effective and helpful.
Set the expectation early
Meaning relatively early on, not immediately, I’d say generally when you get a property under contract and you’re maybe midway through transaction management.
You’re going to want to have a conversation, which is, “Hey, it’s been such a pleasure working with you, Mr and Mrs, a buyer or seller. And I would just ask that if you could, you’d be so kind to write me a review. I’ll send you the link, take you less than five minutes, but this is really how I build my business. Referrals are the lifeblood of my business. And it’s been so great working with you guys. I’d love it if you could tell others about your experience working with me, candidly, openly, no more than five or 10 minutes, would that be okay?”
If you’re doing a good job and they like you, nobody’s going to say no. Now the reason why people don’t get reviews from people when they’ve done a good job and they like you is that they don’t set the expectation. They don’t set almost the quid pro quo. “Hey, I’m putting a lot of work into this. I’m going to see this through to the end. I just would like a little bit of help with a simple review.”
To kind of honor that or give that little quid pro quo back. Also the reason why agents don’t get testimonials for people that would ordinarily write them is they don’t follow up. And remember all of the money, all the values and the follow up. So just like we need to follow up with buyer seller prospects. We also need to follow up with clients until they write us a review.
If you set the expectation, you have a follow up campaign in place, you’re making a call and email and a text, and you’re really prompting them again. If they haven’t already at the closing table, virtual or in person, “Hey, I’m going to send you that link over shortly. Could you just take again less than 10 minutes and just write me a quick review, candidly, about your experience working with me, it would really mean a lot to me.”
It’s how I build my business. If you’ve done a good job, if you’ve built rapport and trust throughout the process, and if they like you 9 out of 10, people will agree. They won’t all do it though. Remember the money is in the follow-up.
Don’t give up until you get it
Don’t feel like you’re nagging. Remember you’re in a sales role. Sometimes you have to continue to follow up, to get the result you seek. Remember people get busy. It’s not because they don’t want to write one. It’s you need to stay top of mind until it’s done. So again, usually phone call a couple of days after the closing, if they haven’t written it yet followed up by a follow-up email, maybe a quick text, couple of prompts. Maybe an automation. But the personal touch we’ve found is most effective.
Do this for a week. If you still don’t have it within two weeks, pick up the phone, ask them to say, Hey, is there anything I could have done differently? Or maybe is there a reason why you, you didn’t write me a review. That’s kind of maybe a little harsh, maybe putting them in a corner to answer.
But you might need to do that. So again, set the expectation early of what you’re looking for at the end of this, once they successfully closed on their home, if they’re selling it or the home, if they’re buying it. And tell them why it’s important to you, tie it to emotion, tie to your livelihood, tie it to your future, to your business success.
It’s been effective for us. We generally don’t have a problem getting testimonials. And I would highly recommend this approach to that because when you increase your testimonials, you’re down the road, again, medium to kind of long-term strategy. You’re going to increase your leads to increase your clients. You’re going to increase the level of trust and rapport you build with consumers, with buyers and sellers in your market.
So hopefully this helped. If it did shoot me a line, drop me a comment here, like share this with somebody else that could benefit from it. And it’s always to your success, happiness and freedom. We’ll talk to you next week.