Today I have Sean Hill from NiceJob on the podcast, and he’s going to show us How to Get More Reviews and Testimonials to Grow Your Real Estate Business and how to do that in an automated way. So it doesn’t take a ton of your time. Welcome to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. I’m your host, Jennifer Myers, listen in, as I share exactly what I did to go from not being able to sell a house for years to becoming one of the top 1% of agents in the US even opening my own brokerage full of agents helped me serve all the clients that were coming my way. I taught those agents the same strategies I use and date two became top producing agents. Now through this podcast and agent crowd, school.com, I’m sharing those same modern marketing and business strategies with you. Most of which I learned from looking outside the real estate industry, no fluff, no theory, no outdated sales techniques or paying for leads, just the exact steps to get you the real estate business you’ve always wanted. And the life outside your business, you’ve always wanted to let’s make it happen and dive into today’s episode. So let’s just, level-set why are getting reviews and testimonials so important for small business owners like us real estate agents. So reviews in particular, obviously as a word of mouth, a tool in that sense. And if you think about it before referral, before any sort of thing can happen, you need someone to physically use their mouth, right? And so reviews have gone back to, and I know people like chuckle when I say this, but you go back to the earliest days of the cave people and someone going to take a Berry off a Bush and another K person going, oh, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Right. That’s the earliest form of review. Like I did that didn’t work out. But then again, that person’s not as good as a hunter-gather. There’s my immune system isn’t as strong as yours. So maybe you take the Berry, maybe you don’t listen to the earth, but you do that. And that’s where it comes about is right now with, especially the, from the digital landscape, there’s a lot of noise out there. It doesn’t mean all the noise is bad, but there’s a lot of noise out there. So at what point can you really drill down to that core human connection? And that’s where reviews and testimonials come in. I think consumers are generally a bit smarter overall there are some statistics out there that range between, you know, 10 times or 12 times more credible, a review will be than something that’s written in sales copies, because people understand that there are positions like copywriters out there and they understand, you know, from their spam inbox, things like that, that people are constantly trying to get their attention. So by creating a bunch of situations, once they start to interact with you, looking at your website, giving you a phone call, just searching your name online, the fact that a review or a testimonial serves as one person’s individual experience, and that you can build that collective to then create a narrative. That’s why reputation as a whole is so important. And why reviews are the easiest way to really start to build a culture of reputation and then build a foundation for growth. Yeah. And it’s almost like what you’re saying is our potential clients won’t necessarily believe us if we’re the ones saying it, but they’ll believe other people, their peers, how their peers view you Going the other way around sons, there’s a little oppositional defiant, right? There’s a little bit of like, oh, you know the hipster, for example, oh, well everyone’s into it. Well, I’ll be into something else. But what it does is you will always be able to own your brand. You’ll be able to say, these are our colors. This is our core value. This is what we stand for. This is what we want people to talk about it. Your reputation is the world. Kind of saying how you match up to those expectations that you’re saying. And so, you know what, especially like in the real estate, you know, market, things like that, your customer testimonials are potential clients, future neighbors, maybe future friends. And so you’re actually being able to advertise, you know, the area, your service, as much as the service that you’re providing. So that core connection doesn’t go away. And I think oftentimes it gets overlooked because people think of the negative connotation, kind of like the word Yelp’s thrown around, right? No one ever uses Yelp in a positive sense, really, right? It’s like, I’m going to go on Yelp and bury them. Right. But realistically, as people are always looking for some sort of feedback, social media is literally this feedback cycle of broadcasters and viewers trying to take in what’s popular. What should I be laughing at? What should I be following? What am I missing, et cetera, et cetera. So instinctually human characteristics draw us towards wanting to see some sort of feedback and reviews. You know, I would say it’s one of the more important parts of your business. You can be successful without really having it in a certain regard. However, what you do is you’re now relying solely on the brand and not your reputation. And if you start letting your reputation be quite honestly vulnerable, then that’s when it comes a little bit harder. You spend more money to try to recover this. Isn’t a cancel culture thing or anything like that. It really comes down to, if you do a service for someone and they can provide their response to it, you can take that and build any narrative you want. If they’re really, really happy, you support that. If they’re not happy, you now have the opportunity to show how you’re going to learn and grow so that when people see that particular story, they might not identify with that review. So reviews are incredibly important because it really is the human connection in a world that’s full of just broadcasting. Yeah. I think a lot of real estate agents know that they need to get reviews, but I kind of feel like they fall into one of two camps either they’re embarrassed to ask or that maybe it feels like graspy or desperate or salesy, or to ask a past client or review, or they knew they should do it. And it’s kind of the thing that never gets done. You know, it keeps slipping because we’re all so busy these days. So I want to talk about both of them, but let’s deal with the first camp first. So how do we get over this hump of being embarrassed to ask a past client for review? Yeah. I think my perspective is to almost enhance kind of what you said a bit is a lot of people don’t ask because they think there’s already asked of a client, right? Ask if someone, you know, you might be asking for documents, you’re trying to set schedules, you’re trying to set meetings, you know, and at the very, very end of it, when you’ve reached this conclusion, there’s almost this natural sort of feeling of being like, we’re all looking to kind of, you know, take the photo with the handshake and be done. And another thing that starts to creep in is, well, how do I ensure that they know I value this interaction? I’m not just trying to use it for the next interaction. That’s something we hear a lot of. I don’t want to ask for reviews. Cause it makes me feel like I’m already on to the next one. And I want them to understand that I’m still with them. And if anything comes up, any issues, any future opportunities for us to work together, want to keep that together. And so my response to all of that is you are asking for a review to find out how the interaction went and to give you the opportunity to now improve upon it. So one about the, I don’t want to say that I’m onto the next one. You’re not at all. You want to know how you did on this one, because again, if someone is like, you know, I’m not sure if I want to review you, that’s probably what triggers something in your brain of like, okay, wait, was there something there not satisfied? Is there something we could’ve did a little bit better? You start to realize that. So I think in your brain need to serve as, Hey, we are asking for a review because we are beginning this culture of, we want to know how we’re doing. We want to have data for us to improve and we want to get better. I always bring up, if you heard me on any other podcasts, things like that is the restaurant industry. They literally just put the tip on the receipt. That’s a feedback method right there. And no one box at it, no one thinks it’s very weird. No one thinks like, oh, well they already got my money. Now they want more money. That’s what people think. People started to think that we’re views get in the way of referrals. Absolutely not true. Absolutely not true at all. All you do with a review is now you’ve expanded that person’s referral network because now their words, their story can be turned into an act. You post on your website and now actually expand against, beyond a couple of people. They know. So if you want to ask for reviews, you need to shift the mindset of it is not an extra thing you’re asking for. It is a fundamental part of how you do business and how you get better day over day. Just the same way you look at your, you know, your accounting ledger, the same way that you might investigate, you know, refreshing your signs or your business cards, things like that. It’s literally just something for you to be able to improve. And I think by telling the customer, this is why I want to hear from you. It creates a better circle of trust. You know, you really can’t have more with them, but then it makes it where they don’t feel like it’s an ask. It’s more of a request, which I know it sounds like a marketing way just to say, ask, but really they have the option to decline. You can write zero on the tip. And so I don’t think you should be afraid of asking because the worst thing you can say is no, but I’ve yet to hear a situation of, I absolutely love them. This is my dream home. It was amazing. I was like, perfect. But then, but then they had the audacity to ask me to tell them how it went. And so I burnt that house to the ground and I will never ever use that again. That’s sometimes the thing that creeps in your mind, but more often than not the worst you’re going to get is like, no, of course, you’re gonna get a lot of it. Like what you’re touching on is really how, first of all, setting our own expectations about what we should be expecting from a review because I think so often we focus on reviews simply to get the next client, but I love your take on that. A review is actually truly like an opportunity to reflect and say like, how can I improve as an agent, right. Not just how can I get my next client? And so I think if you present the review request in that way, that it’s like, truly, I want to know how we did. So we’re always looking for improvement, you know, like be tough on me, you know, tell me what you would love to see improve. Don’t just tell me how great I am. I’m using this as a tool to get better. I think people would probably be more likely to give you the review in the first place. Okay. Absolutely. They want to help you out. You know, my background kind of comes from the sports industry. And so I deal a lot with fans, right. Passionate people. And they want to be a part of it. It goes back to almost the human nature of people that like to have, you know, their ins, their connections, you know, oh, you want to buy shoes? I know a place you should go. There’s a good side of the population that enjoys kind of being a part of that. But also there’s some that, you know, when you ask for a review, you’re giving them one method to do. So. I like to say, think about asking the review. We always say at NiceJob, you know, with our software, we kind of designed to do this, to ask at that moment of peak happiness. But realistically, as you should be looking for feedback throughout the entire process, right from the kind of a first contact, because then you’re now also, okay, well, throughout the entire time they were checking in, they were making sure, you know, it wasn’t overbearing, but I felt comfortable being able to share whatever I was thinking at that time. So when you ask for a formal review at the end, then that doesn’t feel like anything different than you been doing the entire time. And as for getting better time over time, especially I think in real estate, you know, this isn’t a retail store where you’re going to have a hundred opportunities a day, maybe to get reviews, right? With customers that will come through your doors. Sometimes it’s few and far between, but if you can start getting those and building that portfolio over time, you now get this wall of social proof, this really almost silver bullet of social proof that allows you to one expand. So if you bring on new people, you know, into your business, you know, you’re going to hire another agent to join you. Well, now you can say, Hey, this is our expectation. This is how we do things is what people are looking for. These are the clients we serve. And so now you’ve built things that go into your training. They go into recruiting. So it’s about getting better. Those are things you’re already doing, just getting your customer involved in that gives them the smallest little bit of equity in your business overall. But then it also creates this culture that the very best thing you’re going to do is, Hey, you shouldn’t think twice, like the referral becomes, you shouldn’t think twice about contacting them. Maybe not doing business with them by contacting them because at no point did I feel like I was stuck at no point, I didn’t feel, I could say as a consumer, you know what I wanted from them? If you can create that culture, hold your phone’s gonna start ringing a lot because that’s where people want to start their journey. And you may not be the right fit for them. They may not be the right client. That’s a whole different podcast topic. But if you can get people to connect with you, that’s where your other systems come into place. And when we talk about customer-driven growth, you know, the key part of that, the customer-driven part is you want to get them involved and reviews is the way to get them involved without having to have them in a weekly meeting or something like that. Yeah. I mean, again, I just want to make sure that everyone like really takes this home is like, how many times have you been asked for a review? And it’s simply like, Hey, I’d love for you to review this. Right. But I think if you take that extra step and say, I want it to improve our way of doing things, like give us one critical piece of feedback that we could improve on or whatever. So that people don’t feel like it’s just like a client-getting opportunity. I really loved that. And until I heard you say that, I didn’t think of reviews that way. In my mind, I always thought reviews were like, oh, I’m going to use this in my marketing. And I love the way that you approach reviews in that standpoint. So let’s talk about that other camp of agents that know that they should be put, like they’re sold on this idea of doing reviews. They want to improve not only their own way of doing things within their business, but also they want to use it in marketing because it’s still a great way to market yourself, but they just can’t get it done because we’re doing so many other things. How does NiceJob help us as real estate agents overcome the, like getting it done? So the biggest thing about getting it done is the timelines don’t usually sync up. Right? You know, we talk about not being on to the next one, but you know, sometimes you, aren’t going to have some contact over the next couple of days or things like that, you know, a week, maybe there is other things that are coming down the pike for you, but we found that in order to collect more reviews, you have to do three key things you have to ask for the first time at the right time. The second thing you have to do is you have to ask the right way at the right time. And the third thing is that you have to continue to follow up. So to break that down, kind of step-by-step very succinctly, I know I rambled on a couple of the other ones is you want to kind of get them in the moment that peak happiness is when you want to present them the opportunity to leave that kind of formal review. So a nice shot the way we do it is it starts with a text message, you know, in the campaign, the drip campaign that we’ll start through the software, that text message, you know, it’s right in their hand, we’ve actually heard people that use it as a certain key element. So right before they might be dropping off the keys or doing something like that and they do it to make sure like, Hey, leave a review. I made it really simple for you. You know, just you click that link there. You’ll be set and good to go. The tone is kind of what you alluded to earlier. It’s very much a request, but it’s about asking from that first tax, but also through some of the follow-up emails we’ll touch on in a second is it’s not the same ask every time the first ask is, Hey, thank you so much. You know, we’d love for you to review how you do it. That first follow-up is, Hey, hope everything’s, you know, still going great. And things like that. I know it was so exciting that so much was going on. Like the moment of peak excitement is sometimes a little overwhelming, but don’t worry. I just want you to know we have the opportunity for you to do it here. Really appreciate it. The third one is, Hey, I know things get in the way. I’m okay. Waiting for you to get in the review. This isn’t a pressure sort of thing. But I also know that sometimes that reminder kind of helps. And that fourth one, we call it the personal message is literally the, Hey, you know, we didn’t opportunity things like that. I just want to make sure the last note you leave on is that we really appreciate being able to work with you, you know, make this kind of happen, and you kind of send it off and it is there. Like, Hey, you’re going to leave the review, do it here, but it’s no longer an ask at that point. It’s literally saying, Hey, we’re just closing this chapter and moving on to the next one. So if you’re not getting reviews, chances are, is that you don’t have the ability to follow up. You don’t have the ability to monitor when these follow-ups should go out. You know, one of the key things, a NiceJob’s software that people love is whenever a view is left and then takes them out of that campaign. So they can get a text message and up to three emails. But if they leave a review after that first text message, they don’t see any of those emails, right? You don’t get that spam, but that’s something. If you want to try to build it, you know, you build your, an automation or something that you want to monitor. Even if you had an office manager, try to monitor it. Next thing you know, becomes one of those like murder mysteries pins with, you know, the yarn and stuff like that. And so a lot of times with the automation part, while we really, really love it is that it allows you to focus on what you do and then you tag it, NiceJob. And NiceJob comes in dedicated over that two-week period to get you that review and to handle all that part, including when their views are left, getting it up to your social media platforms. So getting that first a little bit of marketing started, but yeah, the biggest problem with people not getting reviews, it, it does take a good amount of time. It takes a little bit of finesse. And so the fact that you can have an automation through NiceJob, that’s a problem we look into solve, but that’s what gets us most excited is that it now allows you to kind of keep that singular focus and know that you have this great tool to kind of come after it. And you know, there are customization options. There are things that you can do to make sure because we didn’t want it to be something that was, you know, one product. And it’s just for everybody. We wanted you to have your own voice, have your own stamps that can align perfectly with the brand. You’re trying to build. Sean automation is literally my favorite word in the English dictionary as a business owner. It’s my favorite word. So everyone who’s listening knows that automation is like my jam. So if you can automate, not just like your client, follow-up not just automates like your CRM, all the things that need to happen when somebody goes under contract, but then automate the idea of getting testimonials automatically. I mean, I would imagine that’s also going to not only save you time, but also get you more reviews without having to spend a bunch of time. It’ll get you more reviews because you’re getting the proper follow-ups at the proper time. And I didn’t even talk about what the customer is, seeing what your client is seeing, because we knew that making it easy for the business owner was going to get us, you know, people that use our software, but to make it effective. And it keeps people using our software. It had to be just as easy, if not a little easier, if I can be honest for the client. So what they get is they get a link. And when they click that link, it’ll give them the option of where they want to leave the review based on the review sites that you’ve connected. But also there’s a few smart features in there that if someone doesn’t have a Facebook account, for example, it’s not going to direct them that way because then they’re gonna get a login page. They won’t log in, you know, things of that nature. So we try to eliminate as much obstacles that someone could leave a review for you probably in under a minute. But also I give you that choice and opening up that ecosystem. You still going to get reviews where they matter, right? If you, all you care about is reviews on Google, you can make it where almost everybody’s going towards Google in that sense, but by not missing out on anyone that wants to leave a review. And if Google is a barrier for them not missing out on that, that is such you go back to that ask question. It makes it much more of a comfortable environment for them to leave that review. And then with NiceJob, it’s not just about collecting reviews. It’s about reputation, marketing and starting that cycle of customer-driven growth is we’re going to look when those reviews are left organically on the platforms. That’s a key thing I want to point out though, is they are leaving the review on Google, on Facebook, you know, on home advisor, they’re leaving it on those platforms natively. Then Neisha will pull it back into the software and allow you to turn it into marketing, like social media posts, including our new integration with Instagram, to be able to take a review, turn it into an Instagram post, doing all that allows you to not just get that marketing goal, but to really put a little bit of Polish on it and start with it now beyond the automation, the set it and forget it. It’ll keep running and build you a great customer-driven growth cycle with tools within there. They use a little bit manually. That’ll help you, you know, curate a little bit more of a social media presence. There’s, you know, other tools in there that show you insights. So what exactly are your reviews saying? You know, looking at the topics, looking at the frequency, looking at the platform that they’re left on, and that will allow you to really now start making your marketing speak directly to the people that you want to bring in, because you’re not just getting a review and throwing it back out there. You’re really understanding what it’s saying. You’re able to use it for its maximum effectiveness and the fact that this is going to automate in the background. And whenever you do get the time you can now turn, you know, something diamond in the platinum or whatever order that should be. That’s what’s most exciting. So yeah, we love automation. Automation is not my favorite word. I’m a tinker like kind of getting in there, but the fact that you know, that that automation is going to consistently work for you and you don’t have to look at it and whenever you’re ready or whatever you want to really trust it, there’s going to be just simple to easy use tools in there. That’s why I get really excited and talk about this product, even though automation is not my favorite word is that if all you want is automation, we’re trying to be the leader for that. And if what you’re really looking for is customer-driven growth, whole man, is there quite a toolkit now available at your disposal, Especially on one thing that I want to make sure that people are taking away as a real estate agent. So often I see real estate agents focus only on Zillow reviews, which is really interesting, but I think that’s a mistake for agents to only focus on one platform. Because for example, when you have Google reviews, it helps with the algorithm. It helps you pull up. So it’s so funny because I know like within the real estate industry, like people, I don’t know what it is. They all just like, oh, I need a Zillow over you. And I’m like, you’re totally missing out on being found in other places, if you only focus on Zillow reviews. So one thing I love about NiceJob is it sounds like you can integrate with different, like whether it’s Google, you can pick where you want the reviews to be. I think I saw Zillow’s one of your integrations. I believe we do have an integration with Zillow. I will always double-check with that. The one thing I can say, it’s going to sound like a sales pitch, but it really is part of our mantra is that if there’s something we’re not connected to, we want to go out and try to get connected. So when people are like, oh, I use this CRM and we don’t have native integration tools like Zapier for that sort of CRM integration, but we want to try to make it as quick and pan as possible. I’m pretty sure I’m going to go to the 90% category. That Zillow is one of them that we’re connected to. But to your point is, I didn’t know about Zillow until it was recommended to me because I was having trouble finding an apartment to rent and people like, I don’t know, maybe try Zillow, but they only knew about it cause they had just bought their first home. So it’s weird as it sounds like, you know, what I see a ton of is Google reviews. Maybe I don’t know, to look on zoom. You don’t want to go to look at these other places. I sometimes use the wedding analogy. I have not searched any wedding wire or any other websites like that. Now that I’m married before I got married, I didn’t search for anything like that. Except for the small little period where maybe I was looking for a photographer where I looked through wedding wire, but you know what? I found my photographer that did my wedding on Instagram. I saw his portfolio, I saw his photos. And then when I went through and saw one of his links that came there, I went to his website on his website. He had a little bit of his portfolio and stuff like that. That’s how I found him again. I haven’t bought my first home yet, but I have moved a couple of times. And a lot of times I end up, you know, I’m looking at restaurants in the area I’m looking at, you know, what’s kind of going around there, some already spending a lot of time on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, things like that. And maybe when I finally got them nitty-gritty, I know exactly what I want. And maybe I’m dedicated. That’s probably I’m going through a Zillow or something like that. It’s not saying don’t do Zillow. But one thing I think is the most important is like for Google, you know, what Google loves to do is show things that Google has, you know, why YouTube videos rank so high Google owns them. You know, either that three-pack, you know, to appear in that little map, three-pack, you know why I think it’s 20% now is Google review based just because they want people to think that it’s your Google and that’s all that matters. So if you wanna talk about search engines, absolutely it’s user-generated content that search engines love ones that Google, in particular, it’s going through their platform, which they absolutely love because it builds their brand while showing off accurate results. But I think it’s also meeting the most advanced person, the person that has super real estate savvy. It might be very particular about who they want to hire. They’re still going to go through Google at some point. Maybe it’s not their first though, but if you have enough thing there, if you’ve made no focus there, we talked to recently with a real estate organization up here in Canada and said, you know, when we go search on a Google map pack that real estate agents that come up have like two reviews, five reviews, Right? Number one, Google’s going to be like, And You know what? So maybe there’s a platform out there. We don’t know. Maybe at some point tech talks is going to get reviews where you have to like use that voice-over voice while doing a dance, a submit your review. Don’t want to want it. Maybe it comes popular. I don’t know. But if that happens and you don’t have a voice there, the person that does now gets all the attention, right? It’s kinda like the history is written by the winter sort of thing. So I think focusing on Google, especially I think Google is king across the board. I think even no matter how specialized your agency is when someone goes in their phone and even looks up your exact name, just to try to find your website or whatever, the fact that they can see your website, your Google reviews, and a link to some Zillow reviews and things like that. That’s going to tell them that they’re in the right place. So yes, Google, I think is incredibly important. If you don’t have a Google business profile or anything like that, you can get one absolutely free. Google’s trying to give them away in that sense. And then you can use something like NiceJob to not only help you collect Zillow reviews but to then help grow that platform as well. Which again, it goes back to now your caveman, you just gave him a megaphone. Exactly. And Curtis from NiceJob is teaching our, we’re doing a class for our students about how to create a Google business page and how to integrate NiceJob and all that stuff. So if you’re listening to this and you’re a student, then if you’re not, we’ll show you how to do that and connect NiceJob to do it for you automatically. Yeah. And versus being on Zillow where there’s like, everybody is a real estate agent and everybody’s like, got the reviews. And now you’re just one of many. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be on Zillow. I’m saying you should be also on Google and also on Facebook and all the other places that you can connect through. NiceJob and give the choice to the consumer about where they want to leave. Well, that’s also, I like the social sharing automation that we have and even some of the manual social sharing is that you can now take a review. That’s left on Zillow. It’ll pull back into your nice shop dashboard and you can share that as a Facebook post, you can share that as a tweet, share that as a LinkedIn post, share that as an Instagram post, and now you’ve taken a review, that’s left on Zillow. You’ve taken that same words, those same narratives. And now you’re presenting it on Instagram, on Facebook. It’s a little bit more manual in this one, but you can make it a post on your Google business profile. So if you’re, yeah. It’s so that one, that’s not through the direct automation, but through Google business profiles, they had posts a long time ago. They went away for a little bit. They’re starting to come back, but you can do that. But, and get that out there. It doesn’t come up as a review. So it doesn’t record it as a review. It’s literally just a post, but it’s user-generated content that tells Google, Hey, someone searching for this, look at all these things I have for you to show. And Google goes, Ooh, precious user-generated content. We want to show a ton of that. And, like I said, it is now if you’re wearing, if someone’s listening to all this going, I know I want to do Google, but I don’t want to miss out on a Zillow review. Cause I sent them to Google. Well, okay. Something like NiceJob will allow you to get that Zillow review and then turn it into the reputation marketing assets that take that narrative, that story you want to tell that referral that you want to create and put it on those other social platforms. So, you know, people go, I don’t know what to post on Instagram. If you can post a review once a week, that has one day. Now that you’re set, you’re almost an Instagram influencer, right. You know, I’m not sure that putting my Facebook page post reviews add a photo to your review. So not only does someone see what the review is, they see the actual house that relates to that story. There’s so much that you can do to really expand per platform, right? So what should your Facebook page look like? What should your Twitter account look like? And that’s more time, but now just by getting reviews, you’re starting to check off a box of what can fuel those other systems. So if you start getting reviews and then you grow where you’re big enough that you can hire an office manager and that person can hire a social media manager. You now not only told them, Hey, we have a Twitter account, run it. You’re saying, Hey, we have this account. We also have this many reviews that can all be turned into gifts, captions, photos, animated videos, whatever the case may be. So you’re building this collateral for whatever your growth takes you towards. And so that goes back to the very first question to ask me, why are these things so important? Because it really is a core part of where your growth is going to go. And if you don’t have that backing there, it gets very difficult. And so, yeah, Google, isn’t happy on the search engines. Zillow is going to help you for very, you know, particular industry sort of niche in that sort of sense. But if you can have a presence on both and that presence can be consistently growing, man, does that get you a lot of eyes that get a lot of buzz and does it really make you a pillar of your community? Totally. Exactly. And then not take so much of your time to have that consistency and have that growth. Yeah. You just got to go. You just gotta go and do your job to the best of your ability. You know, we made the tagline, we get great companies, the reputation they deserve and that great was strategically put in there that, you know, what, if you have bad customer, you know, experience, if, if you don’t answer your phone calls and you don’t send back emails, you’re rude and things like that, you’ll get the reputation you deserve. You will, you know, people will eventually that word of mouth will get around about you. But if you’re a great company and how are, you know, a great agency and a great office, the amount of time it takes to maintain that level of excellence, the fact that you had to tack on a marketing degree and then also try to build your own automation, things like that, that shouldn’t be necessary. That’s where NiceJob steps in is we want you to you, do you be very, very good at it and we will start collecting future collateral. And, but at the very sense, the immediate ROI is you’re going to start collecting more reviews and those will instantly help that customer-driven growth engine start to roll. And then once that’s in gear lookout. Yeah. And one thing that I’ve heard you say is don’t always expect, and don’t always want the five-star reviews are the best, you know? And so can you talk a little bit about why the depth of review some twos and threes and fours and fives is important? I think all of us are always like, well, what if I asked for a view and they don’t give me a five, right? What if I get a four? And then I look bad. Talk about your philosophy on why less than five-star reviews is actually a good thing. So one, because they’re true. So the one thing I’ll start off the top is if you’ve got a one-star view or two-star review and the person is lying, you know, just make it blunt, right? They’re inaccurate. It’s not factual relevant. Well, that’s not you, that’s an easy, almost solve is that you kind of, you put your response out there, you explain, you know, you don’t have to defend yourself, but not to go down that rattle too much, but you can build that. Well, the one-star, the two-star review, that was something that someone was going to say anyway, right? If it’s a true review, if they didn’t really like their experience, they were going to say that the odd thing is that once they make it public and they leave a review, the knee, the ball actually goes into your court. So they don’t take the ball and go home. The ball now is in your court. You have the ability to reply to that review. I’ll take Google. For example, actually, within the NiceJob, you know, software within the app, you can reply directly to Google reviews, right from there. So you have to worry about re-logging back in and everything like that. But your review now gives you the last word and that online exchange. Now you don’t want to misuse it and go and try to dunk all over somebody. But what you can do is you are now creating a moment in your business’s history, where you say, we’ve heard this feedback. We are reading this feedback. We’re going to improve on this feedback. And then what you do is the best companies. I see ones where they’re like, oh man, everyone loves them. They’re not a five-point, oh, they’re probably 4.9, 4.8. But what they have is they have a really bad review from two years ago. And it’s a really well-written bad review and it scales them. And at the time that business owner was losing sleep over it. But then they don’t have anything else like that. For two more years, as a consumer, you look and you go, ah, they improved this person, talked about them being late. And then for three years, no one else talked about them being late. And so what you can do now is you create the, Hey, these are moments in time. If we don’t do a good job, we want to know about it. So we never do it again. And so that’s where bad reviews can actually be good marketing gold. If a, you are willing to fix mistakes that you absolutely make, you know, or B that you constantly, when you improve on it is you make sure that you’re allowing customers that experience you from there to leave their own experiences. That’s where not collecting reviews becomes dangerous because one review in a sea of five can do a bit of damage. One in 10, not so much, one in 21 to 31 in a hundred, not so much a hundred reviews and a thousand. It does exponentially, you know, kind of come back down. And so if you’re not taking every opportunity to collect a review, you’re giving power to the people that do go and speak. But if you have two reviews and one of them is bad, you do get their ability to respond to it. But now you can also make it part of your narrative. You know, in 2020, we got a review from this person. Like you literally could turn it into an ad. We got this review and we said, never again. So this is three core promises, right? We said never again. So our three core promises are this, this and this. And that’s where it goes. So when I say don’t fear, bad reviews, certainly don’t, don’t try to get bad reviews. I actually do agree with that one. You don’t want to get bad reviews, but the whole reason that NiceJob we say, ask everybody and take them all in is because the only thing that makes a bad review, powerful is your inaction and your inability to actually maybe accept some truth in it. And again, most bad reviews that we hear about most bad reviews that people fear are the ones where people are going to lying or they’re exaggerating the truth, or the worst is like, I tried to call them and do business, but they didn’t answer the phone immediately. So they don’t actually have an experience with you. They’re just taking one small thing that happened. They’re making it. But you know, what if someone, their number one priority is that you communicate quickly and efficiently. That review is going to give them pause, but your response, your commitment. And then they finally go, you know what? I’ll give it a shot. And when they call you two years ago, you didn’t answer. And now it goes to maybe an automated answering service that allows the process to start. So they feel heard and they feel communicated with the whole man. You just checked a big old box right off the beginning and think of the testimonial that person’s going to leave because now you’ve set them up to be wowed. And so, yeah, don’t fear, bad reviews that say you should be looking to do 10-star work, give a 10-star experience. They only can give you a five, but good 10 stars, but anywhere under five, the improvement levels that get back to that 10 and be honest, be open, be transparent. And you’ll be surprised is how more people will go with a business that has a 4.8 and a ton of reviews and a 5.0 with just one or two, Cause a five-point, oh, it doesn’t feel real sometimes. You know, and especially, I know like when I’m, you know, my husband and I are like reviewing restaurants or something, we’re like, which Italian should we eat in a new town? He’s always like the one who has the most reviews and has the highest score. You know? So whenever he’s looking, he’s like, he never goes for like the one that has three reviews and a five star. He goes for the one that’s like four and 139 reviews. That’s the one we picked. Yeah. It’s almost like, you know, sometimes not having a plethora of reviews sells as inexperience. Would that being said is, you know, Google I’ll use Google, for example, does change their display algorithm a bit, right? Google wanted to increase people’s ratings lightly. You know, especially over the past few years we had no things like that. So how many reviews factor into the equation that makes you a 4.9? We do an award show twice a year and they shop-rated awards in which we look at all the data that we have. And we award people based on how many reviews they’ve gotten and their overall score is your actual score can be broken down to like four or five decimal points. And so we have the task of, for our award show, the, between this business as a 4.97621, and this business is a 4.97620. Where should our cutoff point be? But the reason I bring that up is, you know, the algorithm might shift. So you might automatically become a 4.9. They get stricter. You can have a five-point, oh, they get a little bit loose with it, but people will look. If you see a lot of reviews, I saw a thousand reviews, but the last one was left in 2017. I’m like something changed. Something’s greasy. Now he must be review gating, not letting people leave reviews in a certain way, you know, something happening. But if I see, you know, a 4.7 and they’ve had reviews coming in every other day, and I look at the reviews coming in every other day and they’re all glowing and great. And I just scroll back for eight months just to find someone being negative. That’s a bigger impact. Now I mentioned sometimes in real estate, it’s not like you’re, you know, a, a thousand houses a week, right? Or a hundred dollars a day. I can retail. But what it comes down is if people consistently see that you’re getting frequent reviews and they’re all coming good, or they do see that bad when it was three months ago. But then see, you’re falling three. After that, we’re all super glowing. We’ll take the time. If they’re reading a ton of reviews, they’re interested in you. They really want to know about you, right? Like you don’t, you don’t ask your friends about the cute guy or girl across the way you’re not actually interested in. Right. Right. And so the fact is if people think about, well, what do they pour through all my reviews? Good. That means you’ve done something to entice them. So have enough to convince them to go that next step and contact you because that’s where you really can shine. Great. Anything else you want to add about reputation management, testimonials reviews or NiceJob before we tell people how to learn? Yeah. The last thing I’ll say is that you actually, you mentioned her reputation management and I’ll say it’s crushing it. But we made the shift from rotation management, reputation marketing, and some people thought it was just a semantic sort of thing. But the one takeaway I want to get is that every time you get a customer, every time you get a client, it should give you the opportunity to get another one. Every single time. It might not always be a one-to-one. You might get one person that gets you five and they go overall averages. But if you’re going there and you’re providing these great experiences, great service, you should have the opportunity at another one. And that’s a reputation marketing is. But in the end, we started with a lot of home service professionals. You know, people that do that day in and day out. And the one that they didn’t want to do was take extra time to do something. You know, they were laborers at their core. So everything we build, we start with, well, the people that use NiceJob love this, will they use it effectively? And does it not ask more of them? And if it gets that, and that’s how it comes to feature, but the biggest sell job for Niesha, I really could say. And this is why I’m proud to kind of represent them here today. It really is the people. If you want to work with quality people and people that will kind of stay up at night, trying to think about how to help you. It really is the culture here. It’s located in Canada, I’m American, but it’s located in Canada because it’s that nice, polite, all come together. This is a company that really is trying to empower everyone with its customer-driven growth, because we kind of do see it as, if you serve a customer, you should have the opportunity to get another one out of that. So we love for you to check us out. You know, I know that we’ll have a link and then things like that. But also if you just want to reach out to kind of pick our brains or anything like that, send us a message, visit our website. You can look for me, Sean Hill on Facebook is probably the easiest place to get me. We’d be happy to help you out because as someone that helped build a community here, this is what we get really excited about. So I want to thank everyone for listening. Obviously, I know I rambled a bit there, but yeah, I’m excited to always talk about this and I can tell you this isn’t a performance. I love, you know, what we’re doing here. And I cannot wait to meet more people that wanna take advantage of it. Yeah. My interaction with NiceJob and why I invited you guys, not only on the podcast, but inside our student community, because I’ve interacted with three different people in three different levels of NiceJob employees, everyone from the first, you know, I requested a demo, the salesperson that called me and he told me the story about how his dad makes playgrounds and how it changed his business. You know, I don’t forget his name, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. And then Curtis, you know, coming inside of our student community and not just wanting to sell NiceJob, but really teach our students how to create a Google business page and teach them why it’s so important to be there. You know, so rarely do companies really have this desire to grow your company. And so I will say that whether you use NiceJob or not definitely do a free trial interact with them, do the demo. And I think you’ll fall in love with the way that they want to build you up. They want to build your business and it really is genuine. So you can go to www.agentgradschool.com/nicejob, and there’ll be a link to a trial and more information about NiceJob. And I’ll also link Sean to your Facebook page and LinkedIn. Some people can find you. So thank you so much, not just for being here, but really everything you guys do at NiceJob, supporting small business owners. It’s tough for us and you guys help us grow and do better and then serve our clients better. So thank you so much. It’s a pleasure and thank you for the opportunity to come on and speak with you and connect, and hey, if anything comes up and you’d love to hear from us again, we’d be happy to come back. Awesome. Thanks. Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. We purposely keep those podcasts sponsor and commercial-free so we can focus solely on providing Real estate agents with the content that will help them grow their real estate business. And how about life? They love out five but business too, but we need your help to get this podcast in the hands of other real estate agents. So please, if you liked this episode, leave a review on iTunes or wherever you’re listening, and also tell your agent friends to listen in to thank you so much for supporting the show for being a listener and supporting other agents along your way to success. That’s what this is all about. See you next time on another episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. And until then, come hang with me over at agentgradschool.com. We’ll see you there.