How To Stop Missing Out On Reviews From Happy Clients (Ep51)

Speaker A: Today's episode is for you. If you've ever encountered this scenario where your clients or patients seem thrilled with the work that you're doing with them, but then they don't end up leaving a review for you. The Systems Wise Podcast. Hello and welcome to the show. This is Systems Wise, the show about helping small businesses with the most limited resources to achieve some of the things that much larger businesses with far greater resources can achieve with the teams that they have. I'm Gareth Heversen and um, today I'm going to be talking about a systematic gap that most small businesses, most micro businesses miss, and especially those expert led businesses where we're so focused on getting our client or our patient or our customer, the amazing result that we've promised and doing the best work that we can do and then moving on to the next one. We should not assume that our, ah, delighted client is going to give us a phenomenal testimonial or review or referral. Once we've completed that work, there will naturally be a number of people that will do that and who are just inclined to share the great work that we do. But without having a system in place, we're missing out on the opportunity to be able to maximize the number of those reviews or referrals that we're able to get. And when we think about reviews, the first place that I want you to think about is Google reviews, ever such an important place, especially if we're working in a competitive market, whether it's a local market or a national market where there is some online consideration for our services before somebody decides to buy from us. They say that 15% of all SEO is based on the reviews metrics that we have. So if we're not maximizing the number of reviews that we're able to get on Google reviews as a first port of call, we're missing out on 15% of the potential to rank for our goods or services. So that alone, without getting into any of the complexities around SEO and any of the black box type stuff that you'd have to hire very expensive, confusing services to be able to address, just getting reviews alone can help us to rank higher on Google. So that in itself is as good a reason as any to ask for reviews a lot more and a lot more systematically when we do the work that we do. But how do we prevent that scenario that when we've done the work that we've done with a client or with a patient, and they've been delighted as we've gone through that process with them, Perhaps they've even promised to leave you a review or to recommend you to somebody. But then they vanish and the review doesn't emerge, the referral doesn't emerge. How do we address that challenge that we have? Well, the answer to that comes from knowing why that happens. And when we know why that happens, we can help to plug those gaps in that process. Foreign. The key thing to think about, especially when you're helping your clients or your patients to achieve the objective that you want to. In our minds as the delivery professional, that successful conclusion, we generally associate with the end of that relationship that we have with them when our work here is done. And as experts, we fall into this trap of expertise that we want to get, get the very best possible outcome for everybody that we work with. Whereas if we actually think of this scenario from the perspective of our clients or our patients, actually their enthusiasm for the results that they're starting to get or the progress that they're starting to get comes a lot earlier in that process, before all the I's have been dotted and the T's crossed. So actually, we should be seeding into that conversation that we're having with them, that interaction that we're having with them, um, that engagement that we're having, we should be seeding much earlier in that process the prospect of them leaving us reviews or referring us. So are there opportunities where you're achieving small milestones with those clients or patients where you can more naturally ask for that review? Think about those scenarios where you've got off a call or you've got off an interaction with that client or patient, and they've been gushing with praise for the progress that they're making. Now, it might feel awkward at the time to think it through, but what I'd encourage you to do is go back and think about your last five or 10 clients and think about where were the moments in that interaction, that relationship that you had with them, where there were more natural places where you could have asked for that review to have been left? Where were they starting to make that breakthrough to address the challenges or the problems that they have? When we wait till the end of a relationship to ask for that review or that referral, it's starting to tail off. That enthusiasm is starting to tail off. The gains that they're making towards the end of that relationship will naturally be smaller than the gains that they were making earlier on in that relationship. And if we can start to frame when we ask for that review or that referral earlier and more in tune with, with Those larger gains, the more likely it is that we'll receive those reviews or those referrals from that client or that patient. The second thing I want you to think about, and this is directly related to how I position that first one, if we don't have a systematic collection process, so if there isn't a clear way that we're asking for and collecting those reviews and down a, uh, consistent channel that we're asking for those reviews, then we're relying entirely on ourselves to either remember to ask for them or on our clients to give them. So what I want you to think about is when do you ask for them, how do you ask for them, and where are you asking them to leave that review? The majority of my clients, I try to get them to think about the benefits of Google reviews. Now, that might not apply to every single client. Trustpilot might be the place where you're looking for more reviews. Facebook might be the place. Or if you are purely a LinkedIn player, LinkedIn testimonials might be the place to ask for those reviews. But it needs to be one of those, and you need to be clear with where you're going to ask somebody to leave that review for you. The reason I ask for people to think about Google reviews is that Google is, as we know, one place on the Internet that will have an index of which it thinks are the best providers of a good or a service. Now, that provider might be a local one, so can I find a physio near me? It will index those people who are local to you and your town, or if it's something that's more national, let's say a business coach that works online, it will index the people, the business coaches that it thinks are most relevant for the person that's doing that search. So it might be a mix of local suppliers and it might be a mix of national suppliers. The value of going to Google first and getting those reviews is that you then become part of that index. But also it's a nice place that when we take a copy of that and a text copy of that into our, uh, CRM, we can then use that in an email to follow up with that delighted client or that delighted patient to then invite them to copy and paste that to somewhere else that they might also leave you a review as well. So it provides a really nice start point and a core central point that you can then reuse that and reapply that elsewhere. And then the third point, the final point I'd like to make on this topic of why somebody might not have left you a review. Also, think about the way that you are framing that request for the review when you ask for it. Is it framed in such a way that you're asking for it as almost like a favor that they're doing for you? When we ask somebody for a favor, there's a mismatch between the level that we're both at. A favor is very much geared towards you asking somebody to do something that they maybe wouldn't be inclined to do. So let's reframe this a different way. If you start to seed how important it is to you and to your clients or patients that you get reviews in the mix, and especially if somebody has been referred into you or perhaps they've seen as part of your education process that you have reviews that you're sharing in there, uh, they can see the value of that. So I'd encourage you to think about asking for reviews earlier in the process or framing the importance of reviews and referrals earlier in that process. So I would ask for it this way. You'll have seen, perhaps when you were, uh, doing your research into who you wanted to work with, the reviews that people have left when they've worked with me. You'll have also perhaps heard of people that have referred others into our service. And in fact, about 60% of our business comes from people referring. That's a really important and valuable way that we run our, uh, business. And if you found value in seeing some of those reviews and those case studies and stories from other people that have worked with us, if we get the results that you're looking for from working with me, I wonder if it'd be possible for me to ask of you to leave a review or to refer us to others who are like you. Would that be okay? That's the way that I would ask for a review or a referral earlier in that process to at least frame in their minds the importance of that. So whether they've come through a review or referral process themselves, at least then you've seeded into the conversation how valuable that is to you. So when it gets to that point further down the line, it doesn't feel like that awkward disconnect or mismatch. And where you're asking for that review or that referral as a favor, you've at least addressed the elephant in the room earlier on in the process. And the more you build this momentum of getting reviews and referrals, the more likely it is that new clients or patients that are coming into your world will have come through that pathway anyway, and so it will feel like a natural progression that you'd be asking for it in the first place. So my closing thought for today's episode is that the work that you do deserves to be recognized. You wouldn't be where you are today if you were terrible at what you do. If you're running an expert led business, especially one where you don't have a great deal of sales or marketing background, to have started that business and to got it off the ground, you wouldn't be running a successful business if are terrible at what you do. The takeaway that I'd like you to have here is to think more about making your business more visible online by being more proactive and more systemic around asking for those reviews and referrals at the right time and seeding that into the conversations earlier in the process. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Systems Wise Podcast. Remember that what we learned today only has value if we have a plan tomorrow to take action on it. If you'd like to download the resources for this episode, then go to getsystemswise.com ep51 and you'll be able to see the notes for this episode there. And there are links to other podcast episodes in amongst. If you valued this episode, I'd really appreciate it. Uh, if you shared it with somebody else or left a review wherever you're listening to or watching this podcast. Until next time, thanks very much for listening. The Systems Wise Podcast.