We are now 6 months into 2019 and weekly I’m inundated with so many new tech options to help build our brand and personal profiles. At times I personally find this very overwhelming and trying to work out what type of impact the program will have on the agent and how it will be perceived by the consumer.  While I could go through a long list of all the rating websites, CRM database programs, general marketing ideas and social media portals. I would rather keep it simple as from April 2019 that is what has worked best for me and many of the BDM’s I work with across the country.

So, let’s focus on rating websites and boy is this an area we all love. So many to choose from now and trying to work out which ones will get us the most leverage and best position online to be visible to the consumer. The problem is if we pick google, realestate.com.au, rate my agent, linked in, Facebook as an example and trust me I know we have a tone more I could add to this list. How do we get the consumer to share across all the portals and how are other agencies getting 200 + reviews? The answer is simple they have not fallen into the trap of setting and forgetting. I can guarantee you across those businesses they have regular targets that must be hit each month in the way of personal review performance. They would be expecting the team to constantly be in sales mode and monitoring the performance of all individuals.

If you have a team of say 10 staff imagine if they all secured 1 review each month? That would bring in 10 reviews each month and 120 reviews across a calendar year. Then when you get to that size how many negative reviews will you receive and are you prepared for this as you continue to grow? Just like loosing a management getting a negative review is just as heart breaking and sometime in both cases completely out of your control. Building up a strong base of supporters is where you will retain you power in the marketplace and the consumer does not expect 5 star reviews from Real Estate Agents. In fact, I encourage the people I work with to ensure across all portals the online presence is demonstrating a 4-star rating an up and not get overwhelmed by 5-stat perfection.

So here are my fast 5 tricks to help increase your reviews across your digital reviews and improve you brand awareness.

  • 7 days after you new tenant has moved in and request a review from the tenant and landlord.
  • If you are in a larger organisation set up team challenges for more reviews.
  • Connect with you clients through social media and share review links.
  • Write reviews for businesses when you have a great experience.
  • If you do receive a bad review, make sure your response as it shows and demonstrates you still have a human behind the brand.

As you can see, we can put a process in for getting reviews just as we do for generating new business leads to grow our rent roll. However, even in the hype of the growth we will still have the months where we feel like we are on fire with our reviews and that one negative one hits the portal.  The emotion of disappointment behind what you are reading is hard to hold back and you forgot about all the great reviews you and your team have received for the month.

The worst thing you can do is put too much focus and energy into the review and just stick to the next 5 steps.

  1. Don’t respond in rage to prove a point even if you believe you are in the right.
  2. Find out if the team are aware of the person, the story behind the review and get contact details for them.
  3. If you have had the ability to connect with them over the phone listen and hear them out regardless of the teams opinions.
  4. If not share a comment on the post requesting a meeting to discuss the issue which is mentioned in the negative review.
  5. Offer a solution and regardless of whether they have agreed or disagreed. You still need to make sure you have commented as a business and if they agree to the solution ask the if they are willing to remove the review.

If I think back to when I was a BDM with Wide Bay Prestige Properties, the social media review space was very new, and our focus was collecting and sharing reviews just on our website. While this space can be a powerful way to establish and build your brand it can also be uncomfortable as growing a rent roll. The key to the review’s management is consistency and ensuring every chance you get you are always asking for your next review as you just don’t what is going land in your inbox.