Why Real Estate Newbies Make Way More Than Experienced Veterans

If you were to go back in time for the last 24 months and look at every closing you had, would all those people you closed a transaction with have given you a recommendation or endorsement online?

In other words...

If you closed 20 transactions, do you have 20 endorsements on realtor.com, Zillow, Facebook, or Google Business? Or are you missing a lot?

If you're missing a lot, you're missing opportunities. Here's why:

If you look at a couple of agents in your market, you might find this, I see this all the time. You might have an experienced agent that's crushing it — doing 30-40 transactions a year. Then you have this brand new agent who just started their business a couple of years ago and only closed 10-12 transactions each year.

But... online, they're getting a recommendation or endorsement from every single client. And sometimes clients they didn't even close a transaction with, but just had a good experience with them. So they might have 30, 40, even 50 positive five star reviews. Yet this experienced agent who's been in the business for 20 years and crushes it every year, only has two or three positive reviews and might even have negative reviews, which takes their star rating down.

But online, this new agent looks much stronger on paper than the experienced veteran.

That's the danger for a lot of you watching this. That's also the opportunity for a lot of you in this as well.

So what should you do? You have to systemize how you approach getting recommendations and reviews from everybody in your database and everybody you close a transaction with.

So here's the process I would recommend:

It's only six or seven steps and super simple:

First, get into the habit of asking for the endorsement.

When's the best time to ask for an endorsement? If you're closing a transaction, obviously it's at the closing table. And you just say, "Hey, I hope I gave you a five star service while we're working together. I hope you really enjoyed the process. I certainly enjoyed working with you guys. One of the ways that I build my business, in fact, my primary way is by word of mouth. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to have you give me a recommendation or review online if you're cool with that."

It's that simple. And they're gonna say yes 99% of the time.

But are you doing that at every closing?

And the best time to do it actually is when you give them that closing gift. So when you give them that closing gift, ask the question.

But here's the reality:

They're not gonna give it to you right then because they're too busy. They're thinking about other things. They're not gonna stop what they're doing and give you the review. Probably not gonna happen.

So here's what you need to do:

Say, "Here's what I'll do: I'll send you a quick text in a day or so. It'll have a link you can click on and then you can give me a quick review."

That's it.

So the first stage is asking for a review. The second thing you have to do is then send them the link through a quick text.

Just say this 24 hours later, "Hey here's the link I promised you. It really means a lot to me that you're willing to give me a review."

Now, where are you sending them to?

Here are the top 5 places we're sending people to leave reviews for you:

1. Google Business
2. Facebook Business (as long as your reviews are turned on, which they should be!)
3. Realtor.com
4. Zillow
5. Yelp or LinkedIn

By the way, you want to build reviews evenly. Meaning, if you have 4 reviews in one place, you want 4 reviews everywhere else then you build up from there.

It's like a foundation. You don't want one 25-foot wall and another wall that's not built because you don't know where people are gonna find you.

Since they may not do it even if you text them, the third step in this process is following up with an email.

You can send the email 3 days later and say basically the same thing as the text. But you can add more spice to it by saying:

"Hey, I promised you I was gonna send you that link. And I sent you a text, but in case you missed it, here are another couple places where you can leave a review. By the way, if you have writer's block, here's a couple reviews people have recently given me."

Some people just have writer's block, so giving them a couple of reviews people have recently given you helps them get over that.

Now let's assume they give you the review, which not everybody will, but I bet about 90% will if you use this process.

But what do you do with the review once you get it?

Don't assume people will see it. No one's gonna see the review organically. You have to take that review, cut it out, and then post it yourself on your social media so other people see it.

Take that, put it into your drip campaigns for potential buyers and potential sellers. Put it into your listing presentation and buyer presentation.

And then reward it.

What do I mean by rewarding it? You're gonna send them a little gift and say:

"Hey, thank you so much for giving that review. Here's a little gift as a side of my appreciation. Again, if I can help you or your friends in the future, I'm here to help. Let me know if I can help you with anything real estate-related coming into the new year."

That's it. Now we implement that five or six step process every single time.

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