Real estate agents and lenders, by and large, know that a good review from a happy client is the best form of advertising there is. The trouble is – getting those great reviews can be tricky. In this blog post, we’ll give you some tips on how to make sure you set yourself up during the transaction to receive rave reviews from every single one of your clients, every time. Read on!
One of the most valuable assets that you have in your real estate or lending business is a testimonial. At By Referral Only, we call them contentimonials instead. Why? Because when prompted, they don’t just compliment you; they tell everyone who is thinking about working with you WHY you are the only one they should choose.
The typical testimonial:
“Oh, Allison is great and wonderful and she took good care of us.”
This is good are certainly great things that we want to hear, but the only people who care about how great Allison is are people frankly who’ve already picked to work with Allison and they need to have a reassertion that they made a good decision.
Why you need to get a contentimonial instead
What a contentimonial is designed to do is to talk to those people who haven’t yet picked to work with you yet. And the people who care about you before they pick you, they care less about YOU and they care more about things like relieving their anxiety about the process of what they’re about to go through, the content of the transaction, and that’s why Joe Stump invented the term contentimonial. The content of the experience that they’re about to have is really what is crucial and critical, and so a contentimonial may sound like:
“Before we started working with Allison, before we even chose to do this, we were expecting that buying a home in Huntsville was going to be a little bit like rolling the dice at a craps table in Las Vegas because we had heard so many stories about all the different buyers that were competing and all 25 people who were going to be trying to buy the same home that we were trying to buy, and when we met Allison, she said, “Wait, wait, you guys. I have a plan that’s going to make you actually the most competitive, so you don’t have to bid so much on that house, and I can’t tell you how good that made us feel when we made our offer for not what our friends were telling us to make the offer, and we actually got the home.”
A contentimonial is less about YOU (although you are mentioned) and more about what you will do for your buyers, sellers or borrowers.
How to plant a seed for a contentimonial before it even happens.
This is your social media contentimonial request way in the future. I’m not actually going to ask them for a contentimonial, I’m going to let them know in stage one of the during unit that this is going to become important later.
In this case, we have taken the By Referral Only “My Purpose” dialogue, which usually asks for referrals, and we’ve replaced the referral request with a future request for a contentimonial.
You never want to spring a testimonial request on somebody at the end of the transaction, where they’re hearing it for the first time. As a matter of fact, most people ask for referrals and testimonials when a traditional real estate agent would be holding the keys to the house hostage and saying, “Hey, you know, before we walk through the house and I turn everything over to you…,” It’s too late in the process to do that, and all they really want at the end of the transaction is their keys, and to start bringing moving boxes into the new house as soon as possible.
So what we’re going to do is bring this process earlier, and here’s the dialogue.
During the initial consultation, you say, “It’s really important that you know …
“My Purpose is for you to be so outrageously happy with the help I provide that you want to scream about it from the rooftops. And experience shows the best way to do that is to write a great review that other people can see.
Not because I want to look good, but because my hard work plus your review will give people the comfort to ask for the help they need when they need it most.”
So early in the process, we are saying, “You know, sometime before this is over, I want to make sure that you’re so happy with what I do for you that you actually want to tell people about it. You want to scream about it from the rooftops, and experience shows that in 2022, the best way to do that isn’t actually to climb up to the roof and start screaming, but it’s actually to write a review that people can see on Google Reviews or Yelp and see it on Facebook, not because I want to look good. The last thing I need to do is look good. But really because what I want to do is help people who are about to do what you just did to feel comfortable and to know that it really is possible, even in today’s market. And that’s my purpose for you.”
See the difference now between a regular testimonial and a contentimonial? It should just be all about you, but rather, what you will do to lead, guide and protect them. This is what they care about before they know you.
There is a clear and precise difference that can be the deciding factor between someone choosing you or your competition.
Get this entire training, the pdf handout from the video, and much, much more
Grab a free 30-day trial of By Referral Only here.
Our All-Access membership gives you access to powerful tools, trainings, resources, and AUTOMATED marketing systems that make it easy to connect with prospects and your sphere in new and interesting ways.
