Estate Agents - the Tortoise and the Hare

In this article we are going to look carefully at some numbers - real numbers for a real client -  to show you just what you can expect.

Today

There are three important numbers: the reviews through Dialogue to the client's own website; the reviews to Google and the negative reviews managed through Resolution.

• Their own website: 171 reviews
• Google: 31 reviews (scoring 4.7 out of 5)
• Resolution: 6 cases (all resolved, none re-posted, either to their own website or to Google)

Note: All numbers in this article are 'per branch' over the last 12 months. 

Broken down (monthly averages):

• Their own website: 14 reviews
• Google: 2.6 reviews

Lessons learned:

For the first two months nothing much happened, there was a fair amount of resistance in-branch (as there invariably is to anything 'new' that is seen as involving 'extra work') until the first instruction was gained that was directly attributable to the reviews on their own website - then everyone began inviting clients to write reviews.

The reviews then began to flow to the Dialogue module on our client's website, but resistance to Google continued (with comments like 'clients cannot be bothered' and 'no-one is signed up to G+'). 

Then two things happened at the same time:

• One of their major competitors began taking Google reviews seriously
• One of their branches got a big instruction thanks to their great reviews on Google

At this point attitudes and results changed. No-more were we hearing how 'difficult' or 'time-consuming' or (worse!) 'time-wasting' review management was, but 'how great reviews were for driving enquiries/helping close/creating a positive impression' and so on.

 

 The lessons to learn from this are:

1. Showing verified reviews on your own website wins business
2. Looking great on Google wins business
3. It's not a big deal in terms of time and effort

That last point is key for managers to get across: that a maximum of 5 minutes a day is all it takes to achieve results like these. 

More detailed advice for managers can be found here.