I noticed that I had taken some notes of the 7878's thread and I thought it would be a good idea to put them here. I didn't want to write them in my current thread because I think it can be used by many people.
These notes are actually only quotes from the thread of 7878 ; quotes that I found interesting for many reasons. Of course, some may not be interesting for you but if you also have some advices, post them here
NB : I won't be able to say who told what because I had written the notes on an email without quoting the person. So, sorry for the people who have been quoted.
These notes are actually only quotes from the thread of 7878 ; quotes that I found interesting for many reasons. Of course, some may not be interesting for you but if you also have some advices, post them here
NB : I won't be able to say who told what because I had written the notes on an email without quoting the person. So, sorry for the people who have been quoted.
Can I offer this as a standalone service? So instead of going to businesses that have bad reviews, why not hit up all businesses that have money to spend and offer to help grow their business by using customer reviews. They can use the bad reviews to change what they're doing and use the good reviews to get more customers because when people search for a product/service online and see their good reviews, they'll be more willing to give them a try.
If they have only four 5-star reviews (which most think is sufficient) and someone comes along and leaves them two 1-star reviews, their average drops instantly from a perfect 5 to a 3.66, which looks bad to potential customers.
If the same business has been using your program for 3 months and has gotten a dozen reviews a month from your efforts, the 2 bad reviews only drop them to a 4.80 which is still fantastic.
The use of percentages which i've seen here is a good sales technique.
Oh BTW, QRCodes are a great idea in the right context but I'm not sure they have reached critical mass yet.
I once had a client who was desperate for an interview with one person in one particular company but could not get past the gatekeeper. I recorded a message from him on my FlipCam, vurnt it onto DVD and went into ASDA (Wallmart) and bought a 19 ($26) DVD Player. I then taped the DVD onto the DVD player and put a big note on top "What do I have to do to get your attention? Watch this". I then sent to to the Home address of the person concerned by Special Delivery (Signed for) . Of course the guy opened it. He probably didn't use the dvd player but just watched the DVD. Yes my client got the interview and yes, he got the job, and yes I got my Fee.
When you have found a potential client, go to the search results page and click not interested on all the other results with bad or no feedback so that the page has your potential client and lots of it's competitors with 5/4 star ratings surrounding it.
My friend found this for me...
The exact quote is "70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online." This is second ONLY to "90 percent trust recommendations from people known". Pretty powerful. For those who aren't familiar with Nielsen Corp., they are the company that poll consumers for TV. The Nielsen ratings for the Television industry have set the rates that TV companies can charge for the commercials. They have done this basically since TV was around.
Bottom line this is solid research. That you should reference in your letter. IMHO![]()
I notice some people don't want to charge a monthly fee because they feel troublesome or lazy or get lost in tracking or something which is understanding. You can make things simple.
Basically what I do is charge them based on a 1 time fee as a 'marketing consultation' in bringing in more prospects and increase the sale conversion rate i.e. the method is by getting the clients leaving google reviews after their service each time. How to get them? After a customer finishes their service or bought their product, offer the client some sort of complimentary item for a google feedback in return. That way, as time goes by, you get more positive reviews in Google up to 100, 200, 300 reviews etc (as I notice the average Google feedback's amount is 20 for any business so I teach them to maximum as much as possible so prospects will be more confident in their business when searching in Google especially if they got alot of reviews and most importantly, positve reviews). Of course if they meet a client that are not happy or grumpy, you obvbiously wouldn't want to ask those clients to leave a feedback since they are likely to write a bad review about you which is what you don't want. Then tell them about Gmail alert and also, advice them to add as many info as they can in the Google Place Listing to get their ranking up as well as get more customers. You can suggest to offer 10% coupon where they have offer coupons in Google Place Listing and that way the sales tracking is available where they are from etc and then give them a few more advices. Basically, this 1 1/2 hour consultation, I already charge the client a simple $2500 fee and they were very happy so I can move on to the next client without having to follow up month by month.
Remember, your knowledge is more valuable than theirs so make things simple if you want to avoid the fuss and also think outside the box!
Hope that helps
1. Get more good reviews to cover the poor ones. Eventually and overtime, the good reviews (and most recent) shows up top and bury the poor ones.
2. Tell your clients (or perhaps yourself), to reply to those poor reviews and apologize. This shows responsibility to others.
3. Try to reach out to that disappointed customer and resolve the issue. Hopefully, they will remove that poor review on their end.
Thanks OP for the awesome angle.
Hey All -- longtime member here although mostly an observer. Here are
my results and what happened. I'm in a medium/big city btw. I don't think that
this will work with too many people in the market, but the market is
big enough for multiple people in a city of this size. Trust me on
this... That's because it's all hard work so it doesn't matter who steals
whose idea...
Week one -- I did some research, printed up about 10 letters and then
realized that 10 letters was too weak and if I wanted to send more
letters I would need a system.
So I had some custom software built to gather all the leads and
qualify them. I wanted to spend my time selling and fulfilling, not
search for leads and making letters.
Week two -- I spent a whole week drafting about 30 different letters
and ending up with 3 rock solid letters. I also figured out my legal
contracts here. I bought a new phone number from Twilio and hooked it
up to forward to me. Then I could track phone calls from this specific
marketing tactic.
Week three -- I started printing, making letters, etc (the mail stuff
was super easy with stamps dot com, but the printing frickin sucks!
everything you imagine can go wrong here).
Week four -- messed up and had to skip this week because of the July
4th holiday (bad time to send mail). Spent this time working on my
offer sheet and some presentation pieces that i put in a binder
(screenshots, workflow diagrams, etc -- just something visually
appealing because it helps when there are slow moments in the meeting)
Week five -- sent the letters on Day Zero
Day one 9am (no kidding, I didn't know mail arrived that fast) got my
first call. I have been on a multiple week conversation with them.
They've expanded to include SEO so this may end up around $2,500/month
revenue. The reputation piece seems like a shoe-in, however, nothing
is done till there's money in the bank.
Day one 10am - second call (not a big enough business - can't afford
more than $500 - not worth my time yet - but I will continue to follow
up)
Day two through Day 14 - two more calls, warm leads with longer sales cycle
So all in all I sent about 260 letters (100ish with dice & return form
& offer letter --- AND --- 160 regular letters with no offer) -- they
cost around $1.00 each with postage included (without the cost of my
time)
LEARNINGS
1. Postcards may have been a better solution. Some veteran mailers
told me to save money on the letters and just send postcards multiple
times with the same money. There are some online mail houses where
you can do this all online like USPS or Vistaprint and stuff.
After postcards, you can follow up with a letter later.
2. 4 responses...pretty weak I think...however, I have not made very
many follow up calls yet -- SO THIS IS KEY -- DONT DO THIS WITHOUT
FOLLOW UP CALLS. I know this is going to work after talking with the
few businesses that I have. Many of the solutions that they have heard
about are very very expensive like $3k+ a month. You can get in this.
[update] I have received two more phone calls now several weeks
after the mailing. One is a weak lead the other is a very large business.
3. Do not mention price in the initial letters (I'm going on gut here
but think that exposing price too early might scare away people?) the
OP might have mentioned this. I put prices on half of my letters
but don't have enough stats on split testing this so consider both
sides.
4. For me, no one cared to talk about the bad reviews because they
already knew they were bad, they just wanted solutions. I didn't have
any problem telling them exactly what I was going to do because everyone
has different objections. I would still say the OP is correct in that you want
to talk about the reviews if possible to build the pain, but honestly everyone
already has pre-conceived notions about what you're doing that they will
bring up as objections so try and be prepared to answer anything.
5. Some businesses that you'd think are loaded with cash are not, then
other businesses that are neighborhood businesses are pulling a
million or more a year -- you just never know till you get in there
and talk with them
SOFTWARE
Now about the software that I had built -- it's pretty frickin awesome
in gathering leads. I'm a software product manager when I work for
the man, so creating a lead tool was pretty easy for me to imagine.
First, I did consider the usual CRM suspects because I've installed them
for multiple businesses... If anything, I'd bring a CRM in later after I
had a database of sales prospects.
So the software basically crawls the web for business and ratings
information, saves it, sorts it, and lets me easily filter it. I had a
function built where some mechanical turkers or odeskers could hunt
down the owners and managers names so that a letter or email would be
ready to go. That turned out to be one of the most time consuming
pieces was just confirming the address and finding a name to send it
to -- that's how I knew I needed something that would scale a little.
When I had the software built I was thinking about a turnkey
system that I could launch around the country if the recipe worked --
however, my dreams turned more sour when I realized the huge lead
qualifying process and mailed introduction is just the beginning.
So combine the software with mail and sales calls and you're in business.
The software is catered specifically to reputation right now, but I
think I'm going to add SEO reports into the system. What the video
that I have doesn't show is how I built a winautomation script to do
all the button clicking. One of the crucial parts was the bot that
grabbed a screenshot and saved it with the appropriate filename. Then
I just FTP up the screenshots of the reviews and the software knows
how to add the screenshot to the mailer. Then of course the bot did
the printing too.
So to summarize the workflow that I did:
software fetches business info based on database keywords,
software mass marks all chain businesses,
software mass marks prospects (i told it to only give me lower rated businesses and bad reviews businesses),
then the software turns on the Name Finder screen for the outsourcers,
humans fill in first/last/names & title,
bots process the letter merge using the software and auto-print.
Human prints stamps from online stamp provider.
Human addresses the envelope.
Human puts stamp on envelope.
Human takes basket to post office.
Human takes the incoming
calls.
Human updates the software CRM with follow up notes.
Human meets with leads in person.
Humans bring in the checks.
As you can see by the workflow, the humans are most important and bots save massive time.
I had the developer create a video to show you what the software does.
I would advise giving this whole idea your own twist. Maybe you do something
other than the same reputation model talked about, make you market a report product,
maybe you sell the website pre-built...do something unique.
Maybe you'll get some ideas of your own when you see the video and how
I crafted my workflow with it.
VIDEO LINK
***** PM me for video, I don't have enough posts or something *******
thanks BHW & community for the education so far it has been an awesome ride --
because of this site, I know way more about white-hat than the
white-hat pros I meet doing big business...keep it going you guys.
Don't give in -- just work tirelessly.
Like Frank Kern said: 1. Don't f*ck around 2. Don't be a p*ssy
Just get to work and constantly ask yourself if you're doing what you
planned to do and if you're screwing around not making money
focus...find stillness...
try something, hit a wall, pivot a little, try again, hit a wall,
pivot a little, and so on...
peace![]()
Superb thread, thanks to the OP for sharing this and then updating and replying to this thread.
I'm partner in 2 hotels so this is right up my street. I can put this to use on my own businesses which is fantastic. Also thinking of offering ORM services to others. I have a friend who runs a busy SEO and web design company so I can definitely get the leads... anyway.
Anyway not sure if someone else has already mentioned this (I started putting this into action after reading only half this thread) but my idea is to use Wufoo to collect the reviews, I'll explain why.
The OP's page is really nice. In fact I have installed it on one of my hotel websites already, I customized the background colour (edit the CSS file) and it looks great and blends in with my site ok.
The only potential issue that I see from using it, is that customers who had a bad experience can can still click on the positive side to see what happens - they are then given all the direct links to the very sites we are trying to steer them away from.
So I had a mess around with wufoo. The OP actually suggests using it to collect data from the negative comments but why not use it for the whole thing?
I had never used it before but it is extremely simple to use. So I created a form with the first field as a multiple choice: How was your stay "Great' "OK" or "Bad". I then added a few boxes for them to write comments about what they liked and didn't like and added a few bits and pieces to make the form longer (this is important I'll explain in a minute.)
At the very bottom I added a section break which is an area where you can add HTML. I put an h2 title saying "We'd love for you to review us online" then added links to trip advisor, foursquare google places etc.
The thing is you don't want these links to be visible to people who may leave a negative review. So what you do is create a Field Rule which hides the section break with the links to the review sites for anyone who clicks "OK" or "BAD". Create just one rule but with 2 conditions. If describe stay OK or BAD then HIDE section break 'we would love for you to review us online".
So now the review links are only visible for people with a good experience. Even people who are had just an OK experience are weeded out as they could possibly say something damaging in their reviews. You can never stop them from going to Tripadvisor (or whatever) on their own but you don't want to help them out that's for sure.
The reason you need to make the form long is so the whole form is not visible on the page without scrolling. That way if the customer messes around clicking all the multiple choice buttons then the form still appears the same as the review site links are off the screen. The way the rule works is it removes the area after they click the choice. As far as I can tell you cant have it so it adds in when they click that their stay was 'good'. i think you could improve this with other features but they are not available to my free account on Wufoo. You can get more complicated with this and add other fields and more rules. But I think this should work pretty good.
Anyway that's just my little bit of input. it may or may not work better than the OP's version. But its just something to think about/test.
Hope that's of some use to someone. I'll post back in a few months to see if this is working in my hotel niche.
Link to the ORM 7878's package : http://www.mediafire.com/view/?75czy48h64yys2h
Wouldn't the world be a lovely place if every prospect told you exactly what you did wrong?![]()
Want to sell value? Print out the negative reviews and read them, one by one, read aloud, right at the beginning of the meeting. #That is what I actually did for my last meeting. Worked so well ! # (yvann94)
You'll find that your prospects start explaining themselves like they're on the witness stand. Then, read the glowing reviews of their direct competitors. This puts YOU in control. If you're flapping your gums for an hour trying to convince your prospect to buy, you're going at it all wrong. Dig into them a bit and remind them why you're there.
They have a problem. You have a solution. Tell them how you're going to fix it and how much it's going to cost. Will that be Visa, Matsercard, or Check? It's that simple.
Hey guys and girls,
I just wanted to add some of my own observations after spending the last two nights reading this thread.
First, my hat is off to 7878 who has opened his playbook and showed us all his blueprint to ORM and with great detail as well. Thank you very much.
I would like to address a few questions that have come up. I would also like to add that although I haven't made any money yet, I have a few owners that I am speaking with, I have my website made, business cards, and have just finished setting up my review portal.
So...I'm ready to go.
1) How do you post these reviews, even if they are legitimate reviews? A great way to do this is by using Hide my ass, which is a paid service, but well worth the money. You just use it to switch your IP address, create a gugl (yes, I know how it's spelled), yahoo, yelp, and other accounts to which you will be posting these reviews and make note of the IP address you are using when setting up the accounts. Also, make sure to save the login and username as you can use these accounts to post multiple reviews.
The more you use the profile, the more likely the review is to stick. I'm not sure about any legal issues with this method, but if you are taking any reviews from the owner that they already have and just putting them online, you should be safe.
However, I will be using my review portal site, so people will be leaving reviews from their own accounts which is much safer and more effective. I have it set up to email the owner when a bad review is posted on the portal site, and when they click the good button, they can access several sites like Yelp to post their review on. Just like it's supposed to work.
You cant control it if they decide to go to their site and post a bad review, but this will definitely decrease the number of bad reviews posted by great deal.
2) I have decided on a $697 set up fee which covers the first month, then $397/mo after that. This is to get them listed on all of the major directories first. And make sure that they have claimed all of their listings as well. As i get more clients, I will probably raise that number, but I think it's a good starting point.
Then we will post a few reviews to get the ball rolling. While this is happening, I will set up the review portal (which is on wordpress BTW) on my domain that I own, with their reviews in a subfolder of my main domain. (www.myreviewsite.com/jimbobseatery).
I think that this looks better and is easier to implement than creating a subdomain which would look like this: www.jimbobseatery.myreviewsite.com.
This helps to ensure that they have a reason to stay with me on a continual basis as I own their review site and it takes time and know-how to manage. This is where the monthly fee is justified, in addition to the monitoring of their online reputation.
The WP theme that I am using was the one in post #1413. It's a theme, not a plugin.
3) Many questions regarding what to do if there are more than a few bad reviews posted. Your goal is not to erase every bad review in existence, only to push any bad reviews off of the first page. Just like in G, the first 4 results get the most attention. Also, if the positive reviews are recent, they hold much more weight that a review posted years ago. This shows that they have taken steps to fix any problems that existed.
4) People keep asking for current data and statistics to show the potential client. Stop being so f-kin lazy and use that thing in front of you and search for it. Try Gugl insights. Jesus.
5)I think that ORM can be an amazing tool to get your foot in the door to sell other services. These are, but not limited to; Mobile marketing, SMS marketing, web design, SEO and PPC campaigns. ORM is very powerful because it's easy for you to yank on the emotions of the owner when you show them what people are saying about their business...about THEM.
6) ORM is way less complex than doing SEO and web design. SEO can be very time consuming and sometimes hard to show and verifiable results to the owner. Web design may be easy for some of you, but not for me, and I don't want 30 phone calls asking for little tweaks and additions and revisions to shit I already did once. When the owner sees what you can do when reviews are posted online, they can see it with their own beady eyes and they will see it in the increase in business. I mean who doesn't look up reviews before they go out to eat nowadays?
I hope this has helped some of you. I know that reading this thread by 7878 has given me more motivation and I am excited to get out there and make some dough. Also, if you are afraid of even talking on the phone, you might not want to be your own boss. You WILL have to actually talk to real people. Make sure you have a script and practice it. Talk to the mirror, talk to a friend. I found that the first few calls were hard, but the more I called, them more I felt comfortable and that they were the ones sorely in need of my help, but just didn't know it yet.
Thanks also to all of the other people who have taken their time to answer questions and give us all some real, actionable content.
Almost forgot...An easy way to take screenshots of their listings and reviews is by going to getlisted.org and putting in their info and taking a screen shot using Jing. Jing is awesome and so easy to use. It even lets you put red arrows and notations on the screenshot before you save it or paste it into your report. Highly recommended. When I mailed out my reports, before I read this, I had 7 printed pages that really made the envelope feel like it had substance and shouldn't be thrown away. Just a thought if you don't want to use dice or a whistle or a chicken's foot. Whew.
I have discovered and I feel good your laughing at that, because I think I wouldn't
Let's LOW the sell of this super Warrior!
Plugin
Code:
Code:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/WPFeedbackTheme/wp-feedback.zip
Instructions
Code:
Code:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/WPFeedbackTheme/WP-Feedback+Instructions.pdf
Code:
Code:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/WPFeedbackTheme/10+Online+Reputation+Facts+That+You+NEED+To+Know+About.pdf
Bonus Postcard
Code:
Code:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/WPFeedbackTheme/postcard.psd
So, why not tweak this slightly by entering a piece of css code so that when one button is pressed, the other option fades to white and dissapears? This would eliminate the viewers temptation to click and see what is offered in the other option..Just a thought though.
How To Sell More For Higher Prices
In here are 3 lessons that could help you to get more appointments,
close more deals and make price objections disappear completly.
This one made me register. Thank you 7878. I'd like to contribute:
Lesson 1 (Phase: Following up your letters)
Code:
How to get the appointment (provisionally)
You see...
Good sellers rarely talk. Instead, they ask. Really... they ask a lot. Image
two sellsmen. Both offer the same product: ORM.
Imagine both salesmen sent out a letter. Both letters made clear: We're
not in the yellowpages-era anymore. Peoples yellowpages nowadays: The
internet. And there, unlike in the yellowpages, poeple can acutally write sh**
directly next to your phonenumber. For everyone searching a [business] to
see. Leading your potential customers directly into the hands of your most
hated competitor. (In case you have a bad reputation.)
There is no way that this won't be pain in the a** for a normal, everyday
business owner. Unless he's selling crack, just using his pizza place to get
the money clean. Anyways: He got a problem and he (now) knows it.
Here's how a bad salesmen would approach the follow-up-call:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hey there, do you remember this letter I've sent you? Well, you see
having those review really harms your business, it's yada yada yada
and yada yada. Did you know yada yada? It's yada yada!
Statistic XY tells yada yada!
Also yada yada. And did you know about yada yada? I have to explain
this to you in greater detail. Do you have any further questions?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sucks. A lot of telling, no selling.
Salesmen B (the smart one) operates like this:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hey, this is Salesmen B. The guy who has sent the letter informing you
about your bad online reputation. Have you got it?
-Bad online reputation? (Tell him to read the letter, call again later)
-Yes, oh boy...
Might I ask you... how do you feel about those reviews?
[This way you check out how qualified your prospect is. You'll realize: The
ones with the bigger pain in the a** are way much easier to close. Encourage
them to complain as much as possible. And let 'em blame those reviews for their
situation, thight years of business and all kind of problems. This stuff is gold.]
-I dont give a f***. (End call, or handle the obejction)
-Man, it sucks...
You see... a lot of my customers had such a problem, in fact: Over time
- less and less potential costumers called
- their business shrunk
- and they ended up making less and less money.
Just because of bad reviews next to their phone number.
Might I ask you Mr./Mrs. ___....
If there where an effective, fast way to fix this... (which would make you
the guy to call in the eye of the customer again...) would you like to know
about it?
-Really, I don't care if poeple out there think I suck. (End call, or handle it)
-Sure (Continue)
Okay, in this case we should meet each other. Let me check my sheudule...
would you prefer wednesday at 9 am or rather friday at 2 pm?
[Don't ask: Should we meet, yes/no? Ask should we meet at x or y?]
-They both don't fit (give another alternative)
-Wednesday is fine
Cool, you'll recieve some materials upfront. Telling you more about how
online reputation can make or break a business nowadays. Make sure to
watch out for it!
See you then!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a very basic script. Not a good one, though. But if you never did tele-
marketing before, it will do it's job. Tweak it the way it makes you feel
comfortable. Don't use it word by word. Make it new in subtile ways only
you would regocnize.
Lesson 2 (Phase: Making the offer)
Code:
Sell good, better, best. Not yes or no.
That's a big one.
Prenote: A lot of ppl here whine about price yada yada. But 7878 is absolutly
right: It's just in your head. A minimum wage person will always feel strange
selling a bottle of 'special' water to a billionaire for $500 each... because you
always judge prices by what you think is fair or ok to pay. Those guys are not
you. And simply have another way of judging value. Damn, for 20% of the
population price isn't even an arguement. They want what works, nothing
else. Get that into your head.
Anyways....
I'll show you a sneaky way to kill every price objections upfront. And how to
make sure you get the most cash out of the 20%. Not even having to discuss
the damn price. Would that be great? I know, it is...
Here's how you do it.
Instead of just offering your service... offer good, better, best. Example:
Gold ($749)
- Online feedback system
- 200 free 'rate us' cards
- Negative feedback delivered every 30 days
Platin ($1449)
- Online feedback system
- Monthly report (Paper of feedbacks made by costumers on google
etc., sent through mail)
- 500 free 'rate us' cards
- Negative feedback delivered every 14 days
- Preferred deliverey of new 'rate us' cards
- Feedback targeting (only giving the rating option for the site were
current feedbacks suck most)
Platin Plus ($2449)
- Online feedback system
- Monthly report (Paper of feedbacks made by costumers on google
etc., sent through mail)
- 1000 free 'rate us' cards
- Negative feedback delivered in real time
- PLUS contact details of feedback-guy (capture phone numer on site)
- Apologizing in business owners name to old bad feedback
- Over night deliverey of new 'rate us' cards
- Feedback targeting (only giving the rating option for the site were
current feedbacks suck most)
- No business with competition-deal (while the contract runs)
This way little Joe can feel great picking Gold, while fancy Nancy can have her
Platin plus. Both will be happy. And you don't have to discuss the price.
If you know more bullets that could be added: LET ME KNOW! I'd love to hear
your ideas.
Lesson 3 (Phase: After showing your pricing model)
Code:
Don't fear the 'ouch'
Everytime a price gets qoutet: Most of them will do it.
They'll give you the 'ouch' technique, saying: Ow... that's.. damn...
Never give in. Never, never, never. The difference between guys getting $50 each
month for this service and those getting $5000 is the same in most businesses: A
straight face.
Tell them: Those are the normal rates. But if you can't pay I won't try to sell it to
you. Just call if you change your mind, goodbye.
Most of them will fight to buy on that point. Because they got the money. They're
just used to get some special deal by giving you the ouch-technique. Don't do it.
They know they need you.
Hope you got some value out of this.
A big THANK YOU! to my man 7878. You're the real deal!