The exact three messages that took one business from 19 Google reviews to 31 in thirteen days. You already have the customer list. This is what to send them.
Twelve new Google reviews. Before that: about 100 deals in five years, and 19 reviews to show for it.
Bryan Tordoff
Founder, Celix LLC
My first client hired me to build him a website. The website isn't what moved his business. This was.
He's a realtor with five years behind him, about a hundred deals, and 19 Google reviews. Everybody he worked for says he did a good job. Almost none of them ever said so in public.
He cares more about the work than about the praise for it. That is true of most good businesses, and it is exactly why their Google page never catches up to the quality of what they do.
He already knew he should be asking. He'd known for years. There just isn't an hour in the day where that is the thing you do. You're at a closing, or in the car, or answering somebody else's question. So here is the hour, written down, in order.
The best asset your company has is your client list. These are people who already like you and already chose to do business with you. If you want reviews quickly, that is the only place worth starting.
Every business that has been running a few years is sitting on a pile of customers who would say something good if somebody asked. That pile does not get smaller on its own. It gets older, and the older it gets the less likely anyone is to remember you well enough to write anything.
Because you have already done business with them, it is legal to contact them by text and by email. You should do both, in a specific order.
Three messages over eight days. The whole thing fits in one night after dinner.
Open wherever your past customers live. A CRM, an email inbox, a phone, a stack of invoices, a notebook. You are looking for anyone you did work for who was happy. Do not filter hard. Three months back is plenty for most service businesses. Go back further for real estate, because those relationships are personal and they last for years.
First name | Phone | Email | Job done | Month | Text sent | Email sent | Nudge sent | Left review?
You have a list. Now you need somewhere to send them.
Open your Google Business Profile manager. Click Ask for Reviews. Google hands you a short link and a QR code. Copy the link, and save the QR code while you are in there, because it belongs on your invoices and your truck and your counter later.
https://g.page/r/____________/review
Now the first message.
Text before email. It gets read. Send these one at a time from your own phone, not from a blast tool, because a blast reads like a blast.
Hi [FIRST NAME], it's [YOUR NAME] from [BUSINESS]. I know it's been awhile, but I hope you're still feeling good after our service. I'm gathering feedback from past clients and would be so grateful for a quick review of your experience working with me. Takes about 30 seconds: [YOUR REVIEW LINK] Thank you!
Some people read a text and never answer it. That is what the email is for.
Wait four days after the text. Then email only the people who have not replied and have not left a review. A different medium catches a different mood. If they are cleaning out an inbox, the easiest way to make you go away is to just leave the review.
Subject: Can you help me? Hey [FIRST NAME], following up on my previous message. If you could spare 30 seconds to drop us a quick review, it would mean a lot. Our business thrives on reviews from great customers like you: [YOUR REVIEW LINK] Thanks! [YOUR NAME] [BUSINESS]
Then one last message. Exactly one.
Three days after the email, text the people who still have not left one. Do not apologize for asking. Say plainly why reviews matter to your business and what this customer means to you.
Hey [FIRST NAME], I really hate to bother you again, but would you be willing to give me that quick review? Google ratings and reviews are everything in my business, so it would be super helpful [YOUR REVIEW LINK]
That is the backlog cleared. Below is the honest accounting of what it did and did not do.
Thirteen days. One business. And most of those twelve came out of the backwards sweep, which is a backlog. A backlog pays out once. I do not know the ongoing rate yet, because it has not been running long enough to know, and I am not going to put a number on it before I have one.
What I can tell you is that the twelve were real, they came from real past customers, and the only thing that changed was that somebody finally asked. What the ongoing rate settles at is the part I am still measuring.
If you run this and it works, that is a second data point and I would like to hear about it. If you run it and it does not, I would like to hear about that more.
This sweep is a one time payout. A backlog only pays out once. The thing that actually compounds is asking every customer at the moment the job ends, while they are still standing there happy, so you never have to run a cleanup like this again.
That is the next issue of 100 Quick Wins. One thing you can go do, every week, free. This playbook is issue one, written out in full.
Get the next oneblog.getcelix.com
You already knew you should be asking. Knowing was never the problem. The problem is that there is no hour in your week where this is the thing you sit down and do, and there never will be.
That is what I do. Building my client's version took an hour in GoHighLevel, plus ten minutes to load his past customers into the CRM. After that it ran on its own. He did not send a single one of these messages himself.
I build the automatic version, I run it, and you do not learn a thing. Every finished job asks for the review on its own, and every new lead gets a text back before they call somebody else.
I am early. I have one client and one measured result, and I have shown you the whole of it above. I want you to take a chance on me.
getcelix.comOr find me here: linkedin.com/in/bryan-tordoff