Mitchell Blackmon

I got quite a bit of new followers over the last few weeks So if you're new here, here are a few tweets I've written to give you an idea of what to expect:

Have you ever wondered if it's worth hiring someone to answer calls Or even overflow calls? Let's do some math to find out Here's what you'll need first: 1. Your lead conversion from the 1st phone call 2. Your average ticket price 3. Avg missed calls/week 🧵Follow along

How to Get Google Reviews for Your Business Over the past 6 years I’ve struggled to consistently get reviews for my businesses Lots of testing, headaches, and failures Then, I decided to combine it all into a cadence that ACTUALLY started generating reviews for my business Here’s my 5 step process & sample scripts and tools you can use to get more reviews now First, let’s talk about a few things with reviews. ✨Getting Reviews = Sales Asking your customers to leave a review puts them into a new sales cadence You’re trying to convince your customer to leave a review. It seems like a situation where only you win But they do too. They want to help you succeed. It feels good to leave a review. Although, it does require some convincing 77% of customers would be willing to leave a review if they were asked. But just because they’re willing doesn’t mean they will Treat this like a new sales cycle. You follow up with your estimates, right? Follow up with your review requests too Most people need to be reminded several times before taking action, so keep asking And keep changing up HOW you’re asking. ✨Getting Reviews = Marketing If you're growing your business, you need reviews on your Google page. It needs to be a pretty big focus for you Getting reviews on Google is directly related with Map rankings. A study by @semrush said that getting positive reviews on a consistent basis will have a positive effect on your company’s ability to rank Interestingly, your average rating seems to matter less than the number of reviews you actually get That said, don’t disregard providing excellent service so that your customers leave positive reviews ✨Getting Reviews = Social Proof Social proof is one of Rober Cialdini’s principles of influence Social proof is basically saying that when we don’t know what is correct, we’ll look to other people to find out what is correct Most people aren’t searching for a specific company when they go to look for the services you provide They search “House cleaners near me” or “Plumbers in [CITY]” 98% of people read reviews online and 93% of people say that online reviews impact their purchase decisions Finally, here are 5 simple steps that you can take to skyrocket your reviews in no time 1⃣ Ask at the job site Have your technicians ask on site. Right after they wrap up the job Your customers are more likely to leave a review if your technician asks. They want to review the person not the company Nice & easy. No pressure. If you do this, you should find ways that encourage your employees to ask for reviews. Perhaps provide bonuses and other incentives if they do, but don't mention it to the customers We provide $30 to our team lead when they get new, verified reviews on Google 2⃣ Use a leave behind that includes a QR Code This doesn’t work all the time. And it shouldn’t stop there. To get the customer to leave a review, have your tech hand the customer a leave behind that asks for a review Keep it casual and not all about the reviews. I put mine in the section about the cleaning service policy Doing this has helped a ton. If you don’t want to use a QR code, I suggest that you use a simple URL, not the spammy URL from Google Use “reviews” as your subdomain that redirects to your Google Business page. Something like reviews.[YOURWEBSITE].com 3⃣ Follow up call the next day (also helps with sales) Some companies call this the “happy call” but it’s really just a follow up call. The goal is to truly ask how things went. If they’re recurring, you can ask them how things are going and you don’t need to call them every time, especially if it's weekly When you get them on the phone and you can remind them about how great the service is Plus you are showing that your team really cares about the feedback, you’re bringing the review back to the top of mind. Here’s a script that we use after first time services: When I was in the chimney industry and our techs were giving quotes in the field, we’d always ask if the customer had questions about their estimate Felt really organic and helped a lot with our closing 4⃣ Use something like NiceJob to ask again Most of the reviews software out there is going to help but my favorite so far is NiceJob The thing I love about NiceJob is that they follow up with the customers when they don’t leave a review. Most reviews software I’ve seen stop trying after the first message The most successful step comes from the last message The customization is pretty cool too 5⃣ Send a thank you letter with SendJim When all else fails, your last ditch effort is to send a letter or a post card You can do this manually and actually write your own letters. Or you can use something like Send Jim to make this quick and easy I haven’t figured out a good way to automate this entirely (haven’t really looked much either) But you can send handwritten letters that look really good with a click of a few buttons If none of this works, move on. That customer’s not leaving a review! 👍 Bonus Tip 1: Always respond. First, Google says that responding will help you improve your ranking Second, responding to reviews provides even more consumer confidence. Here are some stats from a survey done by @brightlocal - 88% of consumers are likely to use your business if they can see that you respond to all reviews - 60% will use your company if you only respond to negative - 50% will use your company if you only respond to positive - 42% said it doesn’t matter that much I’m not great at coming up with responses, so I use Bard to help me out. Here’s the prompt I use: Respond to a Google Review for a housecleaning company. - The review says: “[Paste Review]” It literally doesn’t get easier than that. 👍 Bonus Tip 2 - Make it as easy as possible One of my top rules for business is to make it as easy as possible for the customer to give you money The same principle applies to leaving reviews. If you want your customer to leave you a review for a service you provided, make it stupid simple No roadblocks I gave a lot of options: 1. QR Codes 2. Simpler URLs 3. Email links 4. Text links

We have a 24 point attendance policy in both of my companies If an EE gets 24 points in a calendar year and we let them go It's written & communicated with all of them so they understand Here's how you get points:

You never know how much time you're wasting until you do a time audit I like to do a time audit a couple of times a year. Especially when I feel like I'm drowning in work Here's how to do it: Tip: Use a spreadsheet for this

Starting a business isn’t that hard Scaling it is incredibly difficult

You're wasting time in your business You're doing tasks that could easily be automated or delegated Here's a list of 10 things you should stop doing and how to automate or delegate 🧵

We broke a picture frame at a client’s house 2 days ago I asked her to send the type of frame to replace it but it didn’t exist anymore So I bought a similar one in a 2 pack + a $25 gift card to help fill the 2nd frame ($75 total) She left a 5 ⭐️ review on GMB & FB!

Google reviews are crucial to your business They help improve search rankings AND provide needed social proof for leads Unfortunately, Google tends to hide some of these reviews Fortunately, I know how to get them back... 🧵bc I'm a non blue member

Go Gators! This time, I'm in Lexington cheering the Gators on

Your #1 job as a business owner should be business development

Your leads are 45% less likely to convert after the 6th call But that's still higher than the 0% you'd get if you didn't follow up at all

The first hire you should make is someone to answer the phones But the most powerful early hire you can make is a solid number 2 to handle the operations Budget for an experienced hire Build some systems Sell your vision

Don't let yourself, the owner, be the bottleneck in your business

Follow up with your leads often and in multiple ways People don't always pick up on the first try And maybe you didn't reach them how they prefer You have a 93% chance of contact after 6 attempts but you probably give up after only 3 tries

Track the location of your leads to the zip codes Then look at the conversion rates and ROIs of those zip code leads to find the area with the highest quality leads Then spend time and money focusing your marketing to that area Birds of a feather flock together

Another benefit to having your team take pictures with their checklists: You'll have a bunch of marketing assets. Send the good pictures to your VA to create social media posts with ChatGPT

@hclaymyers It’s been on my list but I only recently discovered all the features beyond messaging It’s going to be a game changer for us

@Mitchblackmon We switched to slack during the pandemic. One of the best business moves we made

Project for the week: Reimagining our communication flow with Slack Instead of a bunch of emails for updates, I'll have our office manager submit a Slack workflow

@scottmondayCA Heck yeah! You can’t beat when a customer calls you a perfect company

@Mitchblackmon Our policy: Every time a customer with a completed project says something positive (about their experience, project, etc.), we ask for a review. Every. Time. (Until they leave one, of course.) Here is the result.

77% of customers would be willing to leave a review if they were asked But just because they're willing to, doesn't mean they will Follow up on your review requests

We ask in multiple ways: 1. Our cleaners ask at the end of the clean when they’re done with the walk through and get the OK from the customer 2. We provide a QR code on the checklist that asks for a review 3. Our office calls the next day and asks how everything went and for a review. 4. We send follow up messages with NiceJob that asks for a review. We look at it like a sales process so we follow up 7+ times

@Mitchblackmon What’s the best way to ask?

@OdysseyDaily Exactly! It’s hard to scale when you’re only thinking of yourself

Everything you do in your business is a system The trick to scaling your systems is to get them out of your head