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you’re listening to the simple growth
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podcast
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the show that helps business owners get
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their life back
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here’s your host mike callahan welcome
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back to the sa weekly talk show mike
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kelly here with my co-host cody owen
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from service autopilot special guest
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returning by popular demand brian
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stearman from
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mark our modern marketing mechanic uh
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brian
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is going to be introducing some really
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uh
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earth-shattering things that are
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happening right now in google so google
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my
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business and the google guarantee what
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does that mean for your home service
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business
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uh is it something you should be aware
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of or is it something you should
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ignore and it’s gonna only be a fad so
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uh brian’s here to break down the uh the
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newest editions of google my business
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and the google guarantee
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uh brian if if no one has ever seen the
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sa weekly talk show and
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doesn’t have a background on if you
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don’t mind just giving us a quick
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background of what you do
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and uh how you cut your teeth and we’ll
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kind of dive right into um
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this topic here because i know a lot of
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people have been asking about it in the
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assay ecosystem
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yep so my name is brian stearman i’m a
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modern marketing mechanic and lawn care
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marketing mechanic
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um we’ve been running that for several
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years we primarily work
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for the vast majority of our customer
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bases lawn care businesses
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um and we basically do website design
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build
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uh search engine optimization and then
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uh paid advertisement
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management um so um
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that’s that’s pretty much uh this
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business before this i used to own a
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lawn care business so
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yeah that’s that’s why i um have so many
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lawn care businesses because i own
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you know used to own that business and
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sold it so
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that’s uh that’s kind of my history with
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it so
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um you want me to just dive into google
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my business or
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yeah brother floor is yours i know it’s
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uh the landscape is changing and i’ll be
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honest with you it’s something that i
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haven’t had time to keep my pulse on so
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uh one of the main reasons is
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as an expert with these things all
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things seo and uh
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you know google and some of the other
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stuff you’re doing you definitely are a
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huge asset to the ecosystem here so yeah
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definitely the floor is yours and if you
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uh
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you know want us to chime in we’re happy
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to we’re just looking to uh
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see what’s going on with google right
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now okay
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so uh last week uh google my business
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which um
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if you’re not familiar with what google
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my business is that’s like if you do a
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search for lawn
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care whatever google my business are the
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the map listings
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of businesses um so they typically
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display three to four of them
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um and you know they’ll typically have
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either a click to
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call or click the website type link and
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then for like brick and mortar
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businesses it has their address
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for most of um the the audience here
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they probably own service area
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businesses where they provide services
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at homes
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so um those are you know geared towards
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you know whatever their service area
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market is so
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google my business um in the last couple
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of years has kind of been gearing
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towards
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um more paid services throughout their
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platform
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one of them vehicle service ads um
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obviously they’ve been doing google ads
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for
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quite some time um and now it appears
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that google my business is also going to
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become one of their paid platforms
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and they’re doing that they’ve been
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testing it
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uh really since last year sometime we
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saw it um
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but we really only saw it in like
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california and um
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at really high-end industries and so
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now uh as of uh last week
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they started offering it to service area
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type
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businesses and select markets at this
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point it’s
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um by invitation only so basically you
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have to log into your
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google my business in order to see the
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invitation from google
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um and basically what it is is and kind
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of what it looks like
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now is you are already google guaranteed
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so if you’re running
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ads on um the google local services
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those appear to be the ones that are
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going to get the invitations first
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um so if you’re not signed up those that
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might be something that you want to look
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into
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but the google guarantee on google my
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business
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is currently what they’re running right
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now is 50 a month
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uh to get that that badge
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your google business list so when
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someone pulls up google my business or
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you know they do a search
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they’re uh yes okay so the the top three
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those are your local service ads and
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then
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and you see that google guaranteed a
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little green check mark
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nice that’s the uh yeah so
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that’s the ad itself and then if you
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look down below
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they’ll be google guarantee in those map
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listings as well so it’s not
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you know what the example you brought up
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doesn’t have it yet
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um but eventually
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you’ll have several competitors with
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that
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um having that google guarantee and
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obviously if you’re paying 15
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a month their expectation that you’re
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going to
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appear higher in those map results based
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on that subscription
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so the um the big question becomes okay
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so once
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five ten companies
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get guaranteed listings and they’re
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paying that fifty dollar a month
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subscription to google
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how are you going to how is google going
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to determine
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who’s net you know who’s first right
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who’s first who second who’s third
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and the
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you know so we don’t have clear
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direction from google honestly google
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hasn’t done a public announcement on it
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yet
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um we expect that probably next week
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you know they start rolling stuff out
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and they just tell us when they want us
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to know
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but obviously we kind of watch what’s
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going on
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so um you know we’ve seen
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several people that gotten those
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requests and are paying fifty dollars
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um so the expectation is is the next
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important thing
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with google my business is going to be
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and you know so logging into the
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platform
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using their platform um so one we do
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that
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is to to get more reviews respond to all
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the reviews that you do get
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good or bad um and then um
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find other ways to use their platform um
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so they have posts there’s messaging
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there’s a lot of ways um that you can
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use google my business
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and now that they haven’t they have an
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app for it you can download it on your
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phone
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and engage with reviews and things like
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that from your phone as well
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so those are the the things that
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you can definitely do to try to and you
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know basically improve
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how you rank on google maps
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once you have the google guarantee the
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the other way is through what’s called
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citations
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just making sure that your information
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is accurate across the internet
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for your website
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so brian question about what
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does the google guarantee mean for
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like on the consumer side what what are
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they seeing that is representing
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yeah so uh when you sign up to be google
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guaranteed or you
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google local services or whatever so
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there’s a couple there’s a process that
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you have to go through so basically you
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have to
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go through a background check for your
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business
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um so for for any type of industry that
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you’re entering
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the home you may also have to depending
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on
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it’s sad but there’s not a
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straightforward everyone’s gonna have to
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get background checked but we’ve seen
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in certain markets google required that
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the employees get background checked
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in addition to the owner like in lawn
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care it’s almost always just the owner
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of the company
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and then they verify the business so
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they’re verifying that you have
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insurance
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that you uh have a business license
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basically just verify your legitimate
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business
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and then you have to sign some
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agreements with google guarantee and
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those basically
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allow for arbitration and
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um no class action lawsuits and things
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like this
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just basically protecting themselves and
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um
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basically saying that if someone does
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not like your
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service that you will refund the price
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so you have to
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to abide by their policies and those
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policies vary
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depending on what industry it is
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so there’s some fine print that you’ll
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need to read just to know
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if someone comes back google and says i
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wasn’t happy with this service
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what is the requirement on your end um
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and that’s
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based
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and then on the business owner’s side so
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i’m paying
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50 a month and i’m getting
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a green check mark hopefully coming up
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higher in
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in listings is there anything else that
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we know that we’re getting
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out of it right now
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yeah i know there at this point that’s
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pretty much it
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um i mean from from a digital marketing
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side of things
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um i think most digital marketing owners
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are a fan of this um i mean the
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pay-to-play system gets rid of a lot of
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garbage
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uh because google historically has done
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a very important
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job filtering out um
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inactive listings and fake scenes
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um you know so there was a time when
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when every seo would
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uh go out there and we would get 15
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listings one for every city you were
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in um we would call on care
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los angeles lawn care san diego lawn
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care you know whatever
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um every little suburb that you had and
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we had tons of google my business
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looking so you would show up
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and these days those all just get
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spinning
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and google hasn’t done a good job of
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actually cleaning
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so there’s a lot of garbage list scenes
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out there
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and there’s also a lot of lead
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generation type companies out there
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that still have google my business
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listings and they’re just not going to
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pay
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and go through the background check
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they’re not going to make the process
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of coming google guaranteed and i think
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this is one of the ways that google
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google’s trying to improve
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the the quality of the listings that are
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on google my business
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interesting so so brian as we’re looking
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at that uh you’re also going to get rid
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of
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our
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go ahead oh i’m sorry there’s a bit of
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delay on my end uh but right
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earlier you mentioned like so basically
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um
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the the process here is it looks like
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they may be driving some folks to
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literally just
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interact with the business right off of
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google um almost probably similar like
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facebook trying to keep everybody on
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their platform
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uh click to call click to quote is there
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any would you mind expanding on that
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what their
11:09
what you’re at least you’re envisioning
11:10
as an expert uh to happen here in the
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next few months
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yeah yeah so um
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google’s they haven’t come out and said
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it but they they
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pretty much want to go as much can to
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what’s a zero click
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search which basically means if
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i type in law care in a city that they
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real situation is for you to click on
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one of those local service ads or on
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google my business
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and you connect directly with the
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company that you’re not going down and
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clicking on a website
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and doing research and things like that
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they want
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to traffic from a paid platform on
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google
11:48
for you to get your business directly
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from them um
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that’s why there’s like if you do
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certain searches there’s like these
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little knowledge cards
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where they basically if you ask a
11:58
question in google it’ll answer
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the question in the search result
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without ever having to look at the
12:04
actual website
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it’s like a little snippet from a
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website and so
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so much information i mean you know same
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thing like if you go book a flight
12:13
if you type in you know like i live in
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northwest arkansas if i type in xna to
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dallas
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i land on american airlines or delta i
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land on
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google’s little search box that says you
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can book an american airlines flight for
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x dollars
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delta for this you know whatever and
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that’s the direction google’s got
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they want you to do business with them
12:32
and american airlines and delta and all
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these other providers are paying
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for that list in their
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knowledge card that they’re providing
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and that’s the direction they want to go
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so if we’re a service business owner at
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this point brian is there certain things
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if we haven’t been really engaged with
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our google business listing or google my
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business that we
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should be doing proactively right now to
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get ready for this technology shift i
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know one of the
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um and you actually mentioned it which
13:03
is interesting so the first time i met
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jonathan patosnick of the lawn care
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millionaire co
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co-founder service autopilot is his uh
13:10
his lawn care business city turf when
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they went in and dominated that frisco
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and plano area
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um in the other areas they serviced they
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did just that
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jonathan was intelligent enough to see
13:20
that shift in technology so they had
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bought
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separate landing pages for every service
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and every suburb they basically had
13:26
serviced
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and i i from what i remember i may be a
13:30
little off exaggerating but i believe
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you had to go to the third
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page of google organically to find his
13:35
next competitor
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because he had built and optimized that
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so much that you literally had to go two
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or three pages back to even find
13:41
somebody else
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obviously those days are gone but an
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expert like yourself here kind of seeing
13:47
the shift like jonathan saw
13:49
the shift probably already starting to
13:50
happen what what should what should we
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be doing to get a hold of that shift and
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be ahead of our competitors now is there
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anything we can do proactively
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yeah so the biggest thing is go get
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reviews that seems to be
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the biggest factor that google is using
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when it comes to ranking my business and
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when you start looking at this paid
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model
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it’s the only thing google knows like
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you know so citations
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you know links to your website things
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like that they have no control over
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but reviews on their form
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matter because they control them they
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determine who can leave them
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they they’re just they they have some
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true capabilities of knowing what’s
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authentic and what’s not
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and they’re going to use that data over
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anything else
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and i mean you know google recently i
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mean i say recently within the last two
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years
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they did away with non logged in reviews
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like you used to be able to go to go
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click on a business and leave a review
14:52
and not be logged into google
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and those days are over you have to have
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a legitimate profile on google
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and you have to use that profile to
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leave a review now
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and so they’re basically verifying those
15:05
reviews
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to people and then they’re also able to
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see obviously from the ip address
15:10
where those people are that are leaving
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the reviews so
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um i i’m not a fan of review schemes you
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know don’t go
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ask your 100 lawn care buddies uh to go
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leave you a review from you know all
15:23
over the united states because that’s
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not going to do anything
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for you you you know you want to go ask
15:28
a bunch of friends that’s fine
15:30
um you know it’s probably not within the
15:32
policies but at least they’re
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local to your business and that’s what’s
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going to drive those numbers
15:38
and really show that is that people that
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have actually engaged with your business
15:43
in a meaningful way left you a review
15:47
and i know in the service industry it’s
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hard to get people to leave your review
15:50
you have to ask that’s the bottom line
15:53
you have to send them an email you have
15:54
to send them a text you have to
15:56
ask them on the phone it’s you know a
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review
15:59
is you know everyone’s been to a car
16:01
dealership and what’s the last thing
16:02
they tell you before they shake your
16:03
hand and
16:04
walk you out the door hey if i get
16:06
anything less than
16:08
10 on any of these i failed right so
16:10
they’re going to send you the review
16:11
they’re setting it up
16:13
they’re asking for that review and and a
16:15
lawn care business a cleaning company
16:17
they need to do that same thing maybe
16:19
not quite as pushy as the used car stand
16:22
but still need to ask
16:26
brian can i run an idea past you
16:30
yeah um so one thing
16:33
that i like in
16:37
like just my normal like consumer
16:39
lifestyle of interacting
16:40
with various businesses i find the way
16:44
that i
16:44
am compelled to leave a review for a
16:47
business
16:48
is when the employee that i’ve
16:50
interacted with
16:51
like specifically asks me to mention
16:53
their name
16:54
in the review because they get you know
16:56
some reward or whatever
16:58
for being mentioned is that like a
17:01
strategy
17:02
people using that you think is effective
17:05
i just know that it like always guilt me
17:06
into leaving a review
17:11
well and and so the more people that ask
17:14
the better off you are
17:16
so you know i i always find that like
17:19
cleaning companies
17:20
are and plumbers and hvacs companies
17:23
they have the easiest route
17:25
because they have someone standing
17:27
face-to-face with the customer
17:30
and you built some type relationship you
17:32
know if your air conditioner breaks and
17:34
you call someone
17:35
um there’s a personal love relationship
17:38
when that air conditioner turns on right
17:40
because it’s 100 degrees outside it’s 85
17:42
in your house and now
17:43
all of a sudden the air conditioner
17:45
works and i’ll be happy to leave your
17:46
review
17:47
because i’m going to sleep better
17:49
tonight right
17:50
so you know and the same thing with
17:52
cleaning companies you know they’re
17:53
they’re inside the house the the
17:54
homeowner went from a dirty home
17:56
into a clean home they can smell it that
17:58
kind of thing um
18:00
you know so as personal as you can make
18:02
it uh
18:03
a lot of times um we see people using
18:07
upgrades i know quality driven does that
18:10
some other platforms
18:11
take the picture of the tech and put it
18:13
on the request
18:16
so that’s one way of doing it you could
18:17
do that with a lawn mowing crew or
18:19
something like that
18:21
to where it feels more personal because
18:24
you know a lot of
18:24
especially with lawn care guys i mean
18:27
most
18:28
of their customers don’t really have
18:30
contact with the guys out in the yard
18:32
they might see the truck pull up and
18:34
a bunch of people in uniform running
18:35
around the yard and then they leave
18:38
but there’s really not much conversation
18:39
no personal relationship here
18:41
um but yeah i totally agree that the
18:44
more personal you can make the ask
18:47
the better response you’ll probably get
18:52
so brian on the flip side of that uh if
18:54
something comes up every day i just saw
18:56
another one in a private cleaning group
18:58
uh today i just got a bad review
19:01
i can’t make the person happy they’re
19:03
crazy i’ve gone
19:04
up and beyond um
19:08
has the approach to a bad review
19:11
and responding professionally um
19:14
has that has has that changed is there
19:17
certain things we can do proactively now
19:19
with google kind of filtering these to
19:20
actually protest a bad review that’s not
19:22
even legitimate
19:23
like biggest thing was um in this
19:26
facebook group which i think honestly
19:27
we saw a lot of callaghans too not on a
19:29
large scale what we saw occasionally is
19:31
people literally would get the service
19:32
done and then act like they were
19:34
literally unhappy you’d go there the job
19:35
was fine
19:36
but they basically say i’m going to give
19:37
you a bad review unless you give me a
19:38
discount or refund all my money
19:41
so so how do you handle a a legitimate
19:44
excu you know
19:44
a legitimate complaint what’s best
19:46
practice and be on the flip side what if
19:48
you got scammed by somebody you did a
19:49
great job and they’re just saying you
19:50
know what either you give me a discount
19:52
or a refund or i’m gonna i’m gonna
19:53
slander you around town is there any
19:55
recourse
19:56
right okay so i’ll deal with the uh
20:00
the first part of that you know how do
20:02
you deal with a legitimate negative
20:03
complaint
20:04
so the biggest thing um you know
20:07
business we take things very personal um
20:10
especially when someone attacks
20:12
um us our people in our business
20:15
so the first thing that i recommend is
20:18
is
20:18
a probably breathe a minute um
20:22
and then do not address the problem
20:24
online
20:25
you do not want to air your opinions
20:29
their opinions back and forth
20:31
um you want to basically stand by
20:35
your guarantee so whatever you publish
20:38
on your website whatever you talk about
20:40
when you’re signing up customers
20:42
like hey we offer 100 guarantee
20:45
sorry you had a bad experience mine you
20:48
know call the office and specifically
20:50
ask for me
20:51
and we will take care of your situation
20:53
and that does two things one
20:54
it stops the attack online and two
20:58
it tells people that are looking at
21:00
reviews making a buying decision
21:03
that this owner
21:06
may not get it right 100 of the time
21:09
but they’re absolutely going to stand
21:11
behind their work and they’re going to
21:13
address my problem
21:14
if i have one and so that i think that’s
21:17
the most important thing that you can do
21:19
online
21:19
just but don’t sit there and go well we
21:21
did this and they did this and that
21:23
because that turns into a bad bad deal
21:26
very bad deal
21:27
um and now as far as negative or or
21:31
false reviews so first of all um
21:35
i’ll address one that we see common
21:36
which is employees
21:39
um you know that so google facebook
21:43
or or i should say former employees um
21:47
they uh facebook and google
21:51
both have policies that employees cannot
21:54
leave reviews
21:55
and so all you have to do is dispute the
21:58
review
21:59
file a help desk ticket um so different
22:01
platforms have different ways of dealing
22:03
with it
22:03
you show them proof that they were an
22:05
employee and they will remove the review
22:07
um and then so the other issue becomes
22:12
the former employees friends that left
22:16
you in a negative review
22:18
those are harder to get rid of depending
22:20
on how they
22:22
how they go about leaving the review so
22:24
obviously if they
22:25
mention the employee google’s pretty
22:27
good about
22:28
going ahead and removing that review
22:30
otherwise
22:32
you can um you can dispute it you can
22:36
file a help desk ticket you can
22:38
send them a customer list and try to try
22:41
to get it off but
22:42
at the end of the day it’s the
22:44
discretion of whoever’s
22:46
behind the help desk at google and
22:47
facebook to determine whether or not
22:49
they’re going to remove that review
22:51
so you know um
22:55
you’re you’re pretty much at that mercy
22:57
i mean there’s gonna be some crap i mean
22:59
let’s face it i mean your your
23:00
competitors your former employees
23:02
um and then just upset irrational
23:05
customers
23:06
that um you know as opposed to deleting
23:09
one negative review have ten of their
23:11
friends leave you a negative review
23:13
um all concerning the same issue so
23:16
um you know it’s
23:19
it’s really just go through the process
23:21
do what you can
23:23
but the easiest solution to 10 negative
23:26
reviews is 100
23:27
positive reviews so consistently ask for
23:30
the reviews
23:31
and your numbers will be your average
23:33
will be fine
23:37
so if i’m a service business owner and
23:38
i’m looking at it uh some of the ones i
23:40
just pulled up here in my local market
23:42
just for example
23:43
uh we’ve got some that are on the high
23:45
four end uh none of them really had a
23:46
five i’ve got other ones that are a
23:48
little bit before a four
23:50
um it was interesting let me just
23:51
actually look back here i was curious
23:53
because it
23:55
so i’ve got one at a 4.7 a 4.1 i’ve got
23:57
one as low as a 3.3 with a google
24:00
guarantee is there a certain
24:01
threshold that we’re seeing that doesn’t
24:04
allow that google guarantee or are you
24:06
just paying and they’re approving
24:10
um so you know google guarantees a paid
24:11
service right
24:13
um i’m just curious is there a threshold
24:16
though
24:26
um yeah so i had seen a
24:30
i mean i’m sure there’s a point at which
24:33
google may say
24:35
nope you’re not going to be a google
24:36
guaranteed provider
24:38
um but i haven’t seen it
24:41
um you know obviously if they’re at a
24:43
3.3 that’s pretty bad rating
24:45
um you know to uh
24:49
to be to have that kind of guarantee
24:52
badge
24:53
um and and that’s why i think that
24:56
uh reviews are gonna play such a huge
24:59
part
25:00
in the google
25:03
guaranteed badge you know obviously
25:06
if you’re looking at three different
25:07
companies that have google guaranteed
25:09
badges and one has
25:10
4.8 one has four pro and point three who
25:13
are you calling
25:15
um oh yeah i was just is there is there
25:17
a is there a level that you need to play
25:18
by
25:19
i mean or if they haven’t
25:23
okay um so i guess it’s kind of a loaded
25:26
question but what would you say i mean
25:28
obviously you’re going to get some
25:28
negative reviews and all negative
25:30
reviews aren’t bad if you respond
25:31
exactly like brian’s talking about uh
25:34
where i guess as an expert seo
25:36
in different things google what are you
25:37
seeing as a
25:39
kind of like a benchmark or a threshold
25:41
like if you’re affordable like a below a
25:42
four is that are you in the danger zone
25:44
what do we need to be striving for at a
25:46
bare minimal to really
25:47
drive that traffic and that click
25:49
through
25:53
so i i feel like anything over like a
25:56
4.2
25:56
4.3 is an acceptable you know
26:00
star rating the biggest issue that i see
26:03
is
26:03
quantity um you know it’s one thing to
26:06
have
26:06
a 4.8 and have two reviews
26:10
um if you have a point your 4.6
26:14
and you know uh 150 reviews
26:18
that’s that speaks volumes um
26:21
to a potential buyer
26:26
okay and would you think that eventually
26:28
maybe that algorithm that google’s
26:29
running there may
26:30
may favor that that average it may maybe
26:33
it’s going to be smart enough say oh
26:34
there’s only two versus 100 or 200 here
26:40
right yeah if you have one review um you
26:42
you essentially haven’t done
26:44
your work i mean um i mean anyone using
26:48
service autopilot simple growth us um
26:51
you need
26:52
you’ve been in business long enough to
26:54
have more than 20 reviews
26:56
like i mean unless you’re just starting
26:58
now
27:00
um you should have more review almost
27:03
everybody i can
27:04
say you should have more reviews than
27:06
you do um
27:07
and the reason you don’t is because
27:10
you’re not asking
27:11
um you know it’s it’s just the way it is
27:14
i mean
27:14
business owners they want the reviews
27:18
but they’re not most of them aren’t
27:20
willing to put in the effort necessary
27:22
and that’s where
27:23
automations come into play and say hey
27:25
let’s let’s find a way
27:26
to automate this process to to request
27:30
rooms from customers because we have to
27:33
it going into the next five years the
27:36
foreseeable future
27:38
you have to have a good reputation
27:41
online
27:42
and i mean there’s platforms out there
27:44
that i hate
27:45
um we’ll start with yelp um but
27:49
they um you know they are um
27:52
[Music]
27:53
they’re a necessity to ranking your
27:57
website
27:57
and and gaining trust with your
27:59
customers
28:01
you just dropped a four-letter word
28:02
we’re probably gonna get censored on
28:03
that uh the y-e-l
28:06
i still have nightmares of yelp um but
28:09
yeah it definitely it
28:10
it is do you think some of this is
28:12
actually gonna play into voice search as
28:13
that starts to evolve or
28:14
is evolving
28:17
yeah i i definitely do i mean
28:20
if you look at um as much as i don’t
28:23
like that four letter word
28:25
uh that’s the review platform that apple
28:27
uses
28:28
um so just something you can hate it all
28:32
you want but
28:32
uh as long as apple’s using it as
28:34
safari’s um
28:36
primary resource it’s something that you
28:39
probably ought to at least
28:40
entertain the idea i wouldn’t pay those
28:42
people but
28:44
um but you might try to
28:47
um to at least have a decent reputation
28:51
on there
28:52
um but um yeah i mean obviously
28:55
i don’t think um reviews are are going
28:58
to get
29:00
moved out of the equation especially
29:02
with voice search because voice search
29:03
really becomes
29:05
you know if you ask siri and i’m a mute
29:08
series so she doesn’t answer me um but
29:12
um
29:13
you know if you have if you ask alex or
29:15
siri or whoever
29:16
um you know what what’s the best lawn
29:19
care company or what’s the best
29:20
cleaning company or anything like that
29:23
voice search typically
29:24
delivers one result it doesn’t it
29:27
doesn’t give you a list of here’s the
29:29
top three
29:30
lawn care companies in my market it’s
29:33
here’s
29:33
this one company and so
29:37
if if you’re if you’re asking those
29:39
types of questions
29:40
like a normal person would ask it what’s
29:43
the best
29:44
well how do you determine what the best
29:46
is most likely by the number
29:48
and star rating of a company from their
29:51
reviews
29:52
so i mean that’s that’s the logical
29:54
answer right
29:55
so um you know
29:59
that’s you know we we don’t really know
30:00
what voice is going to do
30:02
it’s kind of a new new thing new play um
30:06
the rules change with it every couple
30:07
weeks with schema markup and all kinds
30:09
of things
30:10
um but um you know it’s obviously going
30:13
to play a part
30:14
in the in the future
30:18
awesome brian well i know you’ve got a
30:19
very compressed schedule but i think the
30:21
key takeaways at least for myself
30:22
is uh google my business get in that
30:24
account dive in there
30:26
interact with it see if you actually got
30:28
an invite to play
30:29
um i from what i’m selling i’m here and
30:32
i’m sold 50 bucks a month as a game
30:34
changer let’s just do it let’s get ahead
30:36
of it
30:36
um and to drive that relevancy we need
30:38
reviews
30:40
um and positive reviews and our negative
30:42
reviews we need to follow up
30:43
in a systematic way we take the
30:45
conversation
30:46
offline but go in and reinforce in a
30:49
very non-emotional way and i’m going to
30:50
recommend a 24 to 48 hour period because
30:52
i know at least in
30:54
upstate new york snow removal if you
30:55
could turn online reviews off during the
30:57
winter you would be better off
30:58
obviously you couldn’t um but we we we
31:01
had negative reviews that
31:03
we dropped the plow too loud in the
31:04
middle of night the neighbor was
31:05
hammering us because they could hear the
31:07
plows scraping snow out well
31:09
it wasn’t even us it was a city plow so
31:11
i mean it was just
31:13
some obscene reviews that were just they
31:15
defied logic but i guess after you kind
31:17
of calm down and you got some sleep
31:19
you could go in there and at least
31:21
acknowledge your guarantee and
31:23
if it was something you did or didn’t
31:24
even do you you need to have that
31:26
conversation with that client um or even
31:28
the crazy person across the street
31:30
um but brian great advice i mean take
31:31
that offline don’t have a
31:33
a battle um on
31:36
the emotion from it write a
31:40
pretty standard negative review response
31:42
that includes taking a conversation
31:44
offline encouraging them to call in
31:46
those should all i mean it’s acknowledge
31:49
their like specific complaint if there’s
31:51
something specific
31:52
but the bulk of it you could just copy
31:54
and paste that way you don’t have to
31:56
think about it you don’t have to like
31:58
begrudgingly type out this thing that
32:00
you’re you know
32:01
angry about yeah and i like that idea
32:05
cody too because a lot of times i’d
32:06
catch myself on my phone trying to
32:08
respond to one of those in the middle of
32:09
night off sleeping two days in a row and
32:11
uh you know just frustrated and then in
32:13
in in the lack of sleep there’d end up
32:14
being a lot of typos in there and things
32:16
like that so
32:17
obviously you don’t only want to present
32:19
yourself professionally but you
32:20
grammatically you actually want to be
32:21
professional as well so i think
32:23
standardizing that script is obviously a
32:25
really really good idea
32:26
um and just some minor tweaks have
32:28
somebody proofread it send it to one of
32:30
the people that you know
32:31
have them look at it before you send it
32:32
out because the way you
32:35
interpret that because you wrote it
32:36
could be completely different than
32:37
somebody online
32:38
interpretation so uh definitely respond
32:40
but give it you know give it that 24
32:42
hour rule so
32:43
uh cody any closing thoughts questions
32:45
brian any questions
32:46
thoughts uh on google my business and
32:48
the new game
32:52
i’m i’m excited to see people get in
32:54
there and start playing with it and see
32:56
what happens
32:59
awesome well essay weekly talk show we
33:01
got martha woodward of quality driven
33:03
software coming up
33:05
next week at 1 pm eastern 12 central
33:09
brian really appreciate every time you
33:10
come on here and drop another knowledge
33:11
bomb for the essay community
33:13
uh hopefully conference season opens up
33:14
a little bit we’ll see you
33:16
come in the coming months i’m going
33:18
through uh non-travel uh withdrawal
33:20
right now or travel withdrawal
33:22
not seeing everybody in live person so
33:25
um
33:26
obviously we’re just going to keep on
33:27
doing our thing here online until we can
33:28
open it up in person so
33:30
um next week martha woodward quality
33:32
driven software right here on the sc
33:33
weekly talk show
33:34
until next week i want to thank co-host
33:36
cody owen and special guest brian
33:38
stearman of modern marketing mechanic
33:43
if you like this show you might want to
33:45
check out our resources at
33:49
www.startsimplegrowth.com
33:50
while you’re there enter to win an
33:52
estimator chat bot
33:54
mike callahan is available for private
33:56
coaching