How to cultivate positive reviews and boost visibility to prospective clients.

By Gwen Moran

In early 2015, Grant Muller, CRS candidate, founder of Spaces Real Estate, a real estate brokerage in Boulder, Colorado, received a phone call out of the blue. The caller said that her mother had passed away and she needed to sell the house. She had seen Muller’s collection of more than 60 positive reviews on Zillow and decided that he was just the guy to handle the nearly $1.5 million listing.

“That was directly from one set of reviews. If anyone doubts that positive online reviews are important in our business, that’s the story that explains why they are,” Muller says.

Today, it seems like there are new review sites springing up every day. REALTORS^® are, at once, overwhelmed by the volume and the amount of time required to manage such an online presence, and concerned about pestering clients for reviews. However, when treated strategically, building positive reviews can become a daily part of your business. What’s more, the reviews themselves can become powerful new business tools that can also be used for employee recruitment, says real estate social media marketing expert Kelly Craig of Freehold, New Jersey.

Location, Location, Location

The first step in building a solid base of positive online reviews is to decide where you want them to be focused. Muller places most of his effort in cultivating Zillow reviews. Michael Hege, CRS, a REALTOR^® with Pridemore Properties in Charlotte, North Carolina, has a broader approach to ensure he has “claimed” his listings. He uses sites like Yelp and Google My Business, which allow companies to enter information about their businesses, correct contact information and even enter descriptions. He has also established profiles on LinkedIn, Yelp, YouTube, Zillow, Trulia, REALTOR.com, Twitter and Facebook, where he has a business page.

Hege says that most REALTORS^® do not take the time to completely build out their profiles in the places where people are going to find them and comment on their service. They ignore these online destinations at their peril, he says.

“It is vital to have as many positive five-star ratings on as many outlets as possible. Recently, I received a call because [they said] ‘you were rated five stars and looked like someone we would want to work with,’” he says.

Making the Ask

While some REALTORS^® don’t want to “bother” their clients by asking for positive reviews, Hege says most are more than happy to do so if they’ve had a good experience. He mentions the reviews at the closing, asking happy clients if they would mind writing a few words about what they liked about their experience and about him as a REALTOR^®. He offers to send links to the review sites to make it easier.

Ray Wade, CRS, broker/owner with Legacy Texas Properties in Houston, focuses on cultivating reviews on the Houston Association of REALTORS^® website. Because it’s the No. 1 site for real estate in the greater Houston area, many local people seek it out when searching for a REALTOR^®, “so it’s a good place to have reviews,” he says. He typically gives his clients a gift at closing and reminds them they’ll be getting a request to submit a review.

Craig says it’s a good idea to have a process to make soliciting positive reviews part of your business activities. That’s what Muller does, which he says starts with creating ideal client experiences. If the customers aren’t happy, the only review they’ll write is going to be negative, he says. In addition, ask for feedback along the way so that you have the opportunity to correct the course if things aren’t going well. Then, ask for the review and make it easy for your client by only requesting reviews in one or two places and sending links to the client.

Coaching for Content

Muller also says it’s fine to coach clients a bit on the content. You don’t want to put words in their mouths, but a review that says, “My REALTOR^® was great!” doesn’t do you much good, either. Ask them to be specific about what they liked about the service. Were you particularly knowledgeable in the area? Did you handle the negotiation well? If the client said something noteworthy along the way about your service — such as, “I can’t believe you were able to get the house for me in this hot market” — ask the client to reiterate that in the review, he says.

Craig agrees. In your email request for a review, she suggests including a few bullet points to prompt the client to write about areas such as service, responsiveness, follow-through or whatever particular strengths you contributed.

Maximizing Your Reviews

Once you have the reviews, don’t just let them sit there. You can get more out of them by asking to use them as testimonials in your marketing materials or on your website, Craig says. Hege uses the sync feature with LinkedIn and Realtor.com — when he syncs the two, his LinkedIn reviews appear on his REALTOR.com site, giving him additional exposure without asking his clients to do anything more.

But the best way to maximize the power of positive reviews is to seek more, he says. “Having 20-plus reviews is great. But what happens when you have 100? What happens when you have 200? The impact that quantity could have in generating new business could be huge,” he says.

Gwen Moran is a writer based in Wall Township, New Jersey.

Learn more in the CRS course Building an Exceptional Customer Service Referral Business. Visit the CRS website for details.