Well this one is a corker! Some great info on getting testimonials from your clients as well as improving the customer journey and reducing your reliance on the property portals – Give it a watch or listen or just read the transcription below!
Christopher Watkin: [00:00:00] With Chris Kyriacou, the coolest man in estate agency marketing. Thanks for joining me today Chris, talk to me about how estate agents can get testimonials to improve their business. Talk to me
[00:00:20] Chris Kyriacou: [00:00:20] wow. Okay. Well, first and foremost is deliver the service above and beyond what the client expects. sometimes, you know, just giving the service that they expected is not gonna always prompt them to give you a testimonial. But having said that even when you do an amazing service, Sometimes the client needs prompting to give you the testimonial, right.
[00:00:48] Because it’s, it’s relatively new and asking for testimonials is sometimes a little bit awkward, but sometimes you have to ask for it to get it.
[00:00:59] Christopher Watkin: [00:00:59] Okay. Do you think agents ask at the wrong time? You know, it’s almost, they’re picking their keys up, there’s a removal vans outside, and you say, would you mind giving me a referral?
[00:01:13] Chris Kyriacou: [00:01:13] We’re talking about testimonial, right? Yeah same thing. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Is that the wrong time? I mean, you know, there is the adage of striking while the iron is hot. I mean, I wouldn’t probably do it as a hand over the keys. I might follow them up a few days later and just, you know as the owner of the company say, “Hey, it’s Chris here just thought I’d reach out to you and see what your experience was like with our agency”, you know, how did it go from the viewing stage through to the offer stage and get them to speak to you? If you feel like that was good and there’s some nuggets in there then I would maybe ask, look, would you mind recording that as a video for me? Or would you mind sending that in, on my Facebook page?
[00:01:56]Okay, and, and that really, I think is the best way about going around it. There are tools that can help you. we, we use a tool in some of our client’s businesses that helps us to get these testimonials. So we’ll literally just send a link in an email that says, Hey, I’m just wondered what you thought of the service.
[00:02:12] It would be great if you could let me know here. Just click the link. They give you five stars. If they give you five stars, it asked them if they’d put that on Facebook. if they give you less then it asks, look, could you explain to us how we could improve our services so that we could have got five stars? There’s other things that can help you.
[00:02:28]but in terms of the timing, it depends on the type of client, right? Sometimes if it’s someone of these viewing properties with me, I would always reach out and ask them, you know, how did your first view and go with the company? How nice is that? That an estate agent rings up the owner of the agency or the manager or whatever rings up after reviewing and says, “Hey. I just wanted to know how your first viewing with us was”
[00:02:51] Christopher Watkin: [00:02:51] Because interestingly you’ve been on social media, saying you’re looking for houses at the moment, have you been tempted to give any five star reviews?
[00:02:57] Chris Kyriacou: [00:02:57] Not yet. No. No, not yet, but in truth, I haven’t picked up the phone to any estate agents yet I’m at the very early stage of looking, so yeah, so I’ve been doing the rightmove, search in truth.
[00:03:10] Christopher Watkin: [00:03:10] I mean the wife and I have been looking at some houses in the last six, 12 months and I’ve been totally disappointed by the service.
[00:03:19] Chris Kyriacou: [00:03:19] Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I hear that a lot.
[00:03:22] Christopher Watkin: [00:03:22] Put yourself on mailing list over here and ring up to do a viewing, oh no the property sold yesterday. Sorry and the phone down.
[00:03:28] Chris Kyriacou: [00:03:28] Yeah, I’ve spoken to a few people recently few people about this recently and in truth, I’m not even sure that the mailing list exists anymore, in agency. It’s literally a reactive business for a lot of people. They get an inquiry through about a specific property. They’ll book you into that property. Maybe.
[00:03:43] Christopher Watkin: [00:03:43] Do you think, do you think that’s remiss or shortsighted.
[00:03:48] Chris Kyriacou: [00:03:48] Yeah, definitely and with some of the clients I’m working with now, what we’re doing to revert back to when a property comes to the market, let’s first offer it out to people that are already on our mailing list, already in our Facebook group already following our page. Okay. Go there first, so that would give them a good service. They’re expecting a call from us. They’re expecting us to update them and then push out to the portals. If we haven’t managed to sell it in that first week let’s say as we prepare a details, as we, you know, what we’re trying to do now actually is head for an open day in the first week of marketing and then put it on the portals after that
[00:04:27] Christopher Watkin: [00:04:27] Then
[00:04:27] there’s an advantage for people to put themselves on the mailing list.
[00:04:31] Chris Kyriacou: [00:04:31] Exactly, right now there isn’t.
[00:04:33] Christopher Watkin: [00:04:33] No there isn’t, I’ll just wait for it to go to Rightmove.
[00:04:35] Chris Kyriacou: [00:04:35] Exactly, exactly and then you don’t own the traffic, you don’t own the data. Exactly. And there’s so much more you can do when you capture that data from prospective buyers,
[00:04:45] Christopher Watkin: [00:04:45] And you are more likely to get great testimonials because you’ve been extra.
[00:04:48] I mean, just, just finally, how the hell did you manage to get Rob from Helmores on video, giving you such a great testimonial
[00:04:57] Chris Kyriacou: [00:04:57] Good question.
[00:04:58] I’ll think, as I’ve said or alluded to, you know, I’ve worked with Rob for quite a while. I think we just weave on the really quick relationship. And I went over and above in terms of what he expected, you know, he just, he started out just doing my Facebook course, learning how to do Facebook ads and then took that a step further by instructing me to help him, you know, take that a step further.
[00:05:21] And then that became Google ads as well. And then we just grew from there. And now, I’m in his business, you know, we speak on a weekly basis. I speak to his staff about improving their fees. We talk about their morning meeting structure, all that sort of stuff that really helps you to grow and manage his businesses.
[00:05:36] Christopher Watkin: [00:05:36] And I think also he’s, he uses Jerry lions for his content as well and have together you’ve helped grow his business from around 40, 50% market share to around 80% also improve their fees and one and a half to 2%.
[00:05:50] Chris Kyriacou: [00:05:50] That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. And it hasn’t been a short term thing. It’s been over a period of 18 months as I may have mentioned, but what we did, the key thing there was understanding the buyer journey, the client journey and that leaving the instruction or the fee to the valuation appointment was way too late.
[00:06:14] Okay. So we’re sowing seeds, right at the beginning with a lead ad on Facebook, we’re putting them into an email nurture sequence we’re sending them video welcoming them personally, to the mailing list and then providing value.
[00:06:28] Christopher Watkin: [00:06:28] So personally that like hi, Jim how’s it going?
[00:06:31] Chris Kyriacou: [00:06:31] Yeah, Hey Bob.
[00:06:32] Thanks for signing up to the mailing list.
[00:06:34] Really glad to have you on board. over the next few weeks, I’m gonna send you some tips about how to get the best price for your property. stay tuned for the first one’s coming tomorrow. If you got any questions in the meantime, hit the button below and get in touch right? Something like that, or if they’ve done an instant valuation, Hey, I noticed you just did a valuation using our tool.
[00:06:52]I can see it’s probably a little bit too low for you so I’d love to come and give you an accurate valuation. So let me know when you’re free. Yeah. so stuff like that. So we’re adding value straight away.
[00:07:01] Christopher Watkin: [00:07:01] It seems quite basic…
[00:07:03] Well, you say
[00:07:04] Chris Kyriacou: [00:07:04] it’s basic but who’s doing it.? No one. Exactly. So when Rob gets around to an appointment, right, they already know who Rob is.
[00:07:12] They’ve already, they already like him. They already trust him. he gets to the appointment. They’ve seen his face a million times. They’ve already made the decision most of the time, no one else has going in. And that’s, what’s really helped us with the fee. There’s just, no competition he is the only agent or one of his, valuers are the only agents in, they ask for their fee.
[00:07:30] They get their fee, they’ve been delivered value in advance.
[00:07:34] Christopher Watkin: [00:07:34] That’s the magic thing isn’t it, to create, to deliver value in advance.
[00:07:38] Chris Kyriacou: [00:07:38] He’s already the local authority. it really, really, really does help. And I think that’s, what’s helped grow the market share is that, you know, what we haven’t talked about is his valuation to instruction ratio, which has also gone up.
[00:07:50] Because there’s not so much competition. Yeah. so all in all hands, you know, everything together, it’s really helped that the content that you guys supply, you know, it’s, it’s helping him to add value to his mailing list. He sent me a message a couple of weeks back about a lady who had 1.5 million pound house, checked through the database.
[00:08:07] She was on email 18. When asked, why have you called us in? She said, well, you’re the only one that kept in touch with me. The only one that kept in touch with her. What’s that all about?
[00:08:18] Christopher Watkin: [00:08:18] Just emails and it’s all automated anyway.
[00:08:20] Chris Kyriacou: [00:08:20] Yeah. It’s automated, but you know the truth, for the most part, most people don’t know.
[00:08:24] They think you literally wrote them an email and that’s the beauty of it.
[00:08:28] Christopher Watkin: [00:08:28] Thank you for your time today, Chris.
[00:08:29] Chris Kyriacou: [00:08:29] No problem Chris.