In this episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed, Evan and Thaddeus delve into the invaluable impact of customer reviews and employee engagement with marketing guru Christopher Lollini of Reputation Igniter. Packed with practical advice and innovative strategies, this episode is a treasure trove for any HVAC business looking to soar.
Key Takeaways:
Don't miss out on these game-changing insights. Tune in, get inspired, and let's take your HVAC business to the next level!
Find Christopher :
On The Web: https://reputationigniter.com/
E-mail: chris@reputationigniter.com
Phone: 425-697-9373
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@reputationigniter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reputationigniter
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislollini/
Amanda Triolo Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Z2IgpfDCA
Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662
Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
On Purpose Media: https://onpurposemedia.ca
In this episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed, Evan and Thaddeus delve into the invaluable impact of customer reviews and employee engagement with marketing guru Christopher Lollini of Reputation Igniter. Packed with practical advice and innovative strategies, this episode is a treasure trove for any HVAC business looking to soar.
Key Takeaways:
Don't miss out on these game-changing insights. Tune in, get inspired, and let's take your HVAC business to the next level!
Find Christopher :
On The Web: https://reputationigniter.com/
E-mail: chris@reputationigniter.com
Phone: 425-697-9373
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@reputationigniter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reputationigniter
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislollini/
Amanda Triolo Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Z2IgpfDCA
Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662
Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
On Purpose Media: https://onpurposemedia.ca
Hey, here's how you really should be answering your phone calls to make sure that people know the reviews are important. Hey, here's how your happy call should go and how it should nod to the fact that reviews are important to you.
Thaddeus Tondu:Hey, welcome back to another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan, where we have good conversations with good people and any good conversation worth having is worth having drunk. So we had on Chris Lollini from reputation igniter on today and man, the conversation that we had centered around Google reviews and how important they are to your business we're going to drop like a couple of cliffhangers on why you should listen. But fuck what we just said. Listen to the whole goddamn episode because it was absolutely phenomenal. But just to tease you a little bit, just a little bit of tip, Evan, what was your favorite nugget from today?
Evan Hoffman:For me, it was just having a benchmark, having a goal, having a number that you should expect in your business for, you know, if you're running 10 sales calls or 10 service calls, what should we expect back in terms of reviews and so Chris highlighted that, gave you a benchmark to go after and then we talked about all kinds of tips and how you can increase your number to make sure that you're hitting that benchmark for your business. Chris, what about you? What was your favorite nugget?
Christopher Lollini:There's a lot in there that it's hard to narrow it down, but I would say one of your guests actually set me up pretty nicely to just talk about what is the evolution? What's the next sort of generation of reviews and review generation look like and what technology can be leveraged in order to really like 10 X your results and your response rates and I think the answer will surprise you, but it won't surprise you and you definitely need to think it through for sure.
Thaddeus Tondu:And that was a great part of the episode, but even just before that. We talked about the one thing hey, look, we're struggling. People, some companies are struggling to bring in top level talent into their business. How can reviews help increase your recruiting? And that was a great tip right near the end that I think a lot of people need to pay attention to. But of course, we want to hear from you. What was your favorite part of today's episode? Leave that down in the comments, send us a text, send us an email, send us a carrier pigeon, fucking smoke signals. I don't give a shit. Get in touch with us. Let us know what you thought of today's episode. So you made it. He is down live with us in Memphis, Tennessee at Graceland for the True Grit event with Joe Crisara. But enough about us. Let's talk about our guest. We have Chris Lolini coming on. Probably should have clarified how to say his last name, but I think I nailed it. So we're good to go there. He is from Reputation Igniter and it's a, it's hey, look, Google reviews are super important and I'm actually really fascinated by what they have on the go in order to be able to enhance getting more Google reviews. We know from an SEO perspective that it is a big signal for your rankings, specifically in your map pack. Put it this way if you're searching AC repair near me, and three or even sometimes now two businesses, depending on what Google's flavor of the day is if there's three businesses up there, one has 10 reviews, one has a hundred and one has 500, who do you think the consumer is going to call? The one that has 500 or even a hundred as their second plan B, they're probably not going to call the person that has 10 and so it's an important part for conversion aspects, as well as ranking with inside of it. So I'm going to be fascinated to dive into today's conversation from that, but also he's a man after a heart. He also had an agency a little while ago, transitioned away from that because he saw the gap in the marketplace for reviews. So super fascinated, super excited to dive in today with Chris.
Evan Hoffman:Absolutely. Nope. You nailed it. It's all about giving back and adding some value here today and how businesses can really Ignite they're review generation.
Thaddeus Tondu:Ha. Ba dum bum. Today's show would not be possible without our sponsors. We have Chiirp. We have Elite Call. We have On Purpose Media and in no particular order, let's actually go with Elite Call first. So have you ever thought about outbetting your database to fill your dispatch boards with lucrative service and sales appointments? And boosting memberships too. Okay. We'll enter an Elite Call a us based call center that does just that for over 20 years, by the way, the dedicated teams don't just make calls. They directly integrate appointments into your CRM and fill your dispatch boards. Don't let your competition get ahead. Let Elite Call connect with your customers. First, visit elitecall.ca to learn more today I was hoping Evan was going to put that link up, but he did not. So I got it all right right there for you. The other one, if you don't want to use calling and you want to use text messaging, we'll transform your home service business with Chiirp, the ultimate automation toolbox, capture more leads, connect instantly and skyrocket sales and integrate seamlessly with things like ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro, offering automated text messages, emails, ringless voicemails topic of today, boosting your Google reviews and customer lawyers with proven rehash programs schedule your demo today, get an exclusive 25 percent off your first three months, visit chiirp.com/hssr and last and certainly least in this conversation is us On Purpose Media enhance your online presence with On Purpose Media, your go to home service, marketing experts for everything, web design, SEO, PPC, stunning user friendly websites, big old check mark beside that one, increased visibility and search engines also a check targeted traffic through effective pay per click ads. Yep, you got it. So let's turn your online presence into a lead generating powerhouse visit onpurposemedia.ca to start your digital transformation and watch your home service company thrive. In a digital world without further ado, we'll be back on the other side with Chris.
INTRO:Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets Revealed a show where we interview industry leaders and disruptors revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts, Thaddeus and Evan.
Thaddeus Tondu:What up through the wild world of technology. We are live with Chris Lollini from Igniter. Welcome to the show. I know that you're drinking a pretty fancy whiskey over there. One that has a pretty cool story. We got to start with that.
Christopher Lollini:All right. I wouldn't say it's fancy by any means, but I guess the logo is pretty cool. So it says horse rider and it's a Kentucky straight bourbon. Me being a veteran, I like all things veteran and so if you've watched the movie 12 strong, which is about the first batch of green berets that essentially went into Afghanistan after nine 11 a couple of those guys started the distillery and it was really cool. I can't remember if they were like giving a speech or something, but they somewhere in proximity to the 9 11 site and somebody said we should give you a steel I beam so that you can use the steel to actually create your glassware forging unit and so every single one of these bottles actually touches a piece of 911, which I think is really cool because it's what forges the glassware there and it's got a nice kick as a good.
Thaddeus Tondu:Even better. We might have next time I'm down in the United States, I'll have to try to look for a bottle to buy that. So maybe Evan can bring one back from Tennessee. If it's down there.
Christopher Lollini:Maybe I could ship it unless that costs like a King's ransom to do. I don't know.
Thaddeus Tondu:You might have duty and import fees when it comes to alcohol coming across the border. Justin Trudeau doesn't really like that too terribly much. It doesn't like a lot of things, but anyways, we don't need to get political.
Christopher Lollini:This is going to get too long.
Thaddeus Tondu:Might get too long. If we start talking about politics, we'll just steer clear of that that whole topic. I know that your start after you were done in the Navy and you want it, you got your start into the trades, walk us through your journey into getting started inside of the HVAC space.
Christopher Lollini:Yeah, happened to do that. Maybe I think that maybe the best way to do it is so I spent my time in the Navy I was in the nuclear sort of department, on the Ronald Reagan and I was a reactor mechanical division officer and so I was in charge about 40 guys that oversaw all the valves, the mechanical systems piping, pretty much anything that was going in and out of the reactor and so there's, and I, Oh, my education had been in engineering and I came out my last corporate job was building the Washington state ferries up in Seattle and I've been doing online marketing for like years on and off. Every time I build a business, it would collapse because I go on deployment and then anything to, like you get dial up speed there. It was pretty bad but I loved, the online space and so when I finally got my feet on land for an extended period of time, I started my agency. I noticed there was a gap in the home services industry just online marketing this was 2013. So online marketing was advancing so quickly and most of these guys in the trades are just trying to keep up with the technology in their trades. Like just what's evolving and so I saw a gap there I wanted to fill it. I want to serve these guys. So the goal was to quarterback all their marketing for them. So I do everything from overviewing, like direct mail to like Facebook ads to SEO to pay per click anyways, that wore me out but my wife and I'm sure if you've got a significant other, how important of a pivotal role they can play in your business. She made a comment she said, I don't know. I think your business is too hard to understand. It's too expensive and you just need to do something that's more productized and much more simpler to understand and so, it took me six months to drill that through my thick skull and that's where I invented or came to what is now Reputation Igniter. So the original agency obviously did everything, but I essentially niched way down in terms of service providing and was only doing reviews pretty much since whatever that would have been 2016 and on and it's just been the lowest common denominator for people to really gain traction in the marketplace and it's just, it's constantly and you can see these guys who are brand new still compete with the big dogs. If they can put the right strategy in place to generate a lot of reviews and the referrals just keep coming and their visibility on Google grows and, obviously it's become a little bit more competitive out there in terms of what it takes to rank a profile. That's why, tapping into somebody like yourself can really have some significant advantages to it. But at the end of the day, and I think you were mentioning it at the beginning there, right? This is the conversion rate, depending on what they're seeing is all going to be dictated by the number of reviews and the star rating that you see when somebody is Googling HVAC contractor or HVAC company or, HVAC repair so.
Thaddeus Tondu:It makes sense and it's neat because he came from the agency background and he had that experience in all things marketing and having that bridge and that gap and that connection with reviews is powerful and we'll get into the review part of things as well the one thing that, that you said, 2013 in a tough time for individuals keeping up with technology, fast forward 11 years. Yeah. I'm trying to remember myself and what I was doing in 2013, but I like, I know 2009, like that was when I went to Southeast Asia and Facebook was just beginning cell phone didn't have that. I was totally disconnected from most of the outside world, except for when I had the internet cafe, do you have a login and see what was happening in Facebook and message my parents that I was still alive. But keeping up with that tech, a big thing. Shit. The last year and a half inside of the technological space. Yeah. Crazy, right? If somebody is sitting here and thinking, okay I might already be behind the eight ball. I might already not be up to date with the most latest technology in my business. What are you going to say to that business owner?
Christopher Lollini:What do I say? Where I usually start is like I, I try to like, start with what a business owner already knows, right and they go, are referrals important to your business, right? And it's I think the number like, it's like 86 percent of businesses or something like that. Say that referrals are their main source of revenue. Okay. Okay. The referrals are important. What if I told you, Okay. That your word of mouth marketing is really your reviews. It's just reviews are the new digital form of your word of mouth marketing and that's the problem is like in today's digital world, right? Nobody hands out a business card. Nobody says, Hey, go to the yellow pages and look somebody up, right? They tell somebody a business name. And they Google that name, they better have a website and they should contact you to get a fancy one, that does all the cool stuff. If they can't find you right with your website and right next to your website, it's going to be a Google business profile and when they look at that, the question is how many reviews do you have? Do they have a reputation that is in alignment with what their friend, your customer just just lined you up, teed you up, and the question is are they going to see what they feel like they're getting from their, from that person that referred them? Are they seeing that online? If it's not congruent and it's out of alignment, your competitors are a click away, right? And it's really easy to, just delete the search field and go HVAC contract and so it's so important you're probably losing. This is where I start the conversation. I go, you don't even know it yet. And this is somebody who obviously doesn't have a lot of reviews. It's Hey, you don't even know it yet, but you're actually losing a lot of your referrals to your competitors and you don't even know it and the problem is you can't put a metric on like people that look you up and then don't actually go with you. And I think if you don't have triple digits, you're probably losing out a lot of your business and even then, I think, especially in the HVAC space, since it's so competitive, you should have multiple triple digits and that's what I aim for my clients, is getting you to the triple digits and then multiple triple digits as fast as possible. Yeah. Do you need a thousand plus? I think it's nice, but, you really just need to be in the triple digits. I think for somebody to really take you seriously, because you can have 25, 30 family and friends, right? That's why we don't choose that, Vietnamese restaurant because they're like, yeah, they got all their family to, do that.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, I might have more than 25, 30 family members.
Christopher Lollini:They might, they're better communicators and stuff.
Thaddeus Tondu:But I mean, family is a big thing, right? Association cultures are just families, huge families, massive and you'll, it's not unheard of to see three, four generations living under one roof so actually really glad that you bridged that gap between reviews and referrals. Cause I'd written that down as one of the next topics I wanted to get into and in really, it's a greater understanding because sure. I've never really bridged that gap myself, right? Thinking, okay how can referrals and reviews make sense together? You just did that, right? By saying, hey, reviews, people are still going to look at that even if you get the referral, you still need that brand continuity of everything going in. That's obviously part of the websites when you see the referral, you want to make sure that you're a legitimate company and look good. Evan's writing a note down. I want to pass the floor to him now that he's back on before his internet goes out on him again and I'm not making fun of you, Evan. It is what it is, your own location, right? So is there anything else? So I guess in terms of obviously seeing the reviews is one way to generate more referrals by way of that, is there a form of an approach that you use or you teach or you coach on, on how to get more referrals with inside of your business? Cause I see reviews and referrals are like very closely intertwined.
Christopher Lollini:It's a hundred percent. They are the same thing. So the question you also have to look at it like a review is a referral that's online available from anybody. So it doesn't have to like actually be somebody that's in the network. I don't know. I did B and I years ago when I started my company, right? And I think it's I've Meisner talks about every person knows 150 people, right? And it's that's how you multiply your network, right? So it's that person, instead of being in front of 100 and 50s in front of the entire population of the city or the town that you're in, right? And so that's a referral that's working for you 24 So I think if you understand that you can give more gravity to the like impetus to actually generate those reviews, right? And then the other piece that people don't literally talk about is, yes, the number is important, right? And yes, your star rating is important. I think the big shocker, like if you're listening to this and you have less than four stars, you should be freaking out because 54 percent of customers will not use a business with less than four stars. So literally right there. Half of your customers aren't even talking to you because you've got less than four stars, right? So we all know we want to be above like four and a half stars. Pretty much. It's a no brainer. The other thing you have to think about, and this is a stat that has been like growing over time that I've always keeping an eye on is the amount of review or is how many people want to see the reviews in the last, like two weeks or a month or three months and it's something like 86 percent of people want to see reviews with they don't count a review as valid outside of three months and I think it's now one month. If it's like older than a month, they don't even bring it relative and I always give the example of that Chinese buffet that's always under new management and they got the big sign under new management and you're driving by and you're like, it's okay. Great. I'm still not going there. Cause I don't want to gut bomb. But the idea there is that it indicates and signals to somebody that you're still in the market, you're still providing good service and you're still doing good quality work, but you also have to think from Google standpoint. Who's Google going to showcase. Google is going to showcase the business that is clearly serving people. And arguably this actually matters more than your star rating, right? You'll cause you'll see people, you're like well, that guy's a 4. 1. Why is he showing up above me? I'm fine. I'm 4. 9. It's that guy is getting reviews on a regular basis and that's indicating to the Google that they're serving customers and so there are more relevant. Search results to be displaying in the maps pack simply because they're getting more reviews more recently. So that's one of the biggest things that I drive home with my clients is look, we have to set up a system, right? And that's my engineering piece. Like the brand and the strategy stuff that you guys do, like that, like It makes me drool. Like it's just so hard for me to wrap my brain around because I'm a systems guy. Like everything I do, it's all engineer. I'm engineering processes into the business and the way that we operate is we're always focused on how do we build a system inside your business that is arguably invisible to you and your people that just runs on autopilot and generates and builds an incredible, great relationship or a. reputation for you, right? So that's always the focus because one more thing to think about is too many things, right? And so our focus is on how do we actually create some sort of an integration? And there's lots of softwares out there that create and have integrations, right? And so the importance is making sure that triggers at the right time inside your business, right? If you're sending out an estimate to somebody, you should not be triggering it. Okay. A request for review. Are you sending out an invoice? Then you've completed work. You should probably be sending out, a request for review. If you're tied into like Service Titan, you could do it after the job is completed, same thing with Sarah or service fusion or whatever sort of software that you're using and we just plug into these and then what the important thing is just bringing the information over. So somebody is not manually typing in, first name, last name, email address, and phone number and we'll hit them up on text and we'll hit them up on email and then we just follow up. Just at a regular routine, because people forget things, right? They're, you're not the most important thing to them, but you have to do it in a very specific timeline, especially in the HVAC industry. It really needs to be like, you have to be following up within 24 hours, right? And hopefully get the review within 72, because outside of that no offense, But they got a lot of stuff going on kids got to go to soccer practice, little Jimmy just got expelled from school or they, they hit the side of the house on the way out of the, there's just a million things that are going on in their life. And so the most important thing is how quickly you're actually reaching out to that person and the other pieces. You got to make it easy for people. No offense, but sitting there and saying Hey, can you write us a Google review? First of all, socially, it's very uncomfortable for the, for them. Person you just serve, right? But secondly, it's really hard. Like they got to go Google you and find you and all that stuff. Give them a link. Google has links just make sure that you're using your place ID there so that it's not something that gets broken really easily. That's another thing that people kind of mess up is they're not actually using Google's API and so on top of that, you can have some issues where somebody says they wrote a review, but Google doesn't validate it for. Whatever reason. But anyways, man, I could probably obviously go down lots of holes here so.
Thaddeus Tondu:There's a lot of notes and a lot of squirrels that are going to go. I'm I have a really quick question and then it's unmuted. The average star rating of what do you think is the best for conversions? What do you think it is?
Christopher Lollini:I'd say you, you really have to be about four and a half, I think. But I would say you should really aim for four, seven is pretty solid. I would argue that if you're five, I'm getting a lot of people that go, I don't trust it cause there's the other thing that's really going in all these studies that people are really like starting to pay more attention. It's like fake reviews and so if you have a five star review or a five star rating, people get suspicious, especially if you've got multiple hundreds of reviews. So it's take the negative on the chin. I tell my clients, it's a nugget of gold you get to show your actual customer experience and reaction to situations when they go South and sometimes that'll be the biggest conversion factor, right? Again, I try to tell my clients think about how you interact with reviews. Every time I buy a product on Amazon. I don't go to the positive reviews that go to the negative reviews and I try and figure out, is that person crazy? Is there justification and what is the issue that they really have? So anyways, cause that's the other thing too, right? People don't realize it's like people can click on a profile and they can see the other reviews you wrote. So if somebody's, batshit crazy on Google, they can find out if they're all one star givers, except for the, cat food place that, gives great deals on stuff. They got five stars.
Thaddeus Tondu:I think it's funny, cause you mentioned the negative reviews. We went to Mexico in January and I remember reading some of the negative reviews on the resorts and I laughed at the ones like, Oh man, we got so sick. We had diarrhea the whole time. I'll never eat at the buffet again. Motherfucker, you went to Mexico and you ate the salad, like no shit. You're gonna be shitting through the Ivan Montezuma's Revenge man. I luckily in this time we didn't, none of us had the Montezuma's revenge, but I have had it before Mexico. Not fun. Yeah.
Christopher Lollini:No. How do you recover from that? Evan, go.
Thaddeus Tondu:Diarrhea. I think that might be the best.
Evan Hoffman:One thing I'm curious on here, Chris is what is the percentage of calls or percentage of people that you're sending a review request out to that we should be expecting a review response on.
Christopher Lollini:Cool. That's a great, that's a great question and the answer is it depends on who you're working with in all reality. One of the, like who we leverage is like one of the backend tools is BirdEye. So like podium is probably one of the biggest names in, in our space and like podium and BirdEye are pretty much neck and neck, I obviously think that BirdEye is better but that's my own personal opinion and what you'll have is typical response rate that you'll get out of the box with these softwares is usually about 5% and people just accept it and they go, Oh that's, that is what it is. But one of my mentors in the agency space, like we're always bouncing ideas off of each other and trying to, keep our eyes down range to make sure that we see stuff coming and the, because BirdEye came to us and like, how are you getting such good response rates? Because on average, we're typically doing I don't like to see a client getting less than 10%, right? But I would say that on average, most of my clients are getting somewhere between 11 and 15%. I do have clients that are up getting 18%, right? It all depends on your customer experience and like what they're actually doing, in the house how much you're building that rapport and closeness and proximity. So that's what I would say, you really should be aiming at 10 percent or better. If you're less than that, there's probably something that's going on that you're not aware of and you just need to dig into your reviews. One of the things that we have in our platform is an AI tool that allows you to just look through all your reviews real quick and figure out, hey, what are the good things? What are the bad things that are going on? And the thing that you need to be aware of is sorry. So what I was saying is we get a 10 percent conversion rate cause we have a weekly call with bird eye, and they're like higher ups they're like, what are you doing? Like, why are your conversions so bad? It's we changed the wording that you guys had out of the box and your thing, and we change it to this and so now they changed their wording to that kind of thing and it's that's what you typically get when you're, purchasing a software off the shelf is they just, they're they. Some engineer somewhere wrote something up one time. It looked good. It converts good. Check, double check sales guy sells it great. He puts you on the program. You're supposed to learn it, use it and become a, a genius and so for us, it's that's what we try to do is go in there and think like a business owner, right? Who's serving his clients in the community and go, what can we do? How can we make this better? And we're always tweaking it. We're always testing things to see what we can do to improve it. So I would say I wouldn't be happy if I were you, if you're getting less than 10%, I, there's something there that you got to figure out and you guys can get my contact information. I'm always happy to just help people. In this disregard, you don't got to be purchasing my services. I'm just trying to be resource because it's frustrating. I get it.
Evan Hoffman:So yeah, I remember when we had Peter and Alicia green on from go green plumbing and even Russell for as well, back when he ran his company. Both of them talked about striving for 30%, a third of our calls, we want reviews on and that was their target. That was their benchmark that they were aiming for and every technician was aiming for that as well. When anyone's falling below that, what are the things that you work with them on to then tweak so that they can start generating more reviews?
Christopher Lollini:Oh, that's a great, that's a great question. So first thing we'll look at is number one is. Is your data clean that's coming into our system, right? Because that's a lot of the issue is like people will just they think they're doing great. your phone numbers are landlines, right? You're not actually putting your email on the right field or you're misspelling email. Like the emails are undeliverable because we'll check it on our end. We can see if an email is undeliverable. If a phone number, is actually a landline kind of thing. So that's first, it's always data hygiene and I would say that's the biggest issue for most of these people is they just, they don't have clean data. The second thing I would say is we start to look at, like what are we getting back? What's the feedback that we're getting back from people? In general, just what are the reviews look like? Are they short five stars and no comments, right? Is, are you doing essentially nothing that's very memorable? Another thing that we can do is we can actually track on our end. We can create a little bit of a leaderboard so you can actually attach it to salespeople or to technicians and that's an easy way to go, okay, Hey, we're actually getting a pretty good response rate from Sam and Tim and Sera, but for whatever reason, Derek, Bill, and Ted aren't necessarily, they're just not converting. So let's like figure out what, and I forget the names that I just used, but yeah, so what are the good people doing that are getting good conversions? And then I think, Evan, to your point. You can get up to the 30 percent right? I would say that is that requires a significant investment in your team's culture. One of the things I'll always advocate and I'm sure you guys do this all the time, right? Because like you're generating all these leads for these clients, right? And then it's just in the agency space. People come back and they go, it's they're shit leads, man. We're not booking anything. It's okay let's see how many of those phone calls actually got answered. Okay. That's interesting number. Second let's see how you're handling those calls. Oh, interesting you sound grumpy. Were you having a bad day? Like you can just piecemeal these pieces and it's just oh yeah, let's address that. Let's just that and so all that to say is that like you have to create a culture around it and make it important. So one of the things that I tell my clients like, hey, it's really cool is my system tells you when you got a new review. What's great is you can track that to your salesperson. So next time you're in a team meeting, in the morning before you dispatch, whatever it is that's an easy one to go, dude, Derek, we just got that awesome review from Chloe, man, you totally knocked it out of the park. This is what she said about you. How awesome is that, man? Way to go, Derek. And you just create that culture of Hey, let's celebrate those wins. That's not the time to call out the people who aren't getting reviews. But it is the time to celebrate somebody who is doing positive stuff and then on the back end, do something nice to them or for them, right? It just, they want to be cared for. And so that's what I would say is you really have to create a culture there to support that.
Thaddeus Tondu:A hundred percent. What you focus on expands, right? If you're going to focus on the negative aspect of, Hey, you're not getting reviews, pull up your socks, nobody's going to want to do reviews because now you're managing with fear where if you accolade individuals and you give them praise they want praise too. So highlight the praise of what you want. Now you mentioned something there. What are your thoughts on Spiffs if their names are attached in the Google review?
Christopher Lollini:I think anything to get, you've got to play around. It depends on your organization too, right? Like I, cause when we started this whole thing people like, let's give them a 5, Starbucks gift card, right? I saw negligible. Near zero improvement in people's like responses like arguably people don't like to be prostituted So the idea of like offering, you know a customer money to do something just makes them feel dirty and so they just they don't.
Evan Hoffman:I gotta correct you there Chris. I horse that out all the time
Thaddeus Tondu:He was drinking me last night.
Evan Hoffman:There's a beer here on tap named Thaddeus, so I'll post the video later.
Christopher Lollini:I was gonna say, I don't wanna get into the the technical definition of a whore and a prostitute, but I don't know if a whore charges anyways, Now I lost my train of thought. Where was I going with that?
Thaddeus Tondu:I worked free. I have spiffs.$5.
Christopher Lollini:Yeah. So like sometimes it'll cheapen it cause a lot of people, the reason they do it is for the altruistic nature. Man, these guys really came in, they treated me, my cats really well. Like I want to, I want to pay that forward and I think for me, it's more of making it a big deal after the fact, like after they do it, that's going to endear them and make them even more of a raging, a raving fan for you. Because it was unexpected and it wasn't coerced out of them and so I think if you just I guess the other piece is go to the front of the sales cycle, right? When the dispatcher calls, right? Our dispatcher gets the call, and they're talking them through, just ask them. How'd you find it? Oh, I read all your reviews. Oh my gosh, We are so blessed to have so many amazing customers who are willing to take the time and the effort to write those reviews we are so flattered whenever we get a new one of those anyways, i'm glad that you took a look at those, we're very proud of you know what we've been able to do and how we will serve our community How can we get you on the counter right? Like you're setting the frame In their mind that wow, like they really appreciate when somebody like I'm going to be one of those people that does that right? And then you make sure that somebody responds to review publicly and if you can set up something where the owner, writes a handwritten card, by the way you can automate that through a service like handwritten Bob, don't worry about your shaky hands. It's okay. You don't have to do cursive a robot will do it for you, right? There's just different ways that you can really send a different message than anybody else. Yeah but the spiffs, it depends on your culture. That's what I was sorry I was getting at, as it depends on your culture, either it can motivate some people or it can turn people off and you just got to find the right balance for you.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I know that like in referencing Peter and Alicia with go green. I think they're on pace for that eight figures this year when they were on our show, they were up to mid seven so just a phenomenal organization and they talked extensively about how do they do it with the in person now, obviously, if they don't get it, then you use the automations and what you guys do super fascinated by that. But I do want to continue on. However, we're going to interject here really quickly with our random question generator which, yeah, so the random question generator we're going to read off first off, let me see what our team wrote down for us. The random question generator is brought to you by On Purpose Media, which is or our digital campaigns go viral faster than a sneeze in a silent library. I love some of the shit that they come up with. That is a hilarious one. I've stopped rereading it now because I'm like, I just want to read it right live on the show and see what happens same with a random question. So I don't pre read them anyway, either. So you get to choose if you want question one, two, or three, of course, I don't tell you what the questions are. Do you want question one, two, or three?
Christopher Lollini:Let's do two. Let's split it right down the middle. Oh, I can tell by your response. It is a good one.
Thaddeus Tondu:It is random. Where I go off limits, it's off limits, right? Pretend you're in a bath. Okay. How many rubber ducks are too many rubber ducks?
Christopher Lollini:Interesting.
Thaddeus Tondu:Evan's just what?
Christopher Lollini:Man, I don't, okay, let me, maybe I'll, here, it's my nuclear training. I like things neat and tidy and orderly. So I think it's as many as I could possibly stack without any spilling over or falling onto the floor.
Thaddeus Tondu:So there would be just like you sitting in a bath and rubber duck just flat all the way around you covering every square inch of water.
Christopher Lollini:Oh, I thought I was enjoying a nice bath. So there's water in it and this is more of like an architectural engineering feat of like how many ducks I could stack high and then at the last moment, like sink underwater and.
Thaddeus Tondu:I forgot I was talking to a ducks that was from Nita. I forgot I was talking to an engineer on this and it would've been.
Evan Hoffman:For me, it was the seriousness at which you asked the question. That's what got me. That's why I was dying, so that was fantastic.
Thaddeus Tondu:No, I was just like, I'll add the bath part in there. The bath part wasn't there. That was just me adding that in because I read the question. I was like, geez, it's okay. Just be glad that I didn't ask Question number three. Would you rather be a reverse centor or a reverse merman?
Christopher Lollini:Oh man.
Thaddeus Tondu:That was question number three.
Christopher Lollini:I'm glad I did not for that one.
Evan Hoffman:Since we're on a random topic anyways, we just talked about, pouring that out. What do you call a child born in a whorehouse? Brothel sprout.
Christopher Lollini:There you go. I hope that wasn't stored in your head.
Thaddeus Tondu:He has a lot of random stupid jokes that are stored in his head and I don't know why I see why there's no space for other things. it's okay. I just got in shit for saying the third question cause she likes to reuse those. So sorry can't reuse that one. So Getting back into, to the review part of things. I, there's a lot of different ways that I can go on this. One that I want to talk, you talked about text and email and automating some of the process and even going back to a little bit of Devon Murphy's question, can you set it up where reviews write themselves and the customer only has to click submit. That's pretty fascinating. I want to get into that question in a second, but I do want to lead off with the part of what's the process like. To get the review, right? Cause that's the second part, right? And so in following up, like how soon after, so if you're in service site and Sera, Housecall Pro, whatever it is, job is marked as complete and you send that review, how soon after that, is it happening? Is that happening in the house or is it happening right after that? How many touch points and how long did you go for it?
Christopher Lollini:Good question. Typically for us it all depends on obviously the client software and, how quick their tech is, putting in the information, completing the job or whatever, right? Sometimes guys wait till the end of the day and they'll just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right? To just batch activities and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That or if we're tying it to an invoice, it'll come out. So it, it all depends obviously when that goes out. I like to, even if let's say that we're doing a job completion, we will typically still put a like a couple hour buffer just so it doesn't seem super weird, right? Like when you walk out the door, like the guy walks out the door and your phone texts that's just Ooh, like that's too much and you also might be emotionally charged from whatever that person just shared with you, right? And you just need to come down from that. Hey, this repair is going to cost you 3, 500. I don't have 3, 500, my kids need to sleep or whatever the situation is. So usually just putting some buffer in there. But I like to see it somewhere between four and six hours, like after the technicians in there and then obviously we try to make sure that we're not doing it past 8 PM at night and stuff like that. The nice thing with email is like, email never really like it, it doesn't disrupt somebody's day kind of thing. We till still typically see better conversion with the email piece just because people see it as a to do item and they'll just keep it in their inbox and whereas a text message, we only send one text message cause it can get pretty like feeling of harassing and we just like to stay away from that. So we usually just send one text message. Those are the people who are just like, those are usually the millennials and the Gen Zers, or who are just like, Oh and they'll be careful. Evan's one of those soft flowers, huh? Okay.
Thaddeus Tondu:You might trigger him anyway.
Evan Hoffman:Continue on now.
Christopher Lollini:But then typically our followup is we will do two followups or two reminders and those will be two days apart. Now our software is smart and so if somebody's already clicked on the link, tried to provide review, feedback, whatever, we won't send those followups. So it's just to make sure that they get it done. Now, that being said we accidentally ran this test for a client just because the client, I get these clients, what are we doing, sending more than one email? I was like, cool, John, you got it, man we'll just take out any reminders, right? And he's yeah, we should only be sending one reminder four months later, I get the email. Hey, this, your system's not working anymore. I'm not getting any reviews, or at least I'm getting a fraction of what I used to. Yeah, it literally cut his reviews in half and we said, so John, referencing your email. Do you want us to turn back on the reminders? He goes. Yeah. I don't know who did that It's like john. Did you read the email buddy? That's from you. So anyways, man that's our thing is like the follow ups are important, right? I know you don't want to bug your customers, but people are just busy and they want to do it they genuinely want to do it. It's just that like they're Juggling so many darn things and, as a parent myself now, like I wasn't when I started my company, right? Like I totally get it. There's things that like I should have done 30 seconds that it first came up, but I do it three weeks later just because priorities are priorities, right?
Thaddeus Tondu:Then they end up giving you teeth marks in your forehead.
Evan Hoffman:I love that part of the conversation because one of the things that I talk about, at least in our sales calls, when we're having a marketing call with a client or a prospective client is that, we're seeking to be a partner with you and work with you for the long term. Sometimes that means having uncomfortable conversations and disagreeing with what it is that you're suggesting with us are you okay with that? Because in situations like that, yeah, sure, we can turn off the reminders. No problem. Just so you know, the impact to your reviews will be dramatic. Is that something you still want to move forward with doing, right? And now you have that real conversation with the business owner. So you let them know this might be detrimental to the end result that you're trying to achieve in your business. It's a hard conversation to have.
Christopher Lollini:Yeah. All right, we got to go down this rabbit hole a little bit, right? So I love that you mentioned that because this is one of the things I think that's really important for people to understand right in any HVAC business. There is an evolution of your marketing, right? And it starts with my niece is going to make my website in Squarespace don't even know it's Squarespace, but your niece is going to make the website because she does it in college or she's really good at it in high school, right? Then you graduate and you show up at a B and I meeting early tip meeting or whatever and then you have the dude at B and I make your website and the guy is old and crusty and he was around before the internet, like he was messing around with actual semi conductor.
Evan Hoffman:Hey, you got that referral and thank you for closed business.
Christopher Lollini:You did and then, some young greasy bespeckled kid comes in and he does SEO and so you hire that guy. Cause you, everybody's talking about the SEO and you got to get the SEO and so you hire the guy to get the SEO and he gets the SEO and your business is growing. So you think that these things are really maybe working. But then maybe there's some day where you take a cold shower or, one of your customers slaps you or something and you wake up and you go, I got to make this an actual business. Like I got to step up my game and maybe you go to a joke, a Sera, a seminar, or maybe you're an AHR expo and you go, I need one of these actual full service agencies and I think what people need to understand and why there is validity and having a full service agency or an agency that actually, does or specializes in something. The importance there is that, and this is why, partnering with you guys makes so much sense for people, is because you are looking into multiple HVAC businesses, right? Anybody that owns an HVAC business, unless you're like the 0. 00%, you only have the one HVAC business and that's the only HVAC business, and so how are you going to get somewhere? You've never taken your business before. If you haven't been there before, and so that's the power, like you're saying, is that having those tough conversations with your clients and being like, Hey, just so 40 extra 40 other clients or what we've learned from, doing 200 of these campaigns for HVAC owners, just like you. Is we know XYZ that's what you're paying the premium for because like I get it like, you guys aren't cheap, right? And for a reason, right? You were hiring good quality people to do good quality work and especially if they're in the US or Canada, right? It's not like you're outsourcing everything to the Philippines or, Eastern Europe or something like that, right? That takes somebody with forward thinking skills to put care into that. But also like you guys get all of that expertise to bring it in. Then you get to pour it into the brand new customer that you have and literally their brain, if they're listening to you, gets filled with those 40, 60, a hundred other cases. Not just case studies, but like actual working success stories. They get all that poured into their head. Now that is different than going to a joke of Sera cause that's obviously very focused on something different in their business. But from a marketing standpoint, that's the power of hiring an agency is they're looking across multiple businesses. Same thing with what I do with the review side is hundreds of clients, right? And we are very well versed in this. We've been doing it for over a decade just I don't know how long you guys have been doing it at least like five, six years, right? So there's a lot of intellectual property that's getting poured into whatever is being executed on your behalf. Like I invite you. I know you know your business very well and it's not that we're saying that you don't. It's just that we know an aspect of your business that there's no way I'm talking about. Sam's held that, as much as we do on that business. So please let us help you. That's what we're here for. So anyways, that, sorry, that was a little bit of a monologue or a rant, but I just love rants.
Thaddeus Tondu:Okay. But if it's all good information, it's good rants, right? It's testing at scale to come back to it as testing at scale. You have a, let's just use easy math, a hundred clients. Okay, great. You want to test something out on 30 clients at a time where you can batch out a test of 30 different campaigns. The data you're going to get back is way quicker than if you're a single, you're a singular business testing it on one thing. The data is going to take a lot longer to be able to come in. So now you, when you test that scale, you have the ability to say, Oh shit, we tested us on 30 for clients. Holy shit. We increased our conversion rate from 11 to 13%. People might not think that 2 percent conversion is a big thing, But if you're doing a hundred jobs, that's two reviews, right? And it just goes and it spirals. But now you can roll that out to the other 70 clients and see the incremental result, right? Whereas it's going to take a lot longer from a singular business to be able to do that. So I love that testing philosophy.
Evan Hoffman:That's what a lot of people do though, is that they let their ego go to get in their way and as uncle Joe says, your ego is not your amigo. Shoutout to Joe. But it's being right to your own demise versus being wrong, admitting you're wrong, letting the marketplace prove what's right to your own prosperity. As a marketing company, we love being wrong because we're finding solutions and we're finding opportunities that we might not have seen, but we're testing out different things that we think are going to be right and allow the market to dictate what is right and when you do test things out, like that said on 30 different companies at a time. It allows you to look for, what are individual market trends versus what is a global trend that's going to work across the country. It doesn't matter if you're in Florida or Oregon or New York or California, it's going to work consistently and it works everywhere and that's a universal trend that you can pick up on. So when it comes to review generation, what are some of the outliers? That you're seeing from clients that are getting the best results. What is it that they're doing differently? That's allowing them to exponentially succeed in review generation.
Christopher Lollini:I would say number one is there businesses in the Midwest where people are so kind and so warm and loving that they'll write a review for just about anybody? No. That's actually a real thing. Like we, we do see her, like our customers that are in the Midwest, like they just get a ton more reviews. If you're, Like in the Pacific Northwest, or you're in the Northeast, man, like people are harsh, and so it's just the reality of it and I, that's a great question, because what I was going to point out too is that yes, there are global things that are relevant to the HVAC industry, but there are also regional things that are important to the HVAC industry and the last thing I will say is it's important to work with somebody who specializes in your industry and the reason is because if they're constantly changing up and retooling for your business, because they just did it for a restaurant the other week and then they were doing it for this other guy who has a power washing business or whatever the case may be like they're not necessarily the expert and they can't actually see these trends because they're looking at radically different businesses and I'm sure if you're an HVAC owner, you can verify that your business is a lot different than a roofing company, right? And your business is a lot different than, a carpet cleaning business, right? So the importance of working with somebody who specializes in your niche is it. In today's day and age, there's no excuse for you to go to a generalist marketing agency. Everything you should be doing is focused on somebody who has specific industry knowledge in the HVAC space. I hope I don't get a whole bunch of hate from a bunch of agency owners who are generalists out there, but it just, it's no.
Thaddeus Tondu:You're right on that because or even just a broader home services and so looking at the company, who do they serve? Okay. HVAC plumbing electrical, solar lawn, all sorts of things that are similar avatars and similar pain points. For the most part, you go to somebody who's doing HVAC and they have a plumbing and then they have a medical and then they have a lawyer. All of those are different avatars, of speak the same language. So no, you're not wrong on that. By the way I support and endorse that statement.
Evan Hoffman:The one area that I will say. Having someone that's local can have a bigger impact is on the social media side of things. Yes. Because if they can show up and start recording some pictures and recording videos for you, because they're in your local market, the impact is exponential. I will say that is the one area that has the potential to have a bigger impact for a local company.
Christopher Lollini:Oh, 100 percent agree. I think that If you're a business and you're bigger, right? I think what you need to do, and it's like this evolution of marketing, right? You get to the full service agency, but then, you're the owner, maybe you're managing that agency. There's, you should have multiple vendors, right? Cause there's the digital piece, but then you should probably be doing some direct mail stuff, right? You should be doing social, but literally I think social is the first thing you need to be bringing in house as soon as possible and it shouldn't just be like a. A piece of that marketing coordinator's job cause like you're saying, like it needs to be done on the local level. Like you just can't have an agency in New York be doing, social media posts for an agency in, or an HVAC company in Dallas. It's just going to be incongruent and just disingenuous and it will actually have the opposite effect. I'd arguably like, just don't post until you can post. And then if it's getting stuff from the guys on the field, like that communication just needs to be there, but you do need people that are specialized because like you could lose a lot of money doing pay per click by yourself. There are so many like switches and options and stuff that would just bleed you dry and lead you just about nothing. So that's the other piece of the experience on the platform and stuff.
Thaddeus Tondu:Also goes back to that testing at scale because you have a PPC company now they can say, Oh, Hey, there's this one thing that we're going to see, and they're going to get the data back a lot quicker than you would.
Christopher Lollini:Yeah, but Evan started to answer actually answer that question in full transparency. It's like it's the cut. It's the company that has a culture that literally all we're doing is plugging a tool into a system into that just accelerates that. That culture because we're making it easy for the customer to take action on everything that they've experienced. So and that shows in the reviews and like how long, like what people write and how much they write and all that kind of stuff. So again, there's a lot for me, at least there's a lot of coaching to the business owner of hey, here's how you really should be answering your phone calls to make sure that people know that reviews are important. Hey, here's how your happy call should go and how it should nod to the fact that reviews are important to you. Not doing anything, overly direct or in a harassing manner, write us a review or, we'll shut off your, shut off your furnace or something like that not like that. But I think it's so important to figure out on that. And then what are you doing to go beyond that? Because I always say it's like most people, it's like as soon as the credit card is swiped, the relationship is severed, right? But you've got to continue it on beyond that credit card swipe and that's why asking for a review is cause what that also is doing to referrals. Is it saying Hey, maybe they don't write your review, but at least they know that you care enough that the system or the service went well, that if they did refer over their brother, Tommy or their sister, Sera, whatever, and they came over and you screwed things up, at least they know that you have a stop gap. To make sure that you are going to go and make that right. So that's again, like the other thing is I look at it as we have, we're a feedback mechanism in your business and you just happen to get reviews as a result of the good feedback that you're getting kind of thing.
Thaddeus Tondu:Sounds like Simon Sinek said that or something along the lines of starting with reverse engineering that. But you are right. Yes, culture is important. That's actually Anita. Over there but look, somebody that I think has a great operator and has a phenomenal culture is Amanda Triolo and we've had a couple episodes with her on and one we went deep on culture and what they do. Definitely find out. If you're lucky, I'll get another one tomorrow too. Oh, even better. Get her on the, get her on the podcast while you're down there. So I'm sure I actually hear it. I know her and Brianna are down there. But we'll link the episode in our show notes for later to that specific one with Amanda trail and wanted, or maybe the couple that we've done. So I do want to get into this one though, because I have a feeling that this might, he might have some insider information here. Where can you set it up where the reviews write themselves and the customer only has to click.
Christopher Lollini:Yeah, it's funny. You should say that we have the technology and we're starting to like slowly roll it out. I want to test it with some clients who and here's the thing. It's know Google is embracing AI. Google is a big proponent of it and all that kind of stuff. And the way that we're going to implement this and I'll share that in a second but giving kind of the context, right? Like we all know that AI is going in that direction. I'm sure you guys are using, AI to generate content and so Google can't. Like all of a sudden, like not rank AI generated content. Like they can't just ignore the part of the internet that was AI generated. Just it's coming too fast. It's coming to bulk. I think they just need to realize that Hey, it's just a piece of it and, that they've got to just adjust accordingly, right? So the question is, what does the future hold? And how would Google feel, right? If they realized that we were using AI to assist customers in writing reviews, right? Now there's the very optimistic part of me that's Google's always been very pro hey you can see it they have it in their not in the terms of service, but in their guidelines and stuff on a GVP, is they say go get as many reviews as possible. Like literally send this link to everybody. We give you this link. We want you to send it and they're smart because for them, it's all about the, if they can have more user data, the more customer data they have, the better a resource they are to potential searches and that's why 92% of searches are on Google. it's because there's the most details and I think I forget what the number is. It's like something like. 70, I think it's like 73 percent of all business reviews are located on Google, right? Like, why do you think that is? Because, Yelp has, a zero tolerance for anybody that wants to try that isn't the king or the queen or the Duke or the Duchess of, whatever the place is to actually post a review and so I think Yelp has totally lost. I think they're just on a slow dying trajectory, right? Until. Hopefully Microsoft just buys them and integrates them into their platform when they're on their deathbed, right? But like google is the king and it will continue to be the king and so the importance there is just thinking through the fact like I would imagine that google would want more people writing reviews you know from the studies that i've seen is it's percent of people don't know what to write about a business So when you even just propose to them like hey, would you write a review? They're like yes, i'd love to write a review what would I say? What do I talk about? And then also from that same kind of study that we did, like 32 percent of people just don't have time to write the review. So it's I want to write a review, but between the, baby pooping in their pants and the toddler climbing, to grab the hot, coffee off the stove
Thaddeus Tondu:pooping in their pants too, let's be real.
Christopher Lollini:That happens too. You're just, you're in a situation where It's just it's hard, right? So you got to overcome all of these like hurdles in somebody's house. So again, like the reason you're not getting reviews isn't because people don't want to. It's just because most of the time they don't have the time and they don't know what to write. So that's where for us, we've created AI that will actually integrate, like it will interface with the customer and just say, Hey, if I wrote a review for you, it. Would that be something that you'd post? And allow and we could write that review using chat GPT and it's just one of those things that it's like, Hey, here it is copy and paste it. Like the thing, like the biggest worry I have, right and I can't see the future. But it's is there some way that AI has a fingerprint that Google will find? Like I would imagine that it would, or it has and so my fear is it's always I don't ever want to make a recommendation for my clients, businesses that could potentially harm them in the future and so the concern there would be AI generates all these reviews. We see a doubling or even a tripling of the, response rate that they get simply because it's so easy for somebody to just hit copy into pace and then they take those reviews down at some future point. So that's, I guess that's always the, that's always the worry. So I think I'm just looking for a couple of those innovators within our clients, or, if somebody is listening and they want to give that a whirl like we can do it. And I think we're still going to get organic reviews cause there's still going to be the people who go, I don't need AI, or I don't trust AI, or I don't want AI to know like what I feel like. But my feeling there is that would just give you more, You'd actually get more data on there. So my feeling is that Google would be very accepting of it and would like it. As long as you're not doing something sketchy, like creating a bunch of accounts and letting AI generate a bunch of reviews. That's the other thing too, is it's these are all coming from unique profiles that are your customers that are aged, that are actual people connected to email addresses and inbox and all that kind of stuff. So my feeling is it's a review. Why would it matter if. they went to chat GPT themselves, typed it in chat GPT and said, I got to write a review for an HVAC company. It was a great experience. They came in, they repaired my furnace, write it for me. Chat GPT goes, I had such a great experience with insert company name da, right? Like how is there a difference? How could Google tell? So anyways, all that to be said.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah, it was like, they're like, you look at their March core update, and you look at what they and the very brief highlight of it is we are accepting of AI. We are not accepting of AI to. game the system to create more, right? And that's when you read, that's just the superficial part of what they see, obviously, in the back end, if you want to read more, you can, but with their core update, they say that and saying, okay we are against people using AI to spam 1000 pages. Right now you're trying to manipulate search rankings. We're not against AI to help you create useful content and I think that's where that bridge becomes. Is it useful? Is it helpful? And is it not trying to game the system? And I think you're probably okay.
Christopher Lollini:And that's why we're slowly moving in that direction, right?
Thaddeus Tondu:Like I don't want anybody to couple innovators to test it. Yep.
Evan Hoffman:Is it possible to do it where it's leading them into the review where maybe they have to fill in a couple words here or there, so then it is still personalized on their level and they feel like they are doing it, but you're guiding them and holding their hand cause I know this is something that I've even put together like a script for technicians to be able to ask for a review for themselves and a lot of that involves. Hey, make sure you mentioned the service that we did today. We repaired your AC unit. We did a maintenance, we did a cleaning, we replaced it dah, talk about the service that you got. Talk about the service that you got on the phone, all the way through to the sale. Did you feel like you were taken care of? And so given thought joggers, that way is no different than handholding through an AI with a suggestion for a review, in my opinion but.
Christopher Lollini:Yeah, I think, and I love it and that's, I would love to go where it's like a full conversation and we're just going to tease out things. But I think that's it's a double edged sword there cause hell yeah, let's get some input. But then you're waiting on input and so it's almost like you got to go for whatever's like quick there's just this fine balance of what's quick and can get it done and be effective versus Hey, what's dragging this on and maybe going to cause drop off kind of thing. Yeah we're flirting with all of that kind of stuff. I think the other corollary to that is what's really cool is and this thing is being adopted, like crazy customer clients love this. It's we'll actually have the AI generate the response for the owner and we'll actually have the AI text the owner and just say, Hey, you just got this review Here's a response. Do you wanna use it? And all they have to do is type yes and then the AI will go post it on Google for them on their behalf, which I think is pretty cool.'cause the other thing there is like now the owner gets to see the reviews that are positive, gets the respond to them, but doesn't have to do any work, and gets that just checked off and feel like they're in the flow of it. So we've been having rave responses from. From clients that are using that piece of it and so now it's just about rolling out the AI and the customer side to see how that kind of works for them.
Thaddeus Tondu:There's a lot of fascinating stuff and I think we could probably keep going longer and longer. But Hey, look, if you're listening to this, you're like, okay, shut up and take my money. Chris hit him up reputationigniter.com. No, but I'm serious, but I'm serious and there's a lot of things out there that I can, that a person can do or have to or whatever. If you're serious about getting Google reviews and you want somebody that's an expert as a decade worth of experience and just drop value for the last hour then check it out, right? It's a, and take a look and so reputation igniter. com is where you can reach out and find them. If you want to reach out to Chris directly, it's Chris at reputation igniter. com and you know what, text them at three in the morning, four, two, five, six, nine, seven, nine, three, seven, three after you've had a cup of whiskeys, of course. Yeah again, thank you for taking the time to be on the show. But before we do wrap up, I wanted to drop those links, obviously, so that people can get in touch with you, but we do have one final question here for you, Chris.
Christopher Lollini:Ooh okay. Can I take that? And there's one last piece. I think that was something I wanted to talk about that I haven't talked about and I'll make it quick. But do you want to ask the question first? You want me to drop the bomb first.
Thaddeus Tondu:Drop the bomb first and then we'll do that.
Christopher Lollini:Okay. Here's the other thing. Our labor market is extremely tight, right? You are trying to find good employees. Just realize. They are reading your reviews. So your reviews are important, not just from your customer standpoint, but they are also from your employees, right? They're going to read it. They're going to figure out, Hey, is this somebody, is this an owner that I could bend over the barrel? I could take advantage of, you can attract those people, or is this a top rate? Organization that is heading to the moon and I want a piece of this action and you're going to attract a players. I just, if you're not getting it for your customers and your referrals, at least get it so that you can hire good quality talent people and retain and keep them. So that's the last piece we didn't touch on that and I just, I think because that is like the biggest thorn in all of my clients sides in this, and I think you guys would agree too. It's if you're not getting the talent knocking on your door, it's probably because you. Appear as though you're an organization worth coming to work for and that goes back to that culture and ties in perfectly because when you have a good culture, you get the good reviews, but the other part is they're still going to read the negative reviews and they're going to see how you as an owner, you as a company respond back to that review, right? That's the other, that's the other part and so making sure that you respond, we didn't say it. But just respond back to every fucking read you guys positive negative. It don't matter respond back to that shit.
Evan Hoffman:And it's not for seo It has zero impact on SEO. It has 100 impact on customers and their experience with you so
Christopher Lollini:80% of customers will do business with a business owner that responds to all of their reviews so there's your stats and your needs.
Thaddeus Tondu:Well, and that goes back to the negative things. I talked about at Cancun Okay, you're reading other products and i'll read like before I buy some products you no, I'm going to read the negative reviews. In fact, with those negative reviews, there were some that constantly mentioned the beach on one of these places is washed and gone. Okay. I have kids that want to enjoy a beach while I'm not going to go to resort to the beach is garbage, right? And so understanding how that is in, knowing that their native reviews are a part of a consumer research pattern to know what's wrong with the product, but also what's good with the product, right? And taking with that the thing, grain of salt. All right. Last question. What is one question that you wished people would ask you more, but don't?
Christopher Lollini:Oh, man, I always ask people that what's the question that you wish I had asked you that I had not.
Thaddeus Tondu:Just us What is 1 question you wished someone would ask you, but they don't.
Christopher Lollini:I take it in terms of my business in this industry. I think Just like flat out, ask me like, what's the most important, like what's the one thing that I could do in my business that therefore everything else would be easier and that's why I stake my flat here. Yeah, absolutely, man.
Thaddeus Tondu:Yeah. Love that.
Christopher Lollini:Love the book, man. it's your reviews, man. If you literally, if you did nothing else and you just got refused, I think you could still have a really thriving, successful, strong business. I can't tell you how many businesses grow in spite of it and they struggle and they spend way more money than they need to on advertising and all of that kind of stuff, because they won't invest on it and so I wish people would just be like, okay, Chris, just cut the crap, man. What's the one thing like you've got, 10 plus years of experience. In the marketing realm for HVAC what's the one thing that I need to do to just grow my business? I'd be like, if all you did was obsess about your reviews, you'd be golden man, because everything else would precede you and your sales guys would have an easier job selling jobs because people would show up and call you pre sold. Your dispatcher would have an easier job getting stuff on the book. They wouldn't get price shoppers. They wouldn't get people being lucky, lose and wasting their time, tying up the phone lines for you. They'd just be calling and saying, Hey, how soon can you get here? When you guys make a recommendation or a, a repair recommendation, they're not going to go for good. They're going to go for better or best ask yourself, what's the profit margin on better or best. If somebody else is they're just going to give me more grace, if somebody is late to a call or whatever for actual legitimate reasons, like Cool. Not a big deal. I just, they're not going to come up like, there's not skepticism at the door when the tech comes in and tries to sit at the kitchen table and have a legitimate conversation. They're not like, yeah, just go check it. It's over there. Tell me how much this thing's going to cost. It's going to be more like, Oh shoot. These guys legitimately care. I read all the reviews. Clearly they care. This is just a North Shore, Nashville, piece of the customer experience. And yeah, man, I just it makes everything in your business collecting bills, right? Like people are just going to feel like I should probably pay my bill. Like I just. Man. So that's it, that's why my flag is planted here. That's why I just I won't leave this sort of corner of the universe. It's why I refer other business refer business to people like yourselves because I wanna stay in my swim lane and I just wanna kill it over here for my clients and just be a service they, they forget about, but they never want to get rid.
Thaddeus Tondu:I like all of what you just said, what he said, what he said. It's like a mic drop to end at the very end so.
Christopher Lollini:Thanks man.
Thaddeus Tondu:Appreciate it. No worries. thank you for taking the time to sit and chat with us and with Evan down in Memphis, Tennessee and his nice lounger.
Christopher Lollini:Thanks for being on my podcast guys. I appreciate you guys. Appreciate that.
Thaddeus Tondu:You scratch our back, we scratch yours. That's how the universe works, right?
Christopher Lollini:Amen.
Thaddeus Tondu:And of course, until next time. Cheers.
Christopher Lollini:Cheers.
Thaddeus Tondu:Well, That's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed before you go two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed the other thing. If you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all one person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business until next time. Cheers.