1. 82% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, including 93% of people aged 35-54.

Statistic from Bright Local

Reviews matter, and your buyers are looking at yours. Make sure that you’re actively asking your buyers to leave a review. Whether it’s in an email, a text, or in person, you need to actively getting those reviews.

2. The purchase likelihood for a product with five reviews is 270% greater than a product with 0 reviews.

Statistic from Spiegel Research Center

How many reviews do you have? 1, 2, 10? If you’re at zero, think how much business you’re losing. How many people are looking you up, seeing no reviews, and heading over to your competitor because they 20+ glowing reviews?

3. Just 53% of people would consider using a business with fewer than 4 stars.

Statistic from Bright Local

This one is easy to fix. If you’ve got less than 4 stars, you just need to ask more. If you’ve been in business for any amount of time, you most likely have more happy customers than not. If you didn’t have happy customers, you wouldn’t still be around. The problem with reviews is that unhappy customers are likely to leave a review, and happy customers are not likely to leave one unless asked.

Which brings us to the next stat…

4. 76% of consumers that are asked to leave a review go on to write one.

Statistic from Bright Local

Let’s do this math. Say you sell 100 homes per year, and you ask every customer to leave a review. That’s 76 reviews per year. Sure, you’ll get some bad ones (more on that below), but the vast majority will be positive. Here’s a couple tips to help you get started on how/when to ask:

1. Figure out when your customers are most happy in the sales process. It could be closing, delivery, when they get the keys, etc. When they’re happy is the time to ask.

2. Make it easy to leave a review. Create a link that takes them directly to your review site (click here for instructions), and have your sales people text it to their customer when they’re the happiest. Save the text on their phones so it’s easy to send.

3. Don’t buy good reviews. It doesn’t look good, and Google definitely frowns on that. Just say something like this: “Hi Mr./Ms. Customer – we hope your home buying experience went well! We’re a local business, and new customers in our area LOVE to hear from our happy customers. Would you mind leaving us a review? Here’s a link to you Google review page. Thanks for the help.”

5. 45% of consumers say they’re more likely to visit a business that responds to their negative reviews.

Statistic from Review Trackers

You’re going to get bad reviews. That’s just part of being in business. What’s more important than the review, however, is how you respond to it. Resist the urge to get in an argument with the customer on a review. You won’t win, and it doesn’t look professional. Remember, the goal is to sell homes, not put an unreasonable customer in their place on a Google review.

So treat them with respect, and direct the exchange offline. Here’s a good response that we’ve used in the past: “Hi Ms. Customer, thanks for taking the time to leave a review. While reading all of our positive reviews makes us feels good, receiving constructive criticism like yours helps us be a better business. Please call our GM at 123-867-5309 to go over the situation in more detail. We look forward to hearing from you.”