John Quint - Ep. 71- 5 Star Reviews: It’s All About Communication

This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle.

Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan.

All right, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan. With G4 Marketing Group, and today we are going to talk about reviews, reviews, reviews, reviews. And I've got a great guest today, John Quint from Quint Pro Siding and Windows. John, thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Um, before I get into it with John, I just want to remind everybody, if you haven't done so already, Go to thewealthycontractor.com and, uh, go ahead and put in your information, your, your name and email address, and we're going to provide you with a bunch of really great stuff to help you grow your business, make more leads, make more sales, and make more money. And the best part of it is that most everything doesn't cost you any money. Anyway, so that's thewealthycontractor.com. John, tell everybody a little bit about your— give us your story, the 1 or 2 minute version of your story.

Okay, yeah, I've been in home improvement pretty much my whole life. I've worked for other companies in the past, really good companies, you know, that you know, had good products, did good installs, and really enjoyed it. And then I was recruited by a manufacturing company that did a real high-end metal roofing product. And I covered 4 states for them, did a lot of traveling. I worked with hundreds of home improvement companies that sold and installed our product. And, you know, over the years, I just kind of noticed that there was a real need for home improvement companies that had a focus on customer service. So I wanted to start a home improvement company that, you know, made customer service the focus. Of course, we wanted good products, good quality installations, but we wanted that customer experience to be the focus. And that's what we try to accomplish with what we do. So yeah, you know, I got into home improvement to to provide good service.

I love it, love it, and you do that. So let's talk about— well, look, it's evident from what other people say about you, which is kind of really the topic of this conversation. You do reviews as good as anybody I've ever seen. I even used you as an example in a webinar that I did recently on here's how to get more reviews, you know, because everybody wants reviews. I don't know if a lot of people understand all of the benefits of having reviews online, but let's talk a little bit about why you are so focused, because let's— well, let's talk about that. Why are you so focused on reviews? And then I'll finish my thought after you tell me that.

You know, reviews is a part of any purchase today. Shopping online, looking for any product, everybody looks for the reviews. They want to see what other people have to say about it to see if it's something that they're interested in purchasing. So we looked at it as an essential aspect, you know, having a good business. We wanted to make sure that, you know, the work that we put into making a happy customer could be duplicated, you know?

Yeah. And how does it— so one of the interesting things about, about you and your company is you look like a really big company, because if I'm not mistaken, you probably have more 5-star reviews than most or all of your competition. Is that true?

To be honest, I'm not sure. I know how many we have, and, you know, that, that's what we focus on is trying to be the best we can be.

Yeah.

You know, and let our competitors worry about how good they can be.

Yeah. So, well, I'll tell you because I, again, I used you as an example in the webinar, and if you go and you're in Plano, Texas, and anybody can do this. If you go and type in best siding company Plano, Texas, I believe that was the search that I used, you come up in the local pack, you know, and you don't pay for that. And you, you have more reviews than the other two. So it's a 3-pack, right? So there's 3 companies that they're going to show. So if you go, if you type in best siding company Plano, Texas, I got to pull up the exact, but it's something like that because that's what a lot of people are doing now is they're putting in that best fill-in-the-blank company with city name, right? So if I do best siding company, you come up in that 3-pack and you have more reviews and better star rating than your, than the 2 competitors that are in that box with you, which means that I think, you know, you're getting a lot more organic leads online, correct?

We, we almost exclusively deal with online leads. Yeah, that local home and garden shows.

Yeah. And so reviews are a big, are a big driver because if you didn't have as many— do you know how many you have right now on Google?

43. Wow. In total online over different platforms, uh, 93 5-star reviews.

That's awesome.

We only have 5-star reviews.

You see, and that's an interesting thing too. So we're going to talk about that. Hold on. Best signing company, Plano, Texas. Okay, so you got paid, paid, paid, paid. Then you have the— oh, there's somebody, there's somebody on your heels. So there's one company that has 43, but they have a 4.7 rating. And then there you are in the second spot, 43 5-star reviews. And then the next, the next company has 7 reviews. So what's happening here is by, by you focusing so much on reviews, you're showing up in these, in these searches that people are doing, and you're not paying for this spot. This is a, this is a Google-delivered result. And yeah, and this should be driving a nice chunk of of leads to you. And by the way, you also show up just as I'm scrolling down the page. So you got, you got, so after the, the 3-pack there, you've got, you've got HomeAdvisor, HomeAdvisor, Yelp, Angie's List, then you got one local competitor, then you've got Modernize, then you've got Thumbtack, And then there you are right there on the first page. So that's really interesting, um, how, how this whole thing, um, how this whole thing works now. So I think everybody would agree, and, and by the way, you know, the number one, you know, if you, if you want to make your pay-per-click more efficient, more effective, and more profitable, the more reviews you have, the better. Do you do any pay-per-click?

I do not.

You do not? Okay, so I want everybody to get this, how important reviews are. So if John was doing pay-per-click, the reviews would help his spend be lower than if he wasn't. Hey, I don't know, I don't know the fancy terms for it and all the tech behind it and all the algorithms and all of that. But all of my clients that are focused on getting reviews that also do pay-per-click, they, they see that the more positive reviews they have, the more efficient and effective and profitable their their pay-per-click is. Alright, so I'm saying I'm talking a lot, forgive me, because I really want to build up the importance of this. And so let's talk a little bit about— before we even talk about reviews, let's talk about what are you doing to earn the review, because you got to earn it first, right? You can't just go go and expect somebody to give you a 5-star review.

Yeah, there's, there's no substitute for great customer service.

So tell me a little bit about it, because you said that you wanted to build a company that was all about customer service and customer experience. Now you don't have to give away your secrets, but tell me a little bit about what are some of the things that you do different than other people do.

Well, it starts, you know, in the culture of what we do, you know, as far as making it an important aspect of everything we do from production, sales, the crews. Everybody knows that what we're trying to achieve is great customer service that, and at the end, get a great review for that. So, you know, it starts in the sales process. We're talking to the customers and explaining what differentiates us from all the competition out there, and it's in the service. A lot of competitors out there have similar products. They've got great crews. We're not the only company that can go out there and provide a good product and a good installation. But those are things that I don't necessarily control. You know, yes, I can find different crews and things like that, but you know, the crew has to do a good job. I can't do the work for them. The thing that I can control is the customer experience and how everything is perceived by the customer. So we do, you know, the first thing we do is anytime we get a contract, we send a thank you card. Not at the end of the job, but when they pay the money. These are big purchases that these customers are doing. I'm sure when we walk out of the house with a contract, there might be some customers that are a little uneasy, and maybe, hey, are we doing the right thing? We want to get a thank you to them as quick as we can, just to set off, set the whole process off on the right foot. We actually send brownies with the thank you card. So within a couple days, if not the next day, they're going to receive a thank you card with brownies just thanking them for their business. And then it's all about communication. My production manager, Jared Ivey, he's a big part of getting the great reviews that we get because his job is to communicate remesures, installs, anytime there's a schedule change with anything, he's in constant contact with the customer to make sure that they know what's going on. I think what we forget as home improvement professionals is that a lot of homeowners don't know what to expect during this process. We've been doing it our whole lives, so we kind of understand what's gonna happen, but they don't know unless we tell them. So we, we take a consultative approach and kind of hold their hand throughout the whole process so that if something happens, they know it was gonna happen, you know, so they're not wondering, you know, is this what should be going on, you know, what, you know, just wondering what, what to expect next. And I think when you set the expectation and you, you guide them through the process, it alleviates a lot of that stress, which can, you know, set a customer off to not have a good experience.

Wow, that's such a great point. I mean, so many companies do such a poor job. They do a great job of making the lead, they do a great job of getting in the house, great job of converting that lead, and then It's like stuff goes into a black hole, right? And that's a spot where you could really wipe the floor with your competition, is by really having a focus on communication after the job is sold and throughout that process.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So what is that? Do you mind sharing what some of what that communication kind of looks like? I mean, how are you letting them know what's going to happen before it happens?

Once the job's sold, the next day they're going to get a welcome call from production and their project manager is going to introduce themselves and let them know they're going to be handling, you know, scheduling we find out the best way to contact that customer. With all the technology today, we've got emails, phone calls, text messaging. You know, we want to know what, what they prefer so that we know how to get in touch with them. And we note that on their account. So if they want to be text messaged, we only text message them. So that's a good way to make sure you're in contact with them. And then, like I said, within a couple days they're going to get that thank you card. And we get out there and remeasure the job as quick as we can to get everything ordered and adhere to the lead times that we give them. And we do tell them what the lead time is going to be. And if it's a 3 or 4 week lead time, we contact that customer at least once every week. Just to let them know, hey, we're still on track for that lead time. Or, hey, you know, rain has set us back, you know, we're going to be pushing this lead time out a little bit further. So I think if you give them a 2-week notice that their lead time is going to change, most customers are understanding of that. So I think that helps a lot, is just that communication.

So what's interesting, and you'll get this a lot of, you a lot of people might not, but I get a lot of sideways looks and a lot of like, because one of the things I do customer, you know, I do customer experience workshops where we look at, you know, the before, the during, and the after, and we completely, you know, dissect the whole thing and look at, okay, how do we make, how do we improve the experience not just, you know, getting in the house to make a sale, but how do we improve the experience all the way through? And one of the things that I know just from my years of doing customer surveys is that that in-between time between the time the job is sold and the time that the job is installed is a period of time where a lot of people could just go dark. A lot of companies just kind of go dark, and I say to them, You need to be talking to them at least once a week. Just reach out to them. And people look at me like I'm a crazy person. And there you go. You know, there's— here's the proof. He said it, I didn't. That's what he does. And he does it because he wants them to know what's going on. He wants to be in communication. He doesn't want to have surprises and he doesn't want them thinking, you know, the crazy thoughts that they could start thinking. Like if you don't reach out to them every week, what are some of the things they're going to start thinking, John?

Well, they think the worst. You know, if they, if you don't tell them what's going on, like I said, most of these homeowners don't know what to expect. So left alone, they're thinking, am I ever going to hear from them again? Oh my gosh, I've paid them money already. You know, You know, everybody hears all the horror stories of contractors that take money and skip town. You know, they start worrying about that. As long as you just, hey, you know, and it doesn't have to be a long conversation with them or even a conversation at all. A lot of times it's just a text message. Hey, just wanted to check in with you, let you know we're still on track. You know, we may let them know where their material is in the process or where they are in line for their installation. Just something to let them know that they're getting closer to their install because people want things right away. And even on small purchases, let alone a large purchase like a home improvement project, they spend a lot of money and then you're like, hey, we'll talk to you in 4 weeks. And a lot of people think, they don't get that gratification from making the purchase. So you gotta do something to just kinda keep them in the loop to let them know that their money is well spent.

And then one of the other things too is that, and this is the thing that I always bring up, is that when we're at the kitchen table and we're telling our company story and we're bringing reviews in and we're doing everything that we can to be their best friend or their uncle or their or their— whoever we need to be in order to get them to sign the contract. We make all kinds of promises. Oh, we're going to be doing this and we're going to be doing that and blah, blah, blah. And then if you don't deliver on that or there's a hiccup along the way, when you show up to actually do the work, you're behind the 8-ball, right? You're, you know, you're fighting from behind now. Instead of being on offense, now you're on defense. And this is part of the reason I think people set themselves up for really bad reviews.

Yeah, I mean, one thing that you can do to set things off on the right foot is show up to the appointment on time, right? I'm floored by how many customers tell us, you know, you're the only guy that showed up on time. Or, you know, you're the only guy that called us back. You know, it makes it easy when that's the standard you have to live up to. Yeah, so just showing up, doing what you say you're gonna do, you know, a lot of times, you know, that's all that needs to be done to earn the 5-star review. But we take it beyond that. We don't want— you know, one thing I tell everybody is You know, a satisfied customer is the bare minimum, right? That's the bare minimum we're shooting for. You know, we want a wowed customer. We want somebody that's going to tell a friend or family about us so that we get that referral. Yeah. You know, nobody tells— you know, nobody buys a car somewhere and calls their friend or relative and goes, hey, I bought a car the other day and Everything went exactly the way I thought it was going to go. You know, they, they usually only make those phone calls when they have a bad experience, because anytime somebody has a bad experience, they want to tell everybody about it. So what we have to do is swing the pendulum all the way to the other end to where they're so floored by the great experience that they had that they felt inclined to pick up the phone and call a friend or family about it. Or, you know, they want somebody else to have the same experience. One thing I've noticed since we've started doing all the reviews is it's kind of snowballed. A lot of the potential customers that we have want to be a part of it. You know, so they, you know, we talk to them after the job's done and we're like, you know, how was your experience? And was it, was it great? And they're like, it's great. And, you know, we explained to them, you know, what was one of the reasons that you contacted us? And they were like, it was the reviews, you know, you had great reviews. And I'm like, well, what we would like to do, you know, this is what we tell the guys to say, the project managers and things like that. What we would like to do is if you could pass that forward, you know, there's somebody out there that would like to hear your story or your review. To make that decision in the future, it would help us out if you could do that. And people want to be a part of that.

I love that. And this is, you know, what I call that, what you just said, or the early part of it, what I call it when I'm telling our clients, you know, what are the ways to get referrals, what are the ways to get reviews, or if I'm teaching it in a workshop or at a at an event, if anybody's seen me speak before, you've heard and talk about referrals, you've heard me say, give your customer a story to tell. And you know, you and I are, you know, in line with this whole satisfied customer thing. You don't want a satisfied customer. You want, what'd you call it? A wowed customer, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's all of that's absolutely, absolutely true regardless of, you know, regardless of the business that you're in. You don't want a satisfied customer. You want— because a satisfied customer, it's like it takes work for people to write a review, right?

Yeah. It's, uh, I mean, there's ways to make it easier with, uh, you know, the authentic feedback that, um, allows them a little bit more effortless. But again, they have to have that want to leave you the review, right?

And look, we could stop the recording right here because John has just given you the keys to how do you make reviews. You make reviews by going above and beyond, by not just having a satisfied customer, by giving customers a story to tell, by, you know, but let's take this now one step further and let's talk about the practical application of how you are actually doing this. How are you actually getting all of these 5-star reviews? How are you doing it?

Well, so one thing is our mission statement is to provide a superior home improvement experience that leaves a lasting impression, achieved by always doing the right thing.

Wow.

Every aspect of what we do has to tie back to that. And if something, any decision we make can be justified with that mission statement, we know we're making a good choice. And so what we do is, you know, we We have that mission on every job. And then when we get to the end, all you have to do is ask. You know, if you've done everything that you need to do up to that point, the natural progression is to just ask for the review and get it. And with the, the Authentic Feedback app, it makes it very painless for the customer. When we, we do a final inspection on every job that we do. So we, when we do the walk around in the beginning, we talk to the customer about everything that we're going to do for their home improvement project. And what we do is when we complete the job, we do the same walkthrough with the customer to make sure that we did everything that we said we were going to do and that the customer is satisfied with it. And, you know, thankfully a lot of, you know, all of our customers are really happy and We just say, hey, you know, we would like to ask you to leave us a review. You know, when we talked earlier during the sales process, you said a big portion of why you called us was the reviews that you saw that we had. We would like for you to be a part of that if you could leave us a review. And our customers are more than happy to do that. And we use the Authentic Feedback app right there. We ping their phone. Right there while we're standing with them, and we get a commitment from them right then. You know, every time you buy anything online now, everybody's always wanting a review for anything you buy, but you don't feel obligated to necessarily because, hey, you bought something. That doesn't necessarily merit a review. You know, sometimes you haven't even used the item that they want a review on. But when we, you know, go through and spend the time with the homeowner to make sure that they're happy, and then we get a commitment from them that they would leave us a review, good or bad, you know, that's what we say, good or bad, if you'd leave us a review, we would appreciate it. You know, we tell them, hey, if there was any aspect of this that you weren't happy with, we would love to hear about it because we can't fix things that we don't know about. So we would love to get, you know, some feedback from you in the form of a review.

I love what you just said. We can't fix things that we don't know about. What a great line that is. That's a writer downer, folks. We can't fix anything we don't know about. I, I'm going to do a shameless plug here because, you know, some people might not be familiar with what you're, you're, you're mentioning authentic feedback. That happens to be our platform, our G4 Marketing platform that our clients use. And John is a client and he uses that, that platform. And so when you are— so you're in the house, you're having a conversation with them, you're asking them about the experience. I would imagine, though, that if somebody is not going to leave you a 5-star review, you're going to fix it before you say, hey, just go online and leave a review. Right, right.

I mean, well, that's what we try and accomplish with the final walkthrough. Yeah, we actually try and find things that maybe the homeowner didn't know about, you know. I mean, I've got great install crews, they know what, what our standards are. So we don't find a lot of things. But, you know, there could be something that maybe we discussed the homeowner and I did or the sales guy did through the sales process or the first inspection, the remeasure that was discussed that wasn't done, but it's not necessarily the installer's fault. They did it the way that it should be done, but we were going to do it a different way. You know, it didn't get done that way. We want to find that before the customer does. Or at least with the customer and let them know, hey, we're gonna get this addressed. That's the point of the final walkthrough, is to make sure that we did everything we said we were gonna do.

Yeah, and so right then and there when you're doing the final walkthrough, job is done, it's completed, you're face-to-face with people, so you are pulling out the, you're pulling out your phone basically, right? And you're saying to them, okay, you know, I'm, I'm going to ask you for a review. You put in their name, you put in their, their phone number, their cell phone number, right? You hit submit, they get a text, and you just kind of walk them through it right then and there.

No, we, we let them do it. We, you know, we're usually just say, hey, there's the link. If you would click that and get it taken care of, that would be great.

Yeah.

But the homeowner knew this was going to happen before that day. Before.

Yeah.

Because we use it in the sales process. Like, hey, you know, part of our, you know, focus is customer service. You can tell by our reviews. We're going to ask you for a review when your project's done. You know, we, we hope that you'll, you know, leave us a review. Um, so once we get to the end, they, they knew it was coming.

Yeah. So which is, which is important. I, I think that's a really good distinction that you brought up. They know ahead of time. Um, that you're gonna ask for the sale.

It's just like asking for the sale. Sometimes you have to ask more than once. Review is no different than getting any other commitment during the sales process. Sometimes you have to ask more than once. Yeah, so that, that customer, you know, knows. I mean, you'll get the occasional customer that, you know, doesn't like to do things online or, you know, things like that. There's nothing, there's nothing you can do about that. But if you're asking every customer and focusing on it with every customer, you're gonna get a good return.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome, man. Well, what great advice, what great insight you've given us. You know, customer experience is key to not only reviews but also referrals and people coming back and buying more stuff from you. So I appreciate your, your advice on that and you're being open and sharing with us. So, thank you.

You're welcome. I'm happy to do so.

Yeah. So, if anybody's interested in, you know, learning more about the system, you know, our system for getting reviews, just go to our website, G4 Marketing, and it's G-F-O-U-R You have to spell out the 4, otherwise you're going to go to the wrong company. So, it's G-F-O-U-R-Marketing.com, and we'll be happy to talk to you about that platform. It's really designed for home improvement businesses. We don't have dentists as clients, we don't have restaurants, we don't have hotels, we just, we only deal with home improvement companies. So with that, again, John, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate you. And for everybody that's listening, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group, and this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Until next time. Thank you. All right. So that's it for today's episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Let me ask you, Did it help you look at your business in a new way? Did it spark an idea or ideas you hadn't thought of before? Do you have a list of action items that you can take and implement into your business or your life today? I really hope so. Now, before you go, make sure you subscribe to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast so you get access to the latest episodes as soon as they're available. We're always striving to provide you with with great content, so you don't want to miss what's coming up. And a favor, I'd really appreciate it if you'd go to iTunes and post a review of this podcast. Let us know how we're doing. And finally, we started The Wealthy Contractor as a resource to help you, the home improvement entrepreneur, regardless of where you are on the wealthy scale get where you want to go. We want to provide you with the motivation, the confidence, the resources, and the tools so you too can live the life of the wealthy contractor. Now, the wealthy contractor is a place where it's okay for you to want it all. In fact, it's not only okay, it's encouraged. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group.