RECESSION PROOF YOUR BUSINESS!

 PART 2

Welcome back to the second part of our recession-proofing your business series. In part one last week, we set up what a recession is, what it isn’t, what it means for businesses, what some of the opportunities are, and a few suggestions on some things to focus on like your health, your brand, your service, and the customer and client experience. In this episode we’ll talk some even more practical stuff like your website, using Google and Google reviews, using social media, and we’ll wrap it up with some leadership advice during tough times. So, let’s get into it!

Listen friends, we live in a digital age, there’s no getting around it. I don’t care how old or old school you are, if you don’t yet have a website that speaks to your most desired segment of clients and customers, you’re going to have fewer options than somebody who does, it’s that simple. I didn’t say that you absolutely must have a website to be an appraiser or an agent. I did say that you won’t have as many options or opportunities for business as somebody who does have a website. I don’t know the exact stats on internet usage, I just know that some vast majority of individuals use the internet on a daily basis to help them make decisions and, for a business, that means helping them decide if they want to choose you or somebody else. Now, for my appraiser friends, what is the purpose of having a website? The main purpose of having a website would be to speak to non-lending clients and potential customers, not necessarily lender clients. It is a rare occurrence for XYZ lender searching for an appraiser in a particular area to google appraisers in that area and then go hunting through their website to determine whether or not to reach out. Your name and number is likely on a list somewhere that they can use to reach out to you.

No, the main reason to have a website for appraisers is to speak to the market of people who may need an appraiser in the future for a divorce, settle an estate, a tax appeal appraisal, or just a simple market value not tied to a lending transaction. What does that mean for your website? It means that your website should speak directly to those specific situations to increase the likelihood that you’ll get the call or the email requesting more info. Most appraiser and Realtor websites speak all about the person doing the job. They might talk about the areas they cover and their fees, but most of what’s on those sites is level 8, 9, or 10 industry speak that might be impressive to you, but not necessarily to the person reading through the site. People landing on a website take about 8 seconds to determine whether or not this site will answer their questions and solve their problem or not. If it doesn’t do it in 8 seconds, they hit the back button back out to Google and click on the next website. By the way, they’re not just looking for information, they’re looking to have a feeling when they’re on your site. The feeling they’re looking for is, ‘does this person or company get me and my specific problem, does their aesthetic resonate with me, and would I feel comfortable doing business with this person or company?’

Take a look at your site, if you have one, and read through it standing in the shoes of the average person who doesn’t know what you know. Does it speak to specific issues that real people have and care about? Or does it just spew industry jargon that you think matters? Everything we’re talking about in last weeks and this episode is about increasing the odds that you’ll be the one chosen in a battle between multiple competitors and choices. Make it easier to do business with you and don’t make people click more than twice to find the info they’re looking for on your site. That’s the rule. If they have to click more than twice to find what they want, they’re gone.

The last thing I’ll say about websites is that they should be designed, at least for appraisers, to get an inquiry, not necessarily a sale. It’s always great when somebody clicks your ‘buy now’ or ‘order now’ button, but that’s likely to occur only after they’ve perused your site for some time, and likely several times over a period of time. In the information age that we live in, people are typically doing research on their future needs in advance, even if it’s only a week or two before they need the service. The easier it is to get answers from your site, the more likely they are to reach out to you with a few more questions. Once you’re in conversation with somebody who calls you from your website, it’s much easier to give them options to solve their problem and increase the likelihood they’ll do business with you. That’s assuming, of course, that you’re pleasant to speak with and actually have options to give people.

If you’re one of those people that hates talking with other humans, like many appraisers are, your odds go way down that you’ll win over somebody on the phone. My suggestion for every company is to use well thought out scripts and dialogues for making people feel comfortable and giving them options over the phone. Once people connect with an actual human being that can establish some rapport and can empathize with their concerns and fears, the odds go way up that the person on the other end of the line will want to do business with the person they’ve connected with. Your website should be designed to give enough info to then drive them to communicate with you in person. Once they’re communicating with you in person, you have a much greater shot at converting them to using you over somebody else or deciding if you even want the work.

Next on this list, and closely tied to your website is your Google Profile and Google reviews. Formerly called your Google My Business profile, your Google Profile is simply your company’s listing on Google with a pin in the Google map (called the map pack). When somebody is searching for a product or service in Google, they type something in the search bar and a page with results comes up. With any search for a product or service, the results page will inevitably show a sponsored choice or two at the top, these are companies that pay for that placement, and then you get the organic results under that with a map showing the top 3 or 5 companies in the results. This is the map pack. For us to go deep on how to rank higher in Google and on the map pack we’d need at least an hour, so the best we can do in this episode is to make you aware of it and encourage you to either hire an expert to help you optimize your listing, or do some research yourself and do everything possible to make sure your Google Profile is updated, that you show up on page one of the search results for your best keywords, that you’re in the map pack, and that you are actively getting 5 star reviews from clients and customers.

Why are Google reviews important? If I have to answer this question for you then you’ve never researched a product or service yourself on the internet. Everything is reviews in this day and age. It doesn’t matter if it’s an Amazon product, an Uber driver review, or a Google review, one of the great things about the information age is the amount of information we can glean from actual users of the product or service we’re thinking of purchasing. It’s one thing for a company to say we’re the best, it’s a whole other world to have actual users say that they love the person, the product, or the service. We will believe actual users 100% more than a company obviously biased about their own products or services. Reading Jim from Nantucket’s post about the local chiropractor is far more powerful than the chiropractor tooting her own horn. If you’re not actively asking for reviews from your clients and customers, start today! Build the request into your emails, build review links into your follow up sequences, have somebody in your office following up to see if they liked your service and then asking for a review, and ask your prior clients and customers if they’d be willing to write you a nice review.

Being that they’re Google reviews, Google places a lot of weight on them when it comes to where you land in the placement on a Google results page. A little secret tip for appraisers, by the way, ask for the review before you deliver the appraisal. I learned this little tidbit from my coaching students, the Perry’s (CMP Appraisal) in Virginia. Awesome appraiser family with well over 150 5-star reviews in Google. Right after Chris, the chief appraiser, has made a stellar impression at the home, Brittany is following up with everybody in the transaction asking for a review, and it works! People are much more motivated to leave a positive Google review after they’ve just had a pleasant experience and interaction with you and your company. You’re fresh on their mind, they’re still in the middle of the transaction, and they consciously or subconsciously want things to go well so they’re more likely to give you a great review before you’ve actually completed the transaction with them. At least in the appraisal business, after you’ve delivered the appraisal they are much less motivated to do more work because the work is done and they’re on to the next thing in their life. Not to mention, if they’re not absolutely thrilled with what is in that report, the odds go way down that you’re getting a 5-Star review.

Obviously, in the real estate sales or mortgage lending side of things, people want to wait until the deal is done to leave a review. Either way, the main point is that you have to be intentional about asking for them. If you don’t ask, the vast majority of people will not take the time to leave a review. People are more motivated to leave reviews when they’re upset than when they’re satisfied. On any given day, there are only about 30% of the population that we can call ‘review writers’ anyway. The other 70% are made up of people who will never leave a review under any circumstance, and people who will leave a review if they’re thrilled with your product or service, but only after a couple pleasant requests to do so and an easy path to get there. Make it really easy for them to do it and you can capture some percentage of the love online and show the world that you’re the one to do business with.

Onward and upward to the next suggestion for recession proofing your business: social media. Let’s have an honest conversation about social media so you know exactly where I’m coming from when it comes to this topic. If you’re like me, you have something of a love-hate relationship with social media. I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn primarily. I have the TikTok, Reddit, and Twitter apps on my phone, but only so that I can click on links from other platforms that might take me over to those services to watch a video or read a post. I am by no means a social media expert, so take everything I tell you here with a grain of salt. I’m speaking from my own personal experience as a 51-year-old with 18- and 21-year-old sons, multiple business owner, an observer of the world and human behavior, and, of course, my own paradigm of the world. Your experience and views of the world are likely different from mine, and you are welcome to have your own opinions.

However, when it comes to business, to recession proofing your business, and to the metrics associated with getting results that turn into market share and eventually dollars, some things work better than others. If you want results, you have to be focused on results and you have to have some goals so that you can chart whether or not you’re on track over time. Let me establish this point right away as it pertains to social media, the only reason to be involved in any of it is to build an audience. That’s it! Full stop! ‘Uh Uh, Blaine! Social media is there for me to post all my opinions about politics, to post my bible verses, to let the world know what I’m thinking at random moments throughout the day, to share with my friends what I ate for lunch, to let everyone know when my memaw passes away and that I miss her so much, to let the world know when I’m at the gym (even though I only go once every two months), and to occasionally say random stuff and end my posts with the words, ‘that’s all’.

No, my friends, that’s how the rest of the world uses social media, not you. You use it to build an audience of people who follow you because you add value in some way to their lives. Nobody knows your grandma, and nobody cares! Yes, it’s sad when people pass, but you posting that your grandma passing and that you’re sad is called ‘fishing’. People who do all those things I just mentioned are fishing for attention and sympathy because they’re needy people who need some dopamine hits from all the random people saying, ‘thoughts and prayers’. With social media, we long ago crossed into very weird territory where people can share their most intimate moments with a whole world of people who don’t care. I don’t know you’re gramgram and, to be honest, don’t really care. You posting it on social media does nothing to stir up sadness in me for somebody I have never known, and will never know. It only helps me know you a little more, but in a cringy, thirsty way that I kinda wished I didn’t. if you’re going to use social media, use it to build a following and an audience. Add some kind of value to people’s lives with good information that might help them make better decisions.

One of my highest recommendations, and this goes for appraisers, for agents, and for lenders as well, is to utilize the private group feature of Facebook to build an audience of people who want to be part of your group because you answer questions, you add value, you post consistently, and you make people feel good for being part of your tribe. Many of you listening know that I have several coaching groups on Facebook, I run several private groups for agents and lenders, and have built many other private groups for the sole purpose of attracting and building an audience of people who wanted the information I was offering. Yes, I know many of you are members of industry Facebook groups that you can get some good information on, but those groups do little for your business. You might learn a tip or two, like which AMCs are slow or no paying at the moment, so stay on top of your receivables, or how to write the ANSI measurement comments to be in compliance, but none of it is putting new dollars into your coffers. The main goal of using social media for your business is to build an audience of people you can add value to with the hope of increasing the trust factor. The more value you add, the more they like and trust you, and the more likely they refer their friends, family, colleagues, and other professionals your way.

It’s extremely easy to start a private group on Facebook and begin inviting people you think could learn something of value from you. Become a resource first, and then use social media as a way to show the world that you are the go-to resource for your industry. When you utilize the private group features you have a way to build a captive audience that you can add value to every day, if you so choose. With a private group, you make it easier for people to connect with your value and reach out to you when they need you. Let me be clear, these kinds of efforts take time to build rapport, trust, and authority. You’re not going to establish those things in the first week or month, so don’t expect business to come pouring in just because you started a private Facebook group and invited some other professionals. This is what I call a ‘digging your well’ activity and those kinds of activities take time to build, they take effort to establish and add value, and they take time to pay off for you. If you’re not consistent, intentional, deliberate, if you’re not going to add value, and if you’re not committed to it, your efforts won’t pay off. Adding value consistently over a long period of time are the main ingredients for turning your efforts into dollars with social media. Everything is just an ego based virtue signaling waste of your time.

The last thing for recession proofing your business, and this one is specifically for appraisers, is what we affectionately refer to as ‘direct vs indirect’, or relationship versus no relationship. Many of you have a variety of clients and a diverse mix of local lenders, some AMCs, some credit unions, maybe some attorneys and estate planners, and are probably doing just fine at the moment. Any time a business is built on relationships the business metrics always look better. If you’ve been out in the market doing the difficult work of building relationships with real humans, your business looks different than somebody who just signed up on a bunch of lists and started getting some orders. I’m not completely knocking that business method, it’s worked well for many appraisers for the last 10 years or so. The problem with that method, however, is that you have no control over it. Not only that, but it commoditizes your business in the marketplace. When you have no relationship with the people sending you business, you run the risk of somebody else like you coming along and stealing that business. Since the business is not based on a relationship, it must be based on some other kind of metric like fee, turn time, communication, updating, and maybe a few other things. As soon as you slip on any of those metrics, there’s no relationship to fall back on to save that business.

As many appraisers are learning in times like this, where there is no relationship, there is no loyalty. When you’re just a fee and a turn time, you’re just a fee and turn time and you are replaceable. It’s that simple.

If you want to recession proof your business, you’ve got to focus on relationship building because, when times get tough, they tend to get tough for everyone and people like to gravitate in the direction of people like themselves that they know they can count on in a pinch. They want to know they can reach out if they need to. They want to know that you’re going to make them a priority when the need arises. It may be a little too late for many of you as we head into some challenging times, but it might not. What worked when business was overflowing is a different strategy than what works when things get slim. If you’re not willing to be different, do different, act different, and do some of the things the best businesses do regularly, things may be extra challenging for you going forward. It’s been a really good run for many appraisers, but that’s all changed and will not be coming back like that for a very long time, if ever.

The ones who really prosper will be the ones who build relationships with their local market, their local clients, even their not so local clients. Use video to connect with the people who send you business from other states. Become known as the nicest person to do business with, not to mention the fastest, highest quality service provider. Be willing to walk into that credit union you’ve been driving past for the last 5 years and introduce yourself. Don’t ask for business, offer to teach them something for free. Offer to hold a lunch and learn on your dime. I said it at the end of the last episode, and I’ll say it again here; when times get tough, leaders emerge. Will you be a leader emerging from adversity, or will you follow the crowd off the cliff?

Until next week my friends…I’m out