Connect With Jack Jostes
???? Ramblin Jackson: https://ramblinjackson.com/
???? Connect with Jack Jostes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackjostes/
???? https://www.instagram.com/jackjostes/
???? https://www.instagram.com/ramblinjackson/
Get Started With The Landscaper’s Guide:
???? Watch the full episode + read the transcript:
https://landscapersguide.com/podcast/
???? Tell us where to send your beef jerky:
https://landscapersguide.com/toolbox
???? See upcoming live and virtual events:
https://landscapersguide.com/events
Welcome And Live Q&A Introduction
00:00
Jack Jostes
And I'll share that from my own experience. I had trouble with recruiting and I realized I was a one star company on Glassdoor. Essentially that you've gotta build a limb for each city and a branch for each service. So if you go to ramblinjackson.com/reviews, I publish my reviews, including the negative ones. Learn answers to frequently asked sales and marketing questions from landscape professionals just like you in today's episode of the Landscaper's Guide podcast, where I share real footage from the Q and A portion of my recent keynote at Landscape Cod. My name's Jack Jostes, and welcome to the Landscaper's Guide podcast. This show is all about growing your snow and landscape company with sales, leadership and marketing ideas. So let's get started with the answer to a frequently asked question about how do you get more reviews from your landscape maintenance clients?
Why Maintenance Clients Hesitate To Leave Reviews
01:03
Kristin
Kristin quickly looked at my Facebook reviews and they're not. They're a little lower than I Googled. And I'm definitely like thinking about specifically going after Facebook reviews to bring that number up.
01:15
Jack Jostes
I love that.
01:16
Kristin
And while I'm just, while I'm speaking, just I have a question. I have had a lot of success procuring reviews from construction customers. We're finished with a project. It's all smiles and handshakes. They're very happy. They don't necessarily need me again right away, so they're thrilled to go on and, you know, put out a detailed review. Maintenance customers. I have a lot of why I wouldn't want to overload you or give away my landscaper that I need on a regular basis. It's just like giving away your babysitter's phone number, your plumber's phone number.
01:54
Jack Jostes
Right? like, they're like, I don't think they feel like they're. You're. You're their person because they don't want.
02:00
Kristin
You to get overloaded and not be able to service their property. That's. I've had that specific answer several times when I asked for maintenance.
How To Overcome The “I Don’t Want To Share You” Objection
02:10
Jack Jostes
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing. First, how many of you work with other contractors? Go review them. There's a something I learned at a networking group called Givers Gain. So give. Go, go see what happens. Go write some Google reviews and you could ask them to review you. So that could be something that you do if you have a irrigation sub or your carpenter or whoever, right. If you have various subs or you all have your branded shirts, I don't know where you bought them. That person probably has a Google listing and would appreciate a review. So that's one. Answering the objection of, hey, I don't want to share you with anyone. I would just say, well, how could you be so selfish? No, I'm kidding. No, I would try and tell them a joke and be like, look, I appreciate your concern.
03:00
Jack Jostes
However, we, we only take on the best customers and we appreciate working with you because you're kind and respectful. So we're only looking for a handful of customers. We're not looking to do anything. We'd never do anything to use. To lose you, Mrs. Smith, or whatever. Right. So I don't know. I would try and use some humor and answer the objection and then systematically ask each and every other customer.
Should Landscapers Review Each Other On Google
03:34
Audience Member
Kind of jumping off of the Google we are creating with a lot of different landscapers that look bad if, like, it's one of us jumping on personally and like, you know how it shows on your profile that you. 20 reviews or something? It's like just us leaving reviews for.
03:50
Jack Jostes
Yeah. So, yeah. So I think the question was, hey, does it look bad if I've left a review for all of these Google listings? And I don't know, I wouldn't worry about it. A lot of people aren't going to get super far into the weeds of, like, clicking on your profile. Like, I do that. And I know what you're talking about. And that's again, why I think having a volume of them is important. And I know the Cape is a small community and a lot of people know each other. So here's what you don't want to do. If your name is Egan, do not get a review from Jake Egan. That's your name, right? So I had a client in Boulder, and she had this lady owned the business, and she had reviews from, like, three people with her last name.
04:33
Jack Jostes
I'm like, you know, we all know what you did there. Right? And so that's something I wouldn't do, but I wouldn't worry too much about reviewing other people. I also wouldn't write a fake review. So I wouldn't write a review for, like, my buddy from the association who I've never hired. And if I did, I might qualify. I. I've known Mike from the Cape Cod landscape Association for 10 years. He's a reputable contractor that I refer to. Okay. Now at least I've qualified the relationship instead of misleading people that, you know, Mike mows my lawn when he doesn't.
Can Employees Leave Reviews For The Landscape Company They Work For
05:12
Audience Member
Is there a way to get around a testimonial for the customer for the company you work for. I did a thing for Egan. I've been nine years now. Brought it up, said how great the company is, and then it kicked me out.
05:27
Jack Jostes
Where did you write.
05:31
Audience Member
Was a while ago. I think it was Google. Huh? It was Google, wasn't it? Yeah, it was Google. Yeah.
05:35
Jack Jostes
Huh. I don't know. This is another reason to get into a volume of them is Google, like deletes reviews. They're not your property. They're the property, the intellectual property of the person who wrote it. So it could be that you got flagged for spam for some reason. How many of you are an employee of a company? I'm gonna. I hope that you really enjoy working where you work. If you. If you don't, you should have a conversation with the person who brought you here. Right? You're in person. Like, have an adult conversation. And if you do enjoy it, go write a review for them on Glassdoor. And Indeed, it would really help your company out, Especially if you're like, oh man, I'm so stressed because we can't hire anyone and I'm doing all this extra work. Go write a review on Indeed and Glassdoor.
06:23
Jack Jostes
Cause that helps your organization with recruiting. So that's my kind of tip for you would be, hey, go. Go write one on Indeed and write one on Glassdoor. And if you're not happy, talk to George in person.
06:36
Audience Member
I did both.
06:37
Jack Jostes
Okay, so that's. And I'll share that. From my own experience, I had trouble with recruiting and I realized I was a one star company on Glassdoor. This was like 10 years ago. And honestly, I hadn't even heard of Glassdoor. The way that I found out about Glassdoor was I learned that I had a negative review average there because I had one review and I'm like, hey, team, we had a pizza lunch. I'm like, guys, I'm bringing in pizza. I'm like, guys, I'm bringing in pizza. And I basically said, hey, if you've. If we have a beef, let's talk. Let me help you. If we don't, I need your help. And please write a review on Indeed and Glassdoor. And people did. And then we became like a 4.3 and it solved the recruiting problem.
Should Net Promoter Score Be Public Or Internal
07:25
Audience Member
You, sir, regarding Net Promoter stores.
07:28
Jack Jostes
Yes.
07:29
Audience Member
Is this basically something that would be more of like an internal referral from a customer per se? Like you asked the question, like you mentioned earlier?
07:38
Jack Jostes
Yeah, so. So the question is Net Promoter Score like an internal thing? I do it publicly. So if you go to ramblinjackson.com/reviews, I ha. I publish my reviews. Including the negative ones. I, including the negative ones. And the reason is how many of you have ever bought anything on Amazon? How many of you ordered something from Amazon during the talk? Anybody? It's okay, I'm just kidding. Sometimes I, one, I, I. It's tempting, I know, but the point is how many of you ever sort on Amazon for negative reviews and then read them? Right? Of course you do. So when you see an Amazon product with a perfect five star review average, you're like, I don't know, how could there be?
08:24
Jack Jostes
You know, like so the, the reason I'm saying this is a lot of people, like we don't want anyone to see anything negative about the company ever. And I'm like, no, put it out there and reply publicly. Show people. What do you do when people are upset? It's an opportunity to. If, if you were. And wow, I have one, one guy, I can't believe he put. I'm like, you know, people can see this, right? And it, this person. And I'm like, let's talk to me and then let me help you write something polite as a reply. It should be like, hey, thanks so much for your. It should be different by the way, because I had, it was a client in Massachusetts and they posted the same response to every negative review.
09:05
Jack Jostes
And then they started getting reviews about how the company doesn't listen and just post their canned response. And it was clear that, yeah, actually that is what this company does. And they got a review, they created a, a Houzz account with their own name in it and wrote a review of themselves. It's like, man, this looks really bad. So we gotta have a bunch of reviews. I would, to answer your question, even collecting that promoter score alone is valuable because it gives you the opportunity to respond to somebody who's feeling a six. Maybe feeling six out of ten. I'm not unhappy enough to write a negative review on Google, but I'd probably fire you at the end of my contract. Whereas if I'm feeling a six and you call me, you take care of me, like that's really what I want.
09:52
Jack Jostes
I don't really want to hire a new landscape company. I want, I want you to take care of me. So I like to publish them because, and this is a key thing, testimonials and reviews are different things. So a testimonial is when you take something, edit it and put it on your website. That has less trust and influence on AI and search engines than a review that a customer wrote. So that's why I'm all about put let the negative reviews go. I have one on there. It's some guy who's like, on my email list that's never hired me, and it's kind of funny. And I just replied like, hey, you know, you can click unsubscribe. I took care of it for you. And people read that and they're like, oh, this is some random person on his email list.
10:38
Jack Jostes
And he wasn't a jerk about it.
How To Respond To Positive And Negative Google Reviews
10:44
Audience Member
So I, that was actually, my question was about the negative reviews. I have a background in marketing, so I'm not familiar with that piece. But I did see on the example you shared, there was a response to a positive review. And my question is, what are kind of best practices? Obviously you're not going to be able to respond to every single.
11:03
Jack Jostes
Why not?
11:04
Audience Member
I don't know.
11:05
Jack Jostes
So I want to share. I just went to, I spoke at the Rain Bird select contractor conference in Riviera, Maya, Mexico. And we stayed at this incredible resort and somebody there, one of the servers by the pool was like, hey, would you write a review and mention my name? It's Marcos. And my wife loved Marcos. We had a great time. So we wrote a review. My wife wrote a review, and within hours they responded and said. And they. And it was an actual personal reply. So I guess I'm just challenging. Why can't you reply? How many do you have?
11:43
Audience Member
Yeah, we're, we're growing that so well.
11:46
Jack Jostes
So that's what I'm saying. Is it. I mean, like, are you getting thousands a day? Are you getting like 10 a month? Like, I, I mean, like, you could reply. It takes like, I actually do it on my phone. I have the Google Maps app on my phone. When I get a Google review, I get a little alert and I reply and I say, hey, thanks, first name for work. I appreciate you working with Ramblin Jackson CEO Jack Jostes. And I reply instantly. So that's how I do it. That's how there's kind of meeting people where they're at. Like, if you all could simply ask people, if you could even ask one person for a Google review, that would be an amazing step.
12:25
Jack Jostes
If you went all the way and had a contest and you used a software and you had QR codes, that would be amazing. But I know that getting from here to there takes a lot of work. So it would best to reply to every Google review. And good or bad, hey, thank you. And why not call them, hey, thanks so much for leaving a Google review. You could spend two minutes. Hey, it's George. Thanks for leaving a Google review. I appreciate it. Wow. I can't believe George called me. They're going to feel amazing, right? These are little things that people would love. Hey, thanks for watching today's episode. You know, I love talking with people like you with the landscape industry.
13:11
Jack Jostes
So if you enjoyed this episode and you know somebody who's the event coordinator or somebody who schedules speakers at landscape industry trade shows, maybe your supplier has an education series, please send this to them and tell them to check out ramblinjackson.com/speaking to learn about working with me as a speaker. And I hope to see you at my next event. I've got in person and online events coming up, so check those out landscapersguide.com/events. See a link to our show notes for that. And again, my name is Jack Jostes and I look forward to talking with you in the next episode of the Landscaper's Guide podcast.