Episode 197: Checking the reviewers / small business references
If you are looking at buying and you can find the reviewer or the person who's left the testimonial, just ask. It can really help you move through. In today's episode, Fiona shares a quick tip or tactic to help you with the evaluation stage. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Buyer's cycle
On Evaluation stage
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Hello and welcome to episode 197 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. My name's Fiona Killackey you and you are listening to a quick tip episode. So that's really a quick tip tool or tactic that you can implement immediately in your business. And today it is a good one. It's one that I actually thought everyone was doing. And then a friend of mine mentioned, I didn't know about that. Maybe you should make a podcast. So here I am. But before I get stuck into the, I just wanted to pay my respects and acknowledge institutional owners and custodians on the beautiful land in which I live and work and play and record this podcast. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. All right on with today's show.
So if you have ever worked with me, if you've ever seen me talk at an event, if you have bought my book, Passion Purpose Profit, I don't know any other way that you've come into contact with me if you're on my Sunday email. So if you didn't know, I send an email out every single Sunday, full of business insights and tips and ideas and storytelling and my opinion and all sorts of other things. And if you're not on that, you can subscribe over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/subscribe. But if you have interacted with me in any kind of way, you'll know that I love to use a framework called the buyer cycle. And that is really, it's kinda like this customer sales journey, the customer funnel, the sales funnel, whatever you wanna call it. But I like to think of it as a cycle because it doesn't end.
It just keeps going and going. So there are kind of five stages to that awareness research, evaluation, purchase, post-purchase/advocacy. Well, it becomes advocacy if you do a good job of all the rest. And so this is really the journey that people go on, regardless of what type of business they're looking to transact with. Even if it's a church or a synagogue or a mosque, or if it's a ceramics class, or if it's an earring company, they will all go through those stages, finding out about it, awareness, discovering more about it, research, figuring out if it's the right fit for their evaluation and then transacting in some way, so purchase. And then if they have a great experience, post-purchase becomes advocacy, which means that they lead to telling more people about it. And then those people become aware of it and the cycle continues over and over.
So one of the things that is a big kind of obstacle for people getting through to the path to purchase is the evaluation stage. And I've talked about evaluation marketing many times on this podcast. And one of the things that we look for, when we're evaluating a brand or a place to frequent or earrings to buy or whatever it is, we will look for social proof. We are social animals. We love them but looking at things like reviews, testimonials, and how many followers they have, as silly as that sounds, these can all be elements of social proof. And one of the things that we often look at is reviews or testimonials. I got my start, not really my start, but I worked in e-commerce marketing in 2010. I think that's when I started Amazon. Obviously, Amazon, whether you hate it or like it, it has grown massively through using customer reviews and utilizing user-generated content.
And so if you are looking at purchasing something and you are looking at the reviews and the testimonials, particularly if they're on a website, so if they're not on say a platform on like Google My Business or kind of using, I don't know, different widgets that bring up the reviews, but if they are actually on somebody's website and you can see who left the review, would you not check with that person or that company, what they thought? So I know that sounds very simple, but I do this all the time. So if I'm buying a service from somebody, I will often look at who left a review and I will hunt down that person. I'm very good at that. I could be like the world's best stalker. I'm really good. If I don't make it as a business coach, I could easily be a private investigator.
I would love that kind of job anyway. So if anyone is out there, they haven't been able to find somebody gets in touch with me because I can find them. I swear, I'm so good at it. Anyway, my point is that I will often look for who's left a review and I will find that person, and I will ask them questions that I might have around that service provider. So sometimes this will be, I'm trying to think of an example. Okay. So this is a good example. I have a Pinterest manager and I've had somebody looking after Pinterest for a while. And I was looking for a new Pinterest person recently. And I went onto a particular platform and looked for different people. And I got one person in particular that I thought, he sounds really good.
And he said that he looked after this person's Pinterest account. And he had testimonials from one of them. And so I went and I found that person's Pinterest, but I thought, well if he's managing it, he's the one who's gonna see the messages. And I found that person over on another platform, like another social media platform and I contacted them and just by DM, and then they got back to me and we had this really great conversation about Pinterest, about how I've been using it for years, how they've been using it, what they've found, what has changed over the years, what I have found. And I was able to ask them some questions about this person before I hide this person. And so that's just one example. I've done it before, where I have consulted with businesses and then I have needed to get other consultants on board and I've gone to their website and I've found testimonials.
And then I found those people and just emailed them and said, Hey, this is what I'm planning. Do you think they'd be a good fit? I mean, it's similar to references that you get for somebody that you are hiring from a recruiter, or if you are hiring somebody full time. And I think we don't do that enough. I'm not saying that you have to do it every single time. Maybe you've been recommended somebody and you just take it at face value. That they're really good. But I would say that there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing this. So check in with the reviewers and the people who have given testimonials. And I mentioned it to a friend just recently who had gone through a situation where they had hired somebody and they had been recommended and they didn't enjoy the experience.
And I said, have you ever followed up with the people that left testimonials? And they're like, no. And she just said, I would never think to do that. And I was like, I'd do it all the time. Because I just think that if they've given a testimonial, you would hope that it is in good faith and that it's not a made-up testimonial, that they actually really enjoyed working with that person, regardless of how long or how short their project might have been. So I just do that all the time. And I think that if you are looking for any kind of product or service, is if there's a reviewer out there and they've got clearly their first name and last name or the brand that they come from and what their title is, why not contact them?
Most people are happy to get on the phone or to simply write back if you're very clear about the questions that you have, and it just then allows you to really move through that evaluation stage and get through to you the path to purchase. So that is the tip for today. Kind of check-in on the reviewers, check-in on the testimonials, and find out a whole lot of information. If you wish to, from somebody who's actually been there. Now, keep in mind, that they may have had different experiences than what you're looking for. Maybe they had different objectives to what you're after, but it just gives you a little bit more of an understanding of the things that aren't coming up in the initial console call or in the initial email that you've had from somebody good and bad, more good I'm thinking of the things that you're like, maybe, let’s say with this Pinterest person, the person that I was damning with said, I didn't realize that he did this other thing, but it came up and actually he's been doing that now for my business.
And I was like, I didn't even know that. And he didn't mention that. So it's these great things and it can actually come out of it, even though it may feel like, I don't know if there's like a negative connotation to it or you're going behind someone's back. I've never actually thought of it like that until I was in conversation with my friend recently, but I was like, well, no, they've got testimonials on their website. I would imagine that they have no problem if somebody checks in with those people. So that is kind of my tip for today. If you are looking at buying anything and you can find the reviewer or the testimonial, the person who’s left the testimonial, then definitely just touch, ask some questions and just, it can really help you move through.
Should I, or shouldn't I utilize this person for my business? So I really hope that has helped. And if you do it for the first time and you have a great experience, let me know. Or even if you have a weird experience, let me know. The other thing is with this person who I ended up DMing, we've kind of become friendly through Instagram now. I mean, they're on the other side of the world, but it's still this lovely connection and that's what can happen. I mean, we are being social. That's really what we're being. So I hope that has helped. And if you would like to read the show notes and kind of get this in text format, or look at the buyer cycle that I mentioned at the start of this, you can find them over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/197.
And just a reminder, if you're listening to this in real-time, we are starting the Marketing for Your Small Business course and coaching program today. So if you are part of that, I can't wait to see you later this morning. And if you are listening, thinking, I wish I had got onto that. No, you can always do the Marketing for Your Small Business course online. Anytime it's always available, you can check out marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com or my dailybusinesscoach.com/marketing. And we will be opening up another nine-week live coaching program later this year. So stay tuned for that. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
