Like 92% of the population, I read online reviews about something before I consider buying it.

This especially goes for big-ticket items like remodels, vacations, and vehicles.

So when I wanted to take my wife to a Cancun resort last year, I went to TripAdvisor to scope the online reviews of the different establishments.

Now…

When I plan vacations like this, I only consider resorts with at least an 80% (four out of five stars) rating. I’m spending a big chunk of change, and I want my money’s worth.

So I found a beach-side resort that ticked all the boxes I wanted: fun stuff to do, exotic location, all-inclusive, and the necessary rating I require (it had four stars with over 2,000 reviews).

I booked the resort two months in advance and went on my merry way.

Flash-Forward Two Months…

We arrive at the lush tropical resort, ready to relax and have fun.

But turns out that, within those two months in which I booked the trip and when we arrived, the resort began a MAJOR construction project.

In the words of Homer Simpson… D’OH!

Instead of being greeted by the soothing sounds of ocean waves crashing onto the beach, we were met with the obnoxious, ear-splitting cacophony of jackhammers crunching into concrete.

Instead of breathing in the salty sea air, I sucked up two lungful’s worth of construction dust every time I inhaled.

Instead of opening the window shades in my room to experience the beautiful tropical view, I had a construction worker’s butt crack staring back at me.

Twice.

By the end of the trip, I looked something like this:

The point?

If I had looked at the resort’s reviews within those two months, I would have seen a ton of new reviews complaining about the construction. And I would have canceled and booked a different resort. But I didn’t.

Oh, well. Live and learn.

Here’s what YOU can learn from my excruciating excursion.

Like the vacation industry, home improvement is a fluid business. CURRENT reviews are critical.

When I looked at the resort’s TripAdvisor page yesterday, the reviews painted an entirely different picture from when I booked it over a year ago.

Sure, some people are still giving it good reviews (they must have been far, far away from the construction site). But many of them now mention the STILL ongoing construction as a turn-off.

This leads me to a few questions for you…

Are there any companies you compete against that were good last year… or the year before… that are now terrible? And would their reviews tell that story?

Odds are, you do.

And trust me when I say people ALWAYS put more stock into current reviews than old ones.

If prospects see that a contractor has negative recent reviews, they’re going to look for someone else—period. Those shiny five-star reviews from one or two years ago won’t help.

But if you have a bunch of great reviews consistently pouring in, it can work wonders for your business.

That’s where ORM comes in.

With ORM, the good reviews pour in fast and furious… while helping to prevent any negative ones from being posted for all the World Wide Web to see.

Find out more on our ORM webpage. (Also, make sure you use our free Online Review Scanner for an instant snapshot of your online reputation across multiple review websites.)

P.S. Okay, our Cancun trip wasn’t ALL bad. Besides the resort construction, it was actually pretty great. We visited the Mayan ruins in the ancient city of Coba and did a cenote tour of the local underground caves and lakes. I don’t have the pictures on my computer, but here are a few photos I found online of the Coba ruins we saw:

Mayan Pyramid

Mayan Lighthouse

Stone Pyramid

Save

You’ve seen the movie Men in Black, right?

In case you live under the world’s biggest boulder, it’s the one where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones play agents for a secret organization (the Men in Black) that handles alien crime on Earth.

The MiB uses a number of cool devices for keeping the “whole aliens on Earth” thing hush-hush.

One of the contraptions is a “Neuralizer.” It’s basically a pen that flashes a beam of light at someone and erases their memory if they’ve seen an alien.

This puts the person in a trance. To keep the person from freaking out that aliens are on Earth, the MiB agent replaces his or her memory with a story that doesn’t include a little green Martian.

Here’s a funny scene with the Neuralizer in action.

Okay, so we know aliens freak people out. (I’m sure not going to greet them with an Edible Arrangements gift basket if they land in MY backyard.)

But do you know what else scares the living heck out of people?

The price of home improvement projects.

Sure, some of your prospects may not show it; they usually have great poker faces. But if it’s their first time remodeling (and most of the time, it is), the initial price tag will internally induce Code Red-levels of panic. As if they just saw an alien outside their window spit-shining his metal probe.

In some cases, this results in a lost sale. (The lines “I’ll think about it” and “I’ll get back with you” are usually code for “AHH, THIS COSTS TOO MUCH, I’M OUT!!!”)

Fortunately, there’s a “Price Resistance Neuralizer” you can use to erase any and all price objections on the spot, instantly calm your prospects down, and take them from “scared to death” to a state of pure euphoria.

It’s Renoworks Pro visualization software.

Renoworks Pro replaces the scary thought of spending thousands of dollars on the unknown with a warm, fuzzy feeling of investing in a project that is real, tangible, and the homeowner will LOVE.

Here’s how:

1. Design: Take a photo of the home and upload it. Apply product choices directly to the picture from over 250 manufacturer catalogs.
2. Show: Wow homeowners with a stunning presentation of how their home will look before the project starts.
3. Close: Build trust with customers, get them excited, and put them in a buying mood to land more (and more profitable!) projects.

The result looks like this…

Yeah, it really looks that good.

When you use Renoworks Pro visualization software, price doesn’t just take a backseat—it gets kicked straight to the curb and hauled out with the trash.

Your prospects stop thinking, “How much?!” and start asking, “Can you start right now?!”

Try it and see yourself.

Fill out the form on the MYM Renoworks Pro page to schedule a live demo of the program with a Renoworks Pro representative.

They’ll walk you through the program, answer your questions, and show you how you can start closing more jobs at higher prices… all without the hard sell (the Renoworks Pro folk are nice, laidback people).

As an MYM email subscriber, you’ll also get your first month of Renoworks Pro for free when you sign up for the program. It’s literally zero risk.

Click here and fill out the form to get started right now.

P.S. Online reviews more than a year old are basically prehistoric in the eyes of your customers. in my next post, I’ll tell you why it’s 100% mission-critical to your business’s success to keep a constant flow of fresh, new online reviews coming in.

Save

Save