Social Proof Secrets – Sharran Srivatsaa

Everyone chases reviews, but few know how to use them strategically. Sharran reveals the tactical secrets of social proof–how to turn reviews into leads, sales, and authority without spending a dime.

In this episode, Sharran breaks down the art and science of social proof. While most businesses collect reviews and hope for the best, the smartest ones leverage them to attract clients, build trust, and close deals.

Sharran explains why people trust peer reviews more than ads, how to position your best reviews for maximum impact, and why your competitors’ bad reviews are your biggest advantage. This episode offers tactical strategies for turning testimonials into a powerful marketing engine that drives results.

Stop letting your reviews collect dust! Tune in to learn how to use social proof to scale your business and close more deals.

“A bad review with a great response, as you and I would agree, is better than no review at all.”

– Sharran Srivatsaa

Timestamps:

01:41 – Why people trust reviews more than ads

03:01 – The power of real customer language in marketing

04:20 – How to position reviews for maximum impact

07:43 – Turning your competitor’s bad reviews into your advantage

10:13 – How AI can craft high-converting messaging from reviews

13:30 – Turning reviews into a sales opportunity

15:41 – The best way to respond to negative reviews

16:49 – Why 4.5 reviews are better than perfect reviews

18:44 – Recap: Social Proof Secrets

Resources:

– Join the Future Proof Community

– The Real Brokerage

– Top Agent Power Pack

– The 5am Club

– Join the 10K Wisdom Private Partner Podcast, now available to you for free

– The Job of a CEO

– Join Sharran’s VIP Community

– ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing

– Sharran’s Partnership Program

– Grab Sharran’s 4-Week MBA for Free

Connect with Sharran:

– Facebook

– Instagram

– X

– LinkedIn

– YouTube

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Everybody’s on a mad dash to trying to get hundreds and hundreds of Google reviews or a hundred Yelp reviews And they think that that is what’s going to get them more business. Yeah, it may help Yeah, it may feel like you’ve got good reviews, but there is a skill to getting reviews And using them well and positioning them Well when to use them when not to use them how to use them how not to use them There’s a very tactical way to use social proof and influence To build your business, generate leads, validate claims that you’re making to your clients, and overall have an insane sales advantage.

[00:00:32] Now, how you do that exactly step by step, I break down for you, all starting right now.

[00:00:44] One thing is for certain just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this, where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. [00:01:00] How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.

[00:01:06] That is the question. And this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa and Welcome to Business School.

[00:01:18] All right. This is going to be an ultra tactical episode on social proof. What exactly is it, how to think about it, and the tactical things that you can implement right now that costs you no money. And this, if implemented right, I will tell you, will dramatically change how you view your business and how your clients view your business.

[00:01:34] So let’s get right into these kind of social proof secret ideas for you. So let’s, let’s back up for one second, right? Most people we have noticed in today’s world, people trust reviews more than they trust ads because they trust. People more than they trust brands, which is why the people accounts get more followers than the brand accounts, whether you like it or not, Elon Musk has more followers than Tesla, whether you like it or [00:02:00] not, Ray Dalio has more followers than Bridgewater, whether you like it or not, Jeff Bezos has more followers than Amazon.

[00:02:06] All of these are important because people trust people more than they trust brands. Second key component of this is there’s huge rise in these platforms like Yelp and Amazon reviews, and you know, the, the hatred on the TikTok testimonials proves that word of mouth is insanely powerful. When we are presented with a product on Amazon, we instantly go to the reviews.

[00:02:30] We see what people are saying and it’s, we don’t even know any of these people and we still like them. Why? Right. And the big idea is that if you know what your customers hate about your competition, you know exactly how to win them over. That’s the big idea. I’ll say it again. If you know what your customers hate about your competition, you know exactly how to win them over.

[00:02:51] And so what I’m going to break down for you is how to leverage reviews, how to think about these responses, how to use competitor feedback to drive trust and break it all down tactically. All right. So here’s kind [00:03:00] of the big idea. Number one, Is the psychology of social proof. So why reviews matter more than marketing?

[00:03:07] And it’s just not about making the review, the marketing, why do reviews matter more than marketing? And this is proven. We all know this it’s 92 plus percent of people trust peer based recommendations over traditional advertising. They trust peer based reviews of people that they don’t even know over.

[00:03:25] Advertising, which is wild. And I’m always reminded of this Don Miller quote. And he says, you know, people don’t buy the best products. They buy the products. They understand the fastest. And when you understand something, there’s no faster way than understanding something. It’s like when a friend tells you, Hey man, you should really go to the tire restaurant because it’s like this on steroids.

[00:03:44] Right? So you instantly trust that immediately. Um, I don’t know if you remember this, but I got the first iPhone when it. Came out, I think week one, uh, I just wanted to have something cool in my pocket, but Apple launched the first iPhone early reviews were really mixed. You didn’t even have like a copy paste feature.

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] Some hated the lack of a physical keyboard. And then Steve jobs totally leaned into the customer feedback and he used it to refine the future models. Apple didn’t fight criticism. They evolved because of it. So these reviews are actually really positive things. So. So let me give you three pieces of ultra tactical advice on what you could do when it comes to review.

[00:04:18] So number one, make your best reviews easy to find on your website, in your ads and on social your marketing message is less important than the review. So if, if you are featuring reviews on your site, it shouldn’t be buried. It should be in and around. everywhere. Make it easy for them to find it. So just make that an easy part of your process, even on social, even on ad, you can run ads with just reviews.

[00:04:42] And that’s a really positive thing overall. Now, a lot of people, you know, will take these reviews that somebody gave you on Google review or a Yelp, and they’ll copy and paste the tax and they’ll make like a really pretty quote card or the really pretty like, you know, on the brochure about that review and say, this was by.

[00:04:59] You know, [00:05:00] SS in Laguna, Laguna Beach, California. Instead of doing that, use a proof bomb. And what is a proof bomb? Is you got to take screenshots of these reviews. Don’t copy and paste the text from the review. Don’t copy and paste. You want the screenshots. The screenshots of the real messages. Screenshots of just plain text messages.

[00:05:18] Screenshots of the review on Google itself. Screenshot that. The screenshot on Yelp. Screenshot all the stuff. And that is the thing that you post. As your review, the review is not the review. The review in the original environment in the screenshot actually brings more trustworthiness to the review. Now you don’t have to make that screenshot pretty.

[00:05:38] The jankier the screenshot, the better, because now people believe in how you got that screenshot overall, because it increases credibility. And last but not least, I’ve seen a lot of folks will take a review, let’s say about a real estate agent and client wrote a review and they’ll literally make that review a quote card and post that review on social media.

[00:05:56] I will tell you right now, please don’t ever do that ever again. It is the [00:06:00] dumbest thing in the world because no one is scrolling through social media and like, Oh, I’m so excited that Sharran posted a big block, like, you know, like a, like Two paragraph review on a social where I can’t even barely read like you’re competing with every other cat video and you know, funny video and entertaining video along with a wall of text.

[00:06:20] Never do that. That is, it is extremely unhelpful. In fact, it is. It is not borderline dumb. It is dumb, dumb, dumb. What you want to do is if you post a big wall of text or a block of text and that’s a, that’s a client review, what you want to do is two things. One on top, give it a headline. Say we made this client a 400, 000 in three weeks and then paste the review.

[00:06:44] In the review itself, just highlight one sentence. That way I see the headline and I see the highlighted one sentence. That’s all should be in the review because I will tell you right now, even you didn’t read your own review and you think everyone else is really excited to wake up in the morning and like look on [00:07:00] Instagram and read your review.

[00:07:00] No, they don’t want to do that. So please don’t post big blocks of reviews and post reviews on social media. Because no one will read them and it actually takes away from your credibility. It’s useless. You’re better off posting a cat meme. What you want to do is ask the question, so what? Like, so what? Why does this person care?

[00:07:18] So make sure there’s a headline and just highlight a portion of the review. That way it makes it very specific. So that should be the price of admission for this one. Alright, big idea number two. It is extremely smart to use customer reviews to win. I don’t know why people don’t do that. They always look at your own reviews, but why don’t we look at customer reviews?

[00:07:35] Because when you, you can steal market share with smart positioning. So let me give you like a quick kind of, um, stat around this. 75 percent of customers read negative reviews before making a purchase. All right. So when you see a bunch of reviews, you go to the one star reviews and you read the negative reviews.

[00:07:51] And then that frames your purchase because you want to say, Hey, what is my worst case scenario here? It, you know, your, your [00:08:00] competitor’s weaknesses are your greatest opportunities because the competitors and the clients are essentially saying, Hey, your competitor is. You know, it’s terrible for, because they’re slow.

[00:08:11] Your competitor B has terrible pricing because it’s complex, you know, right away, but those are the things that the clients care about. And so now you can use that in your, in your marketing. I don’t know if you remember this Tesla story. I’m a Tesla fan. I I’ve, I don’t think I’ve driven on the car for the last, you know, ever since the Tesla’s came out, but Tesla noticed that.

[00:08:28] Traditional automakers, one star reviews often mentioned poor customer service at these dealerships. So they eliminated dealerships entirely and sold cars directly to consumers. Now, you may ask how that was actually able to happen. I’ll tell you that like the 10 second story. The main thing in the U S is, uh, there is no, uh, you don’t.

[00:08:47] You have to go through dealerships for all automobiles, except if you follow the golf cart rule, meaning if it’s all electric and it’s, uh, there’s a specification for golf cars, because golf cars can have their own dealership. Tesla figured out a [00:09:00] loophole around it and used that loophole, the same quote golf cart loophole, to get a direct To consumer dealership, which no other, uh, automaker has, which gives them an insane advantage.

[00:09:11] So this move literally turned a common industry complaint into Tesla’s like biggest competitive advantage. And even now, like I, as a, as a, as a Tesla owner can just use my app to message back and forth with Tesla support. Or if I need, if I have a flat tire, I can just hit a button. It doesn’t matter where I am and someone comes and changes my flat tire.

[00:09:30] I don’t need to go get, you know, AAA or anything like that, which is wild. Right? So here’s the tactical advice, read the one star reviews of your competitors. And those are the pain points that the customers care about the most, the clients care about the most. If people are complaining about confusing pricing, then just position yourself as the most transparent option.

[00:09:49] Right. You get the idea. And your job is to turn their weaknesses into your strengths and just bake them into your messaging. That’s the main idea of this review. So a lot of people just get stuck [00:10:00] reading their own, read your competitors reviews, and then use that both in competitive advantages in when you’re in meetings with people and showcase that, and then adjust your messaging around that.

[00:10:10] Here’s big idea number three, there’s an amazing opportunity for both AI and customer language in marketing in the models. So how do you craft messaging that actually feels personal? Cause otherwise we think we’re great copywriters and we’ll obsess over the copy, but what we don’t realize is the best language that we can get is the language of our customers and our consumers.

[00:10:30] I love these stats because I always want to validate what these stats are. 88 percent of consumers say that authenticity matters when choosing a brand. What is the authenticity? It’s that their words are reflected back to them and their messaging. That’s the authenticity. So there’s an insane J Abraham quote.

[00:10:46] I think about this often, which is if you can describe the problem better than your customer, they’ll automatically assume that you have the solution. I’ll say it again. If. If you can describe the problem better than your target customer, then they’ll [00:11:00] automatically assume that you have the solution. If they know that you know exactly how that mattress works, if they know you get a crink in your neck, if they know it’s cool and hot, if they know you and your spouse partner fight for the covers, if they know all of that and they made a mattress because of that, you know and you assume that they already have the solution, which is the coolest part about all of this.

[00:11:17] I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I think the entire world uses Netflix now, but Netflix uses a lot of AI driven analysis. Of user reviews to personalize recommendations. So instead of just promoting kind of generic top rated content, they will say, all right, real customer preferences said this, that’s what they did to refine the algorithm.

[00:11:37] And that’s why now you get like 70 to 80 percent increase in viewer engagement because the customer reviews are driving what is actually shown and made kind of top rated content. So, so here’s some tactical advice, right? Super easy to do, by the way, copy paste all your reviews. Into an AI tool and then ask it to rewrite your marketing copy in that voice [00:12:00] and you could say, Hey, these are all the reviews, find and extract the key messaging that are important to my customers and the key pain points that are important to my customers and use their words and their language and write the marketing copy based on that.

[00:12:13] So you should not be writing the marketing copy because you think you’re a great copywriter like most of us are not. Because we don’t have the raw material, the research that is in all of this. Most of copy is not you writing flowery language. The most of the copy needs to be compelling and in the voice that they, that moves them emotionally, right?

[00:12:30] Second, make sure your messaging matches the exact words your customers use. So if they say, if every customer says their pricing was not transparent, now. That is the language that they’re using. So now you don’t have to say, Oh, we have, you know, simple pricing. No, you say we have transparent pricing because they tell you that that’s the word they use over and over again.

[00:12:48] They don’t want simple pricing. They want transparent pricing. And this means that you want to use real customer phrases in your ads and on your product pages and in your emails, like you can say, Hey, I was chatting, [00:13:00] I just spoke with our client, you know, Shelly, Shelly said blank and use her exact words because now.

[00:13:07] Everyone else listening to that is like, ah, I am just like Shelly. I’m just like Sharran’s client. Therefore I should probably be Sharran’s client too. It’s super easy to do. Take your reviews, put it into AI, have the AI use the reviews to write your marketing copy and write your messaging copy because now you get a really, really cohesive marketing message.

[00:13:25] All right. Big idea. Number four. I don’t know why people struggle with this and they get really triggered, but you want to respond to reviews like a pro because every review is a sales opportunity, right? You’re not responding to the review. To the person that wrote the review, especially the person that made the negative review, you’re not responding it for them.

[00:13:44] You’re responding to that review for the rest of the world to see that’s what’s most important in all of this Like I was looking at stats on this and businesses that respond to reviews see a 12 increase in revenue That’s crazy, right? And so but but but here’s the learning right a bad review with a [00:14:00] great response As you and I would agree is better than no review at all, because I want the bad review and I want the great thoughtful response.

[00:14:07] And that’s what you want people to see. They see the one star review. They see the thoughtful response. They’re like, man, I like these guys. They’re being ultra thoughtful. It also disqualifies that one star review. If you actually handled it really well. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this story before.

[00:14:19] They’re, uh, you know, kind of in the Airbnb early days, they had major PR crisis when the early hosts received negative reviews about cleanliness. And instead of ignoring the complaints. They implemented like a response system where the host had to acknowledge and improve their spaces. So by addressing these negative kind of feedback head on Airbnb, Airbnb increased their user trust and exploded their growth because they combined, you know, the, the, the requests that their customers were making along with the hosts on their platform.

[00:14:48] So. Let me give you a couple of like tactical piece of advice. So the first one is for positive reviews, engage with them, say thank you, and reinforce that the good points that they made. The other thing that you can also do in positive reviews is when a positive review [00:15:00] was made, you can reinforce it and then use that to actually call out your key staff members if you want to give them praise.

[00:15:07] So you can say, you know, if I left a really good review, you can say, Sharran, thank you so much for recognizing our service standards. We really live by. You know, the 30 minute pizza delivery standard to your house. And we want to make it hot and fresh. In fact, the, the, uh, you know, Jenny and Tomas who worked on your pizza that day, uh, remember serving you your, you know, double pepperoni crust.

[00:15:29] Uh, can you please email us or call the store? Your next pizza is on us. Like, if you did that in that review, can you imagine how much kudos you get for the positive review becoming a better evangelist overall? Now, for the negative reviews, your response isn’t just for the complainer, right? It’s for everyone reading it later.

[00:15:46] That’s the most important thing. So, what’s the format? Number one, acknowledge the issue. Number two, show empathy. Offer a clear resolution. And then follow up with publicly when it’s fixed, because now you can say, Hey, sure. I’m so sorry that this happened. That is not [00:16:00] part of our service standard. Something may have gone wrong.

[00:16:02] Let me figure out, uh, I know this caused you pain. I will follow up with you directly and I will make sure this is right. And I will, you know, get a great result for you. Uh, and then when you resolve it, Hey, sure. I just to follow up, I’d already sent you an email. I’ve given you a refund. I’ve done this.

[00:16:15] I’ve done that. This is not our service standard. The next time you come in, this is on us. We want to make sure you have a great experience. When they see that they’re like, wait a minute. This is insane that he did that. By the way, you could also use AI to help craft thoughtful responses. You could just literally take the review, put it into AI, and say, Hey, I want you to acknowledge the issue, show them, but the offer a career resolution, and also give me a followup and do it in my tone and it’ll do it.

[00:16:35] And then you can kind of tweak it because you already have a first start for that process overall. All right. Here’s the big idea. Number five. And I, I was unsure whether I should include this, but I wanted you to kind of just hear about it because I find myself in this trap as well and I call it the 4.

[00:16:50] 5 star effect, meaning why are imperfect ratings more believable? Right. We know that over 80 percent of people find a [00:17:00] 4. 5 star rating, more trustworthy than a five star rating. And the people are like, Hey, too perfect is suspicious. A little imperfect imperfection makes it real. I remember this, like the rotten tomatoes thing.

[00:17:10] I don’t. You know, watch a lot of these, I just go watch what a movie that I want. But Rotten Tomatoes scores can make or break a movie. But interestingly, movies with like 98 to 100 percent critic rating are often seen as too polished or like out of touch with reality. But films with like 90 to 95 percent scores tend to generate way more buzz and way more trust.

[00:17:28] And people expect some negative feedback. It makes the good reviews more believable. So what’s kind of like the tactical advice that we can use here, which is if all your reviews are perfect, it may look fake. So. That’s number one, right? So embrace the real feedback. Number two, encourage honesty and balanced reviews to build trust.

[00:17:47] Because it’s really, it’s really important. The third is, don’t fear the occasional bad review. It’s totally okay. You want that in there because that shows that, you know, if someone says, well, I read like a couple of bad reviews, uh, out there, you’re like, oh yeah, you [00:18:00] know, we have two bad reviews and 1, 700 positive reviews.

[00:18:04] In fact, did you get a chance to see those two bad reviews? And we actually tried to help the client, tried to address them, and it shows that they just weren’t being uncooperative. By the way, I’m assuming that you are a friendly and cooperative person. If that is the case, we should have a great experience.

[00:18:18] That’s how you handle the negative review, right? But most importantly, if you don’t encourage your current clients to be honest, they don’t give you the right language. If they don’t give you the right language, you don’t know how, what language to use, and if they Actually give you some good feedback. You can take it and use it and do something good with it.

[00:18:31] Which is the point of the review in the first place. The point of the review is not to get, you know, hundreds of five star reviews. The point of the review is to keep getting reviews so you can keep getting better reviews so you can get better overall. That’s the point of the review. Right? So just to quickly summarize all of it now, first one.

[00:18:45] Let’s use real customer language in our marketing because one, it converts better. Number two, competitors complain still exactly how to position yourself, right? Number three, every review is a sales tool if it’s good or bad. So watch that accordingly. Number four, [00:19:00] responding well and thoughtfully, and maybe like following up responses builds to criticism builds like trust and credibility.

[00:19:07] A 4. 5 star review system is way more persuasive than a. So I know there’s a couple of action items for you here, but please, please, please, here’s what I would do at least to kick off this process. Send this message to your team, just audit your current reviews. What themes stand out, what feels good and what doesn’t feel great?

[00:19:25] What can you actually fix? Because they’re telling you something that you don’t want to hear. Number two. Find five competitor complaints and brainstorm how to counter them in your messaging. Like, what can you do to take the opposite stand on that? Because that becomes your positioning. And last but not least, use the AI to rewrite your website copy based on the customer reviews, take the reviews, uh, tell AI to say, Hey, these are the reviews that my customers gave me pull out the good stuff and the not good stuff.

[00:19:49] And then write the copy based on this for consumer psychology. These are the social proof review secrets. Like I wanted to give you like the tactical playbook on exactly how to use the reviews and not just take a review and. And [00:20:00] plastered on social media or make a page of 50 reviews that no one cares.

[00:20:03] You want to use a review strategically, right? The main part about how you use social proof is that you want to use it when you’re making a claim. All right. This is what I want to general. You want to use reviews when you’re making a claim. So if I say, Hey, uh, I created this method called the deal of the week.

[00:20:19] It has generated more than a billion. dollars worth of sales. It’s really simple. Let me show you an example and I show them three examples of it. Now I’ve made a claim and I’ve shown some examples. There’s a, there’s probably a question in their mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Ronnie made a big claim. He shows how to do it, but does this really work?

[00:20:35] Then I I’ll say, Hey, But you must be thinking, does this really work? And then I start showing the reviews. Here is Jenny who did this and got this result. Here is Johnny that did this and got this result. And I can show that if you just did that, now it makes sense. I just don’t show the review that, hey, look at me.

[00:20:49] I’m a real estate agent. I did great for my client. Here’s a review. No, that doesn’t make sense. A review in isolation is useless. You want to make a claim and then teach it. Sure. On the claim and then use the review [00:21:00] to validate your trustworthiness around the claim. When reviews. Are, and social proof are used without a validation.

[00:21:07] It makes no sense. And so any use your reviews to actually validate the claims that you’re making. And that’s when it really, really starts to land. Um, I want to break down for you these, um, five plus big ideas and several tactical secrets on the social proof secrets. Hey, I really hope this is helpful to you.

[00:21:26] You may want to like. AI this episode and take out all the notes. I, by the way, if you scroll to this episode, a link on my website, which is a sharran.com for slash podcast, we have the full transcript for every single episode and all the links and all the show notes associated with this. The key here that I would say is if you like this episode and, and this is beneficial to you, can you please screenshot this and upload a social and tag me so that I can make more like this for you.

[00:21:49] Uh, if you have a team that takes care of your marketing, please send it to them and have them like give you an action plan on all of this, but most importantly, If you like this, please reach out this and so that I could make more like this for you.[00:22:00]

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