[JOE]:
Between writing notes, filing insurance claims, and scheduling with clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That’s why I recommend Therapy Notes. Their easy-to-use platform lets you manage your practice securely and efficiently. Visit therapynotes.com to get two months free today. Just use promo code JOE, that’s J-O-E, when you sign up for a free trial over at therapynotes.com.

This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 471.

I don’t know if you know about Google Business profiles, but if you don’t, this episode is absolutely for you. And if you do, you’re going to get some hacks that are going to help you so much. A Google Business profile is, you know, when you Google something and there’s that little map and the pins show up on it… It’s that, and then you can put so much more into your Google Business profile that helps you rank in Google way better than just your normal website will. So, today’s episode is going to really walk you through that. It’s going to help you get to that next level in so many different ways, so that whether you’re just starting out or you’re scaling your business, it’s gonna help you get to that next level. So, today we’re talking with Brian Greenberg, all about enhancing your Google Business profile. Here we go.

Today, on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Brian J. Greenberg. Brian has founded businesses in E-commerce, marketing, and financial services, and has generated over 50 million in revenue from his businesses, collected over 10,000 reviews and testimonials from customers, been named one of the most creative people in financial services, and has been called The Salesman Who Doesn’t Sell. Brian, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[BRIAN]:
Thank you for having me, Joe.

[JOE]:
Oh well, let’s just start with The Salesman That Doesn’t Sell. I think most of us therapists, psychologists, coaches, we often feel like we don’t want to be ‘salesy’, which I do think sets us up for having more authentic marketing. But just start with, what’s The Salesman That Doesn’t Sell?

[BRIAN]:
Sure, you know, I guess I have a similarity there. I never believed in being a pushy salesperson. It just wasn’t something that was natural for me. Although, I found a way to, basically, sell without selling. All right, so I wrote a book called The Salesman Who Doesn’t Sell: A Marketing Guide to Selling While You Sleep. Now, I’ve made my living and I’ve done very well since about 2008, running online businesses, and I’ve run E-commerce businesses, consulting businesses, and currently I even sell life insurance online direct-to-consumer, which is a very difficult sell, although I’ve learned how to do it. I actually kind of went into this insurance business because it’s one of the most profitable industries. So, what I want to do is I want to teach people how to sell without selling, because I don’t believe in pushy sales. You know, in life insurance, they always say “life insurance is always sold, never bought”. And I didn’t believe that… I said, I thought life insurance is always bought, never sold. So, what I want to do is teach people how to answer everyone’s questions using online techniques and, by the time they are ready to become customers, you don’t have to do anything. There’s no more sales process involved. You let your website do your talking for you.

[JOE]:
So, ideally, the typical private practice would have certain items on the website, things on your Google Business, things like that, that will help the potential client make a decision before they ever pick up the phone or send an email.

[BRIAN]:
Correct, you know, what we do is, if we get questions from clients, and it keeps coming up over and over again, it might be hey, well, you do cover my insurance, right? How much does it cost? Is there a minimum? Is the time available? You know, credentials… All the questions that continually come up, I believe in just answering straightforward on the website, so they never even get to you. So, you know, I have, you know, frontline employees, and I’m always asking them, what questions are you getting? How can I help you answer those questions, so you don’t have to anymore? Any commerce, you know, it involves letting people know the return policy, or giving people their tracking information right away. You know, when we started doing things like this, our customer service phone calls went down like 30/40%. You know, in life insurance, we’re letting people know the price, right? The terms, all the different features of every life insurance policy, the process that goes into it. So, they have all their questions answered. It’s almost like, you know what they’re going to ask, and you know exactly how to persuade them to where the point was, you know, “I’m so happy. This person, this counselor answered all these questions for me up front, he made it easy. I like it. Let’s make an appointment.”

[JOE]:
So, sometimes I hear from people, “I don’t want to put my, my price on my website, because oftentimes, I’ll talk to someone, they’ll hear my voice, they’ll understand me, they feel connected to me. They think I can really help them.” And then they make a decision on the price after that. I know that’s typical, also in sales outside of the counseling world, that, you know, you’re going to have to jump on a pre-consulting call with someone before you find out what the consulting package is going to cost, for example. And then, kinda what you’re saying is, you know, if there’s common questions that come up, over and over, help that person have the information on the front end. Maybe speak to those two mindsets of not revealing the price till you talk to them versus just having the price be front and center at the beginning.

[BRIAN]:
Boy, that’s an age-old question, right? Now, for my personal preference, I love it when people list the pricing on their site. It’s transparent. If you’re a counselor, you know, are you really going down the road where you’re charging one person more than another? Right? Maybe someone’s wealthier, do you charge them more? Now, there’s definitely businesses out there that do that, right? They won’t list the pricing on their website and it’s a little bit of a red flag. You call them up and they’ll say, you know, how much revenue do you do? How many employees do you have? And depending on that, the price changes. So, if you are interested in just getting people to sign up right then and there, I think it’s best to list the pricing. Now, if you’re listing pricing that’s high because you’ve been in the industry a while, that’s okay, and you may think that you may scare people off with the pricing. Now, in that particular case, I would highly recommend, you know, maybe a free consultation, right? Maybe make the first meeting free, it’ll set people up to actually sign up, they actually get an appointment to actually come in and see you, all right? I’ve also had people, you know, that I’ve worked with, kind of in a similar industry, where someone would sign up for a consultation, and then you would follow up with them and let them know, you know, what’s entailed. Also, you may want to email them, you know, some sort of questionnaire, right? Maybe you could page through the questionnaires to make sure that they’re a good fit for your practice. The whole point is, what I want people to do is, I want to get you out of the sales process. So, offer them something for free if you don’t want to put your pricing on there, but follow up with some sort of questionnaire that they would have to do. Now, it’s also kind of a pre-qualifying thing, Joe, because if somebody’s too lazy to fill out a simple questionnaire, they’re probably not a good fit for you anyway. So, these things are always kind of, you know, try it out. You know, the goal is always to remove yourself, right? Because I want your listeners concentrating on what they do best, not trying to sell people or going over and over again about what they charge or what it entails… all these questions that you could answer.

[JOE]:
Well, and I think that when you go through that process of thinking through all the different things that people ask, if you don’t have a virtual assistant that’s answering your phones and doing your calendar, it sets you up to then have a lot of those questions answered already, even if you have someone else answer the phones. I wanna hear a little bit about your thoughts on Google Business, because I know that’s a specialty area of yours. It’s also an area where I think it’s an untapped opportunity for a number of small businesses and therapists, particularly because, in most towns in the United States, therapists aren’t doing things that, you know, in other industries, people, it’s just kind of par for the course. And so even building a small bit of kind of effort into your Google Business, the ROI on that time is just significant. So, maybe take us through some of the best practices for Google Business profiles, and what they can do to make them a little more robust than their competitors.

[BRIAN]:
Sure. Yeah, I agree. Google Business is just a plain goldmine, especially if you know how to use it. You know, I think, some crazy statistic like 95% of people will go onto Google to search basically for anything before they purchase anything. In my business, people would, right before they do a purchase or sign up, they’ll actually do another Google search with the name of your business followed by reviews or complaints. And that’s where you want to come up as well. So, you want these trust signals, right? So, you have Google Business. I also love the Better Business Bureau, I’m not so sure it’s a good fit for your audience, but that’s the number one trust signal that people like. If you show an A+ rating in Better Business Bureau, it’s wonderful. I think it costs like $550 bucks, and you could also put the seal on your website. Now, for Google Business… There’s so many people that don’t do it right, and if you’re in the minority that fills out a Google profile correctly, it’s going to put you right up to the top, all right? So, the first thing is, fill out everything that they ask, especially images. Put some images of yourself, put images of the location, put images of your credentials. Make sure you put images in there, essentially. Put in the hours.

[JOE]:
Around images – how important is it to have professional images of your office, as compared to just when you take on your phone?

[BRIAN]:
Ah, it’s immensely important. So, I take executive headshots of everyone in my company, because, on the emails, I like to put the pictures… it’s very transparent, alight? And your listeners might be, well how do I do that? Well, there’s a website called Thumbtack, thumbtack.com, and you can say, you know, they have a whole section where you could look for a photographer in your local area. It costs about $100 to $150, and you’ll get a lot of bids, and what they do is they can come to your home, they can come to your office, they bring their own lighting, and they take these wonderful pictures and they look incredible. They could take a whole bunch of them, they could put a headshot, they can do your office, whatever it is… but my goodness, it’s gonna look great, and it’s gonna make you look so professional. So, I highly recommend professional, and it’s just so much less expensive than people think.

[JOE]:
Yeah, we had a professional real estate photographer come and photograph one of our Airbnbs, and the difference in just signups after we did that was shocking. And I would actually wonder if you had a professional real estate photographer take photos of your office, and then a professional headshot person, if there would be a difference there in their photography and, I’m sure there’s people that can do both, but yeah. That, to me, seems like, if you have a one-time fee of a few hundred dollars and then you have these photos that you can use forever, if you get one client in the next five years it’s gonna pay for it.

[BRIAN]:
Yeah, they live, you know, on your business listing for so long, right? For years and years, even the headshots, people are using headshots from 10 years ago, right? But I don’t know if you really even need a separate photographer to take photos of your office. Maybe? Although, these photographers that are doing headshots are perfectly capable, you know, they have these wonderful cameras, they have editing software. So, you know, for the same price, you know, “hey, can you take just a couple pictures of my office?” And, again, you’re looking at only $100 to $150, and you can get, I don’t know, like maybe 10/15 fully edited images, and you could use it not only on your Google Business, but also your LinkedIn profile, and all the profiles that you put on the health grade websites or, you know, anywhere where you have business listings. If you put a professional headshot, it’s nice, it looks great, and it makes you feel more professional.

[JOE]:
And, so, what else in Google Business do you want to make sure you definitely fill out? And how can they get the best results from those sections?

[BRIAN]:
Okay. Now, the description is hugely important, all right? So, they, I believe they allow you 1000 characters, and so many people will put one line – huge mistake. You want to fill out that description with every word you possibly can, all right? Now, it doesn’t have to be perfect, no one’s necessarily going to read the whole thing, but you want to put in keywords, if you will. So, somebody might be looking for a therapist in, you know, Scottsdale, Arizona. So, you’re going to actually want to have ‘Scottsdale’, ‘Arizona’, and the word ‘therapist’ in your description, and maybe even the name of every city that you represent. Also, the different words for therapists, may you be a therapist, a psychologist, a Life Coach, you know, career counseling, whatever… maybe put everything in that description, because that’s what Google uses to put you in the search results. I know it’s a goofy thing but, you know, the Google algorithm is basically a computer system and they’re looking at the words that you include in your description. So, make use of it, fill out everything, your full About page, dump it right in there, right? And also, it’ll say what categories of business are you in? And don’t just choose one. Choose anything that even comes close to fitting, right? So, you know, they’ll have dropdowns. I think, for my insurance business, I think I put them in four categories. And that just helps Google list you correctly in Google Business. You’ll start showing up on the top of all of it and you get free traffic, which is beautiful. Also, I would put a link to your website. And, what’s also nice is you can put a link to have them call you right then and there, and it’s wonderful on mobile because they just click, and then they’re calling you for an appointment. And hopefully, you know, you can either take that appointment yourself or you might have some sort of answering service to take that appointment, or you can direct them to a calendar where they can make an appointment… but so many things can be done in Google Business, and we haven’t even touched on reviews.

[JOE]:
Yeah, and I do want to talk about reviews because, for therapists/counselors, most of our code of ethics push back on asking directly for a client to review you, which I can understand because, you know, you don’t want anything to get in the way of that, but also, I think a lot of people will kind of handcuff themselves so much from doing anything in regards to reviews. Maybe let’s start with outside of the counseling world, what are tactics that you would recommend? Not taking into account any of the kind of ethical things that we’re talking about. And of course, all of you listening, need to listen, you know, to kinda what Brian’s saying, but also put it through your own lens of your own ethics and your own state’s laws, and all of that as well. So, with that said, Brian, what’s kind of typical in the business world? Then maybe we can figure out how we might apply that within kind of the limiting setting of private practice.

[BRIAN]:
I am a full believer in reviews. I have, you know, I study all the people that come to my website, and the more reviews I have, the higher the conversion rate. And one of the best examples is Amazon. Now, Amazon has one of the highest conversion rates, I don’t know, known to anybody. I think they convert a little over 20%. That means one in five people that go to Amazon actually purchase something. One of their main competitive advantages are the reviews, so people are able to research. Also, you can see who the sellers are, right? And there’s accountability there. So, there’s a couple ways to leverage reviews. Now, the first is obviously to have them in the search results on your Google Business page, or maybe some of these directories that are specific to your industry. The other is to actually display those on your website, right? So, I don’t know all the rules involved in it, but on every page on my website I have a link to my Google Business reviews and my Better Business Bureau reviews. And when people see those, it says so much. It says these are all the customers that were happy. It also gives them a level of accountability that if something does go wrong, they can, you know, get a refund, that you care about the customer and you believe that the customer’s always right. Especially if you’re going after these five-star reviews.

[JOE]:
Before I sold my counseling practice, one thing that we would do is an annual survey, and in that survey, we would ask, you know, would you refer a friend or family member? And so, we were able to say, 100% of our survey respondents so that they would refer a friend or family member. We also had them say quotes about their experience, and then we had one question at the end that just said, could we, in a confidential way revealing no information, use your quotes on our website for marketing or through social media? You know, no information would be given. We didn’t even ask for their name, we just had them initial so that, you know, they gave their consent. And we would never even give those initials out. And so at least for us, that was one way that, even though we weren’t pushing for Google reviews, we were able to get quotes from clients that said, working with Steve was amazing, working with Joe was amazing, working with Nicole, you know, all these things helped our family, to at least give some of that extra credibility that a typical review would give

[BRIAN]:
Yeah, I think that’s a wonderful idea, Joe. Now, when you’re getting these reviews, there’s a few things that are integral to make sure that they carry the most weight, all right? And you can kind of use Amazon as another example. So, if you’re asking customers, you know, would they recommend you? And they’re giving you a couple sentences, that’s wonderful. And I would just, you know, make sure that you use their initials or just say ‘anonymous’, but give more information. Let them know what city they’re in, or the state that they’re in, right? And then put a date on the review. When people don’t put dates on a testimonial, we just don’t know how legitimate it is, and if you put a date, it just jumps out for some reason. So, you know, when you do that, you have the city where it came from, maybe the initials, the statement, and also the date it came in… those are solid reviews and, if you put them on your website, they’re gonna serve you for a very long time. And I’ll tell you this Joe, I run in the life insurance industry, right? And the last thing I want is somebody to give me a negative review on Google Business, because I can’t get it off, right? So, there’s a line of defense, and I love what you’ve been doing. So, my first line of defense is, I first ask for customers to review my business on my own internal software. Now, I built my own review system, that’s fine. There’s also Trustpilot or Birdeye, you know, there’s a couple software systems that you could use that kind of automatically email people and you could do the same thing, it could be a yearly review through that software. The nice thing is, you own it, right? So, if somebody gives you a bad review, you don’t necessarily have to display it. Now, when somebody gives me a five-star review on my own system, that’s my trigger. That’s when I email them again, I take the exact same thing that they said to me, and I said, you know, would you mind putting this in other places? And I give them a link to the Google Business page exactly where they enter it, as well as the Better Business Bureau. Now, I want to put a value on reviews, all right, Joe, you may agree with it, or maybe not, but from my experience – I’ve been doing this a long time – there is return of investment, even though it’s hard to measure. If I get a review on my website, I count it as at least $100. And that’s just the first year, and then $50 every year after that, because it keeps serving. Now, if you get a review on a third-party website that you don’t control, example, Google Business or Better Business Bureau, I count those as $250 each, and then $100 in perpetuity as long as it’s displayed on there. And that’s just the persuasive weight of these reviews as far as bringing you new business. So, I want people to know there is so much value in it, you know. For me, I might have a small sale, where I only make $50, but if I can get some reviews from that customer, well, then it is more than worth it.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I know that in our Next Level Practice community, we have these small groups and a lot of the small groups that really get to know one another, they will do Google reviews for each other because they’ve got to know kind of the behind-the-scenes business of this person. And they say, I’m in a mastermind group with this person and, you know, the way that they operate is so ethical, I’d send my own family to them. And so, it’s a great way to get around directly asking clients, but to find who else are you connected to? Who are you referring to on a regular basis? Who are you coordinating care with? Who are those kind of ancillary people that you feel comfortable saying, within the ethical bounds in the state laws, I can ask these people for reviews? So, beyond reviews, Brian, what are other tactics that people can do to continue to have a robust website, to continue to rank high, and to attract the right kind of clients for them?

[BRIAN]:
Good question. Joe, before I jump into that, it’s just, the whole not-being-able-to-ask-for-reviews… Is it possible for you just ask for simple feedback, you know? So, you just want to know how things are going? Suggestions that I can do to improve

[JOE]:
100%? Yeah, yeah, clinicians can definitely ask for feedback. They can have surveys on improvement, those sorts of things as well.

[BRIAN]:
Are you able to, if they give you some review, are you able to plant the seed that you rely on online reviews at all? Or is that cross the line as well? I’d imagine it’s gray…

[JOE]:
Yeah, I think there are some different areas that people have done that and because it’s not super clear in all of our ethics, it’s not like it usually gives point-by-point what you can and can’t do. So, some people might have a sticker that says, you know, “find us on Google”, and they feel comfortable with that, or “find us on Yelp”. There might be other people that, after the annual survey, it just might redirect to a Google, you know, their Google Business page. And so, I think, unfortunately, it’s within so many different types of licensures and so many different states that it’s hard to say what everyone can do or can’t do.

[BRIAN]:
Understood. Yeah. I guess the one thing I want to make clear is just that reviews are so powerful, so powerful and so persuasive. Now, okay, so you jumped on things you can do on your website. Now, I think one of the things I never see people do is list their press page. Or if they do some sort of press, they don’t list it on there. So, let’s say you may be written up in your local magazine. Maybe you’ll do some local television, anything you do… any award you win, anywhere that you give a comment and it gets published somewhere. Put it on a press page, right? So have a press page and say, okay, this is here’s a little link to the article I did. I like putting up a little picture of the logo, and then a link to it. Now, let’s say you go on to, I don’t know, you’re interviewed for a local magazine, right? Boy, just the link is good, all right, I don’t want to go into that, but that’s gonna help you rank in Google. The value that is like $1000, at least, to put one of these things on your press page, and again, it has to do with building trust, and increasing the conversion rate, so when people come to your website, they’re more apt to sign up rather than go somewhere else. You’re also going to look better than all the other people. If you go on a TV spot, where that’s worth, like, $10,000, easy, as far as measuring ROI, because it positions you as an expert. Furthermore, as you build up your press page, even if you have just a little bit, it opens the whole door for you being an expert. And then it opens up the door for you to be a contributor on Forbes, and then a contributor on I don’t know any, maybe some industry magazines, which again, build credibility. Again, such an important thing is the press page. And I highly recommend it, and even just listing your certifications or any awards as well.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I think that idea of a press page, and keeping it up to date and keeping press front of mind, you know, if you’re gonna put a date on when you were last quoted, if it was five years ago, it seems like it almost then turns me, at least for me, it turns me off like, wait, you were really active in the press, but I don’t see anything since 2014. What happened? Would you say it’s something that people should keep up with and keep trying to get press if they’re going to do a press page?

[BRIAN]:
I think they should, you know, if even if the press is 8/10 years old, I still think it’s valuable. They’re going to want to know if you were on a news channel at one point, maybe you did it and then just, you know, you didn’t need to do it anymore. But I think it holds value for decades, all right? I went on Fox and Friends and put that I went on my website. It was just a gift for me, and I think that’s going to build credibility for me for the next 30 years, all right? I don’t think that, on some things with PR, I don’t believe that they have too much of a time limit, Joe, okay? I think that they serve more in perpetuity.

[JOE]:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, the last question I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you like them to know?

[BRIAN]:
People are going online, you know. I know there’s a lot of different strategies for bringing in new clients. As far as my background, I have made a real nice living, just from having people going online and finding me. Now, the nice thing about people going online is that more and more people are doing it. So, every year, every month, more people are relying ongoing online and finding people. So I highly recommend you improve your online profile or your online reputation, and that could include a lot of things – taking professional pictures, making sure your LinkedIn profile is nice, making sure that you have a press page, making sure that you have a full Google listing. But take very seriously how you and your practice represent themselves online.

[JOE]:
So awesome. Well, Brian, if people want to connect with you and your work, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

[BRIAN]:
Sure. I have a personal website, brianjgreenberg.com, and for all your listeners, I’d like to offer them a free copy of my book. And if they can just go to brianjgreenberg.com/practice, they could download the audio version or the PDF version of my book.

[JOE]:
Oh, that’s so gracious of you. Thank you for giving that away. And Brian, thank you for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[BRIAN]:
Hey, thanks for having me.

[JOE]:
I love these episodes that are super practical about one teeny aspect of business, because your Google Business profile is so important to how well you thrive. And so, the more that you can do that, the better your business is going to be, the better your practice is going to be, and your ability to level up, too. We had over 70 people sign up for Podcast Launch School when we opened up the doors to that, and these are folks that are launching their podcasts, they’re getting out there, they’re doing things differently, to be able to bring in multiple streams of income beyond just their private practice. So, we’re actually going to be doing more with Podcast Launch School coming up soon. We have a free nine-part email series over at podcastlaunchschool.com, it’s gonna walk you through decisions to make before you launch a podcast, it’s gonna walk you through some of the kind of basic elements of launching a podcast, it’s really going to be helpful for you in doing that. Also, I wanna thank Therapy Notes, therapynotes.com is the best electronic health records that’s out there. You don’t have telehealth as part of it. You get two months free if you use promo code JOE. But, if you’re a Next Level Practice member, you get six months free. So, make sure that you sign up for Next Level Practice as well as part of that. Thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. We have four episodes coming up with some of our Done For You podcasters that are part of the Practice of the Practice Podcast Network and I am so excited for you to hear these over the next four episodes. So, thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. I’ll talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music, we really like it and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.