A shopfront used to do this job. You walked past, saw the lights on, the tidy window, a few people inside, and decided it looked alright before you went in. Most trades don’t have a shopfront — you work out of a van and a phone. So the customer looks at the only window you’ve got: your reviews. That little cluster of stars is your lit window, your tidy display and the other customers stood inside, all at once.
And an empty window worries people. A profile with two reviews doesn’t read as “new” — it reads as “risky”. The customer can’t tell the difference between a genuinely new firm and one people quietly avoid, so they play safe and ring the name with thirty reviews instead. You lose the job not on price or skill, but on having nothing in the window.
Why ten is the number that matters
There’s a rough line most people won’t say out loud but cross anyway: under about ten reviews, they hesitate. Over it, they relax. It isn’t that the eleventh review is better than the fourth — it’s that a handful looks like luck and a couple of dozen looks like a habit. Enough happy customers and the reader stops checking whether you’re any good and starts assuming it.
Ten happy customers a month and you’ll out-rank firms twice your size by Christmas.
There’s a second win, too, and it’s the one people forget. Google reads those reviews the same way the customer does. A profile that’s steadily gathering fresh, genuine reviews is one Google is happier to show in the map box — so reviews don’t just win the customers who find you, they help more customers find you in the first place. Getting trusted and getting found are the same lever pulled from two ends.
The habit, not the campaign
You don’t need a clever system or a QR code on the van. You need one small habit, done every time:
- Ask at the right moment. The best time is the minute the job’s done and the customer’s pleased — boiler humming, bathroom gleaming. A week later the glow’s gone and so is the review.
- Make it one tap. Send a short text with the direct link to your Google profile. If they have to go hunting for where to leave it, they won’t.
- Say what helps. “A line about the job and your postcode area really helps other locals find me” — you get a more useful review and a mention of the area you work.
- Reply to every one. A quick thank-you shows the next reader there’s a real person behind the name — and it’s a good place to answer the odd grumpy one calmly, in public.
Do that on every job and the maths does the rest. Ten a month is two a week — and inside a season you’ve gone from an empty window to a full one, and started out-ranking firms who’ve been going twice as long but never got round to asking.
Want the full picture?
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