Partnering with HelpHound

Most B2B businesses will tell you - publicly or privately - that many (most?) of their best customers come thanks to referrals from their business contacts*. So if you run a business, current client of HelpHound or not - please read on.

*business contacts: we don't expect referrals from direct competitors, obviously, but most of our successful referrals come from either businesses in the same line of work but in a different geographical area or the referring business's professional advisors, including marketing, advertising and PR agencies.

Going from Zero to Hero as these two businesses have done (the one on the left had two reviews on joining HelpHound, the one on the right none at all, showing great faith!) is not the only reason a business joins HelpHound. Others include compliance - it comes as a surprise to some that it is illegal to hand-pick customers to invite to write reviews in the UK - and SEO (a good flow of reviews through your own site boosts that considerably), to star ratings in local search (very highly valued by most of our clients)

This screenshot shows precisely what HelpHound aims to achieve for all our clients - leading in map and organic search, with a great score from a convincing number of reviews, as well as the 'stars in search' derived from the business's own reviews under its organic listing (many people think those stars in search are 'awarded' by Google, when they are drawn - by Google - from the reviews hosted on the business's own website

Criteria for partnership

The key to recommending a business is that there should be no, or at the very least minimal**, downside for the referring or the referred business. 

**While HelpHound provides the best review management available globally (that we are aware of), we cannot, and should not, make promises regarding the elimination of negative reviews. UK law currently - and rightly - prohibits such activity anyway, and there will always be the tiny minority of consumers who are determined to wilfully misunderstand what a business has done for them. We have operated in this 'real world' for well over a decade now, and our own statistics show that over 97 per cent of erroneous reviews are addressed before they ever reach the public web.

Let us put this in the context of HelpHound, first for the referred business...

• HelpHound is demonstrably the best at what it does - it achieves better outturns, in terms of improved Google scores, flow of reviews and quality of reviews, than any other operator in the review management sector - provably

• Everything HelpHound does - and everything HelpHound advises its clients to do - is in compliance with UK (and EU) law

• Every review that flows through HelpHound is moderated for...

• intelligible English, both spelling and grammar 
• factual accuracy 
• potentially misleading comments

And all of this enables HelpHound to...    

• Guarantee success - positively and unequivocally, from day 1 - and no single client has yet invoked that guarantee. The businesses you refer will...

• look better in terms of Google score - 4.9*** is our aim
• increase their flow of reviews to Google
• have a positive flow of reviews to their own website - massively enhancing social proof, click-through and SEO
• enjoy 'stars in search' - see above
• be compliant with the CMA regulations

***very occasionally, we need to advise a business to modify its CRM before embarking on review management. Our moderation is designed to eliminate, as far as the regulations allow, factually inaccurate, potentially misleading and sometimes just plain unfair reviews. It is not, and never should be, seen as a mechanism for a business whose CRM is deficient to deflect fairly held negative opinions. 

So: your valuable business contacts will be safe in our hands. No comebacks and definitely no backlash. Our aim is for them to all feel eternally grateful that you introduced us, day in day out, year in year out, from day one.

Now, for you - our partner (and the referring business)...

We are completely open in terms of remuneration: our referring businesses receive...

• 25% of any initial charges we make to the referred business 

• 25% of the first annual charges we make to the referred business

• 10% of any subsequent fees charged - for the lifetime of the referral (our first referrer is currently approaching year 10 of such fees)

An example of a single-location business: fees paid to the referring business:

Total fees paid to referrer in year 1 =         £ 1,171

In subsequent years =                               £  735

Referring one business a month - fees at the end year 1 = £14,052

The kind of business that benefits most from HelpHound's service...

It might help if we turn that question on its head: what kind of business benefits least?

• online retailers: if all the business needs are star ratings for the products it sells, there are far better alternatives

• monopolies: unless they really care about their customers - and by 'really care' we mean that they respond to every one of their Google reviews in a timely manner, then it's a 'no' for them as well

So it's service and professional businesses, those that seriously rely on their reputations, both in the wider community and online, in order to thrive...

• legal
• medical
• financial

...and related businesses: accountancy, recruitment, estate agency and so on (not to mention businesses in marketing, PR and advertising!). And subsets of these businesses, depending on their current presence online...

• Businesses with few Google reviews

• Businesses that have flouted the law to get Google reviews (it's surprising how many do - usually unwittingly)

• Businesses that have been 'sold' a review website

• Businesses that have been 'sold' reputation management 

and most of all...

• Businesses that have not yet found a safe way to engage with reviews

Now for the $64,000 question

Can HelpHound reassure us, the referring business, that the businesses we refer will benefit, at the bare minimum, by the fees they will be charged? In other words: can you be sure that HelpHound membership will be profitable for them?

The simple answer is 'If we analyse the business referred and consider that we cannot add value by at least the amount charged, we will advise both you and the referred business.'  

But let us add some numbers - here is a separate article focused on concrete results - and since it refers to an estate agency, let us extrapolate that in terms of hard cash. With an average house price in London of £700,000, and an agency fee of 1.5%, that equates to a fee of £10,500. So one extra transaction a year earns this particular business more than two and a half times HelpHound's initial fee and well over three times our fee from year two onwards. 

An extra reassurance is that we are fully aware that should HelpHound not add value for the referred business, the referrer will soon know, and we will have put the continued flow of referrals at risk. We are here to ensure 100% win/win for all parties.

Our suggestion

You select a single business with which you have built up a trusted relationship. Talk to them and highlight the fact that you have found the following...

1. A safe and secure way to guarantee a steady flow of great reviews - to their own website (SEO and social proof) and Google (score and stars in search)
2. That is guaranteed to work

And then simply send them an email copied to us - info@helphound.com

We will do the rest. We look forward to making the first bank transfer!