Earlier this year VouchedFor ran a guide to showcase ‘top-rated’ advisers in The Times.

We’re delighted to hear that they will be doing the same in 2020. But, if you want to be included time is running out.

To qualify for inclusion, you need to:

• Have a minimum of 10 reviews since 1st January 2019 with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 or higher
• Have an all-time VouchedFor rating of 4.5 or higher
• Be a verified VouchedFor member

The deadline

The deadline to qualify for 2020’s guide is 31st December 2019.

However, we recommend that you send enough review invites by the end of November as not everyone you invite will leave a review.

Publication date

The guide will be distributed nationally in The Times on 8th February 2020.

Closer to that date we’ll publish a checklist showing the things you should do to capitalise on your inclusion in the guide.

What are you waiting for?

If you use VouchedFor as a way of managing your online reputation, to create new enquiries or both, we recommend doing everything possible to qualify for the guide. The online tools VouchedFor provides mean it couldn’t be easier to ask clients for reviews. We wrote about these recently, if you missed that you can still read it by clicking here.

Remember:

• It isn’t just ‘new’ clients who you can ask to leave a review. Long-standing clients are perfectly positioned to explain the value they receive from working with you and can now leave ‘follow-up’ reviews each year, which count towards guide qualification.
• Why not ask both partners of a couple to leave a review? That way, you might get two for the price of one!
• You can now invite ‘First Impression’ reviews, which also count towards guide qualification. This is particularly helpful for newer advisers and planners struggling to build up lots of client reviews.

Being included in the guide isn’t the only reason for keeping your reviews up to date. VouchedFor didn’t believe it was right that some advisers and planners with lots of reviews, but who hadn’t received a new one recently, were ranking so highly. Therefore, they changed their algorithm on 24th October to put a greater emphasis on review recency. That means it makes sense to build a process for regularly collecting reviews rather than focusing all your efforts over a few short weeks.

Free resources to help you qualify

Our online review request template is free to download and can be found by clicking here.

The template explains how to use the VouchedFor system to request reviews and includes some suggested text for you to use.

If you qualified for the 2019 guide but haven’t done anything to promote your inclusion all’s not lost. There’s still plenty you can do to capitalise on being a ‘top-rated’ adviser, click here to read our top 10.

Finally, if you’re not yet a VouchedFor user, click here to learn more and sign up.