Ian R: Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today we’re gonna have another little short solo podcast, we have a couple of great guests coming up, Isaac Peck is going to be on the show again. We’re gonna have another edition of drinking with Jay, which is one of my favorite segments that I’m looking forward to. Today I wanted to talk about something that seems to be happening quite a bit more lately as the market starts to turn and to be frank, we’re starting to market a little bit harder because maybe during 2020, we were doing pretty fantastic. Like a lot of home inspectors, we just kind of exploded, doing as many inspections as we wanted but now it’s transitioning into a buyers market. The buyers’ market is going to be awesome, by the way, that’s going to be fantastic to be in but the transition between a seller’s market and a buyers’ market, is really not a fun time period for us as home inspectors. So we may be pounding the pavement a little bit more than we used to.

At least twice last week and pretty much just about almost weekly. I get phone calls from either clients or potential clients this morning, emails and phone calls about, hey, I’m doing quote unquote, everything I can and it’s not working. Matter of fact, I got a phone call last week a guy said, I have been pounding the pavement handing out cards or realtor’s offices and it’s just not working. They already have their preferred inspectors and that’s it. So I wanted to take the time to talk about this because whenever I hear that, I start to ask questions. So I started to ask this one guy questions. Well, how many offices? Have you gone to? Oh, a lot, a lot. Okay, well, how many agents were at that office? Oh, I don’t know. Were you wearing your logoed shirt? No, I don’t have a logo yet. What about your website? I just threw something up on GoDaddy. Okay, come to find out he had visited a couple of offices and then got discouraged and stopped and thought to himself, there’s got to be a better way to market. So he was doing everything the wrong way. Let’s be frank, none of us like to go, and well, maybe some of us do. At least I don’t like to walk cold into an office and introduce myself because it is just guaranteed rejection, day in and day out but visiting real estate offices has been a staple of home inspection marketing, for as long as the home inspection industry has been around. Guys tend to get discouraged because we do it the wrong way. When we think we’re doing it the right way. We’ll go visit some offices so that we can say I have visited real estate offices. Then what we do is we go home and we send out a bunch of mass emails. When was the last time we hired somebody off of a mass email? Hey, would you like to buy this product? Yeah, no, we mark it as spam and move on. So why would an agent hire us from that? Those are the feel-good things to say, Oh, I’m doing quote-unquote, everything I can I visit real estate agents’ offices, I sent out emails. What else can I do?

Let’s take a look at just this one aspect, visiting real estate offices because it is extremely effective. When done right. The problem is, not many people are doing it right. So I’ll tell you my experience with it. The reason I found out that it worked? Well, first of all, there are home inspectors that I know right now, that have started their business, doing a couple of 100 inspections the first couple of years, the first year, and then the next year even more, because their primary marketing was going in visiting real estate offices. Then I know some home inspectors that give up early and the vast majority never get anywhere with it. So my own experience is when I first started, there wasn’t a podcast for me to listen to. There wasn’t any kind of resources out there, for the most part, to say, Hey, this is how you get your business off the ground. I was just sitting there one day and I said, Well, I have to go to the source, I have to go to real estate agents because they get to meet the clients before me. I was doing really well online and that’s an extremely important part of things. We’ll get to that in a minute but I needed something more substantial. So what I did was I would wake up in the morning, and I would pretend it was my nine-to-five job. Wake up, put my inspection uniform on. That’s key, have your inspection uniform on. Mine was if you’ve listened to the dress for success podcast that we did a few weeks ago, it was blue jeans and a work boots shirt tucked in a polo with my logo on a hat with my logo on it. Nine to five, I would visit real estate offices. I would do more than just visit it was very methodical. So first of all, we need to have our uniforms on. The one guy I was telling you about this past week that had called me. He was just showing up. He’s like well, I was wearing a nice button-up shirt tucked in, but we don’t want them to know necessarily remember us, and we want them to remember our brand. Oh, there’s that home inspector from ABC home inspections. Oh, there’s that home inspector from East Coast home inspections. We want them to recognize us. So first thing, always dress in your inspection uniform. If we don’t have a professional logo, if we do not have a professional uniform, because we’re waiting to get our first couple of jobs, we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot, it’s wasted time going to offices before we have the basics in place. Have our brand have our uniform in place because showing up in khaki pants, and a nice button-up shirt is not going to get you anywhere, we don’t look professional.

The second thing that we want to have in place is our online presence. So if somebody says, Hey, here’s a great contractor, I’ve used them a whole bunch, can you start recommending them, the first thing I go and do is look at him online. If he doesn’t have a website, I don’t even recommend them. If he has kind of a junky website that he just threw up. I don’t recommend him. I don’t want to recommend a… what we call a tailgate Slammer to my clients, my clients are important to me. So why would an agent recommend us if we don’t look like we’ve ever existed? Have everything in place, if we’re going to go into battle? Why show up with no shield, no sword, no helmet, and just nothing? Then if we’re handing our business cards, do we just get the free ones off of Vistaprint with a standard Vistaprint quote unquote logo, which is just a little icon? It’s just wasted time. So before we go and visit real estate offices have that stuff in place. Again, the logo, uniform, website, and your online presence have the very basics at least of social media, Facebook, and Google My Business. That’s the map listing if you don’t know what that is. So don’t show up at the offices before you have that. That doesn’t help.

Now, the second thing, one of the things that he mentioned that he was doing, and I hear a lot is oh, well, I showed up and I gave them a stack of cards, or I showed up I give them a stack of cards and a big bowl of candy. Or I gave them a gift basket. Why are we giving them things right now? So we have the… it’s called The Four touch rule sounds super creepy, but it’s actually an effective marketing technique. People recommend someone that they trust. We as human beings trust on a very arbitrary basis, actually. So once we’re familiar with someone, we automatically tend to have trust formed, there’s a whole bunch of science behind the four-touch rule. I’m not going to get into it or pretend that I know it.  Once we’ve touched a person four times as a salesman, then that person starts to trust us. So a touches. Hey, my name is Ian, nice to meet you one touch. We see them again. Hey, good to see you again, see him at an inspection. Oh, hey, so and so. By the fourth time, you have that relationship cinched. Now they recommend you. It has been a hard-set rule in my business model and millions of business models around the world for a very, very long time.

We need to engender trust. So this is what I would do. I would walk in, and I’d have nothing with me. Except maybe like at the time anyways, a clipboard or a device or whatever and I go right up to the admin. The admin’s important the guy or girl sitting at the front desk. We’ll get to that in just a minute. All I would ever leave them is one card. There’s a reason why I would only leave them one card because I would go in and I’d give my spiel, hey, I’m kind of downplaying a little bit. Hey, my name is Ian. I’m doing the typical home inspector thing and we all kind of chuckle. Hey, I just wanted to introduce myself. Here’s a business card. If you have any questions, let me know. So what I would do is burn right through that first touch. If I left them a stack of cards, they’re going to throw it away. If I leave them a gift basket, they’re going to eat the goodies inside and forget all about me. gift baskets do not engender trust. Now if you ask them, would you like it? If I brought a gift basket? Oh, heck yeah. Is that going to get you on your work? No. It’s really not, it’s just going to cost you a whole bunch of money, to be frank.

So we hear a lot about how relationship marketing is not effective marketing because it’s a dead end, and that is true. We should have a marketing machine built but that comes later on this. We’re just talking about getting ourselves started or giving ourselves a boost. If we’ve had a lull in our business, because this is the easiest, this is the lowest hanging fruit for home inspection marketing. So the reason I only leave one card is to basically just save money because why give them something they’re going to throw out? I’d make sure I’d have some really awesome business cards. I would not leave them brochures at this time. Not even close. So I’m going to tell you why in a minute.

So I would get to know the admin. The reason being is I always hear people say, Oh, I can’t get past the admin, I can’t get past the guy or the girl at the front desk. Why do you want to get past them, make them your ally, they are the most important person in that office because they are the gatekeeper to the broker and to the agents. So this is what I do. So let’s say that first visit I just told you about the girl at the desk, her name is Amber. So now what I do is I go back to my truck, and I’d make a route. So I would visit this office, and I start marking down what offices I visited, and I’d make a route. I’d follow that route every two to three weeks. I’d make visits on them. I’d make notes, all that stuff. So on the first visit, I meet Amber met Amber, very nice. has a picture of her dog on her desk. She loves her dog, a golden retriever. Cool. The next time I go back, it’s a different person.

It’s Katie. Hey, Katie. Hey, I don’t know if Amber mentioned me. My name is Ian, during the typical home inspector thing. Just wanted to introduce myself. I was here a few weeks ago, I left my business card with Amber. You know, hopefully, she’s doing good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, she had to bring your dog to the vet. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Yeah, the golden retriever. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So now I write down Hey, met Katie. She seems to be good friends with Amber. They kind of work and she’s covering her shift all that stuff. So now Amber and Katie start talking in the background. Oh, isn’t even so nice. Oh, yeah. I met that guy.

So third time in. I say, Oh, hey, Amber. How’s your dog? Oh, good. Ian, thank you. Are you leaving me another business card? Oh, yeah. Sometimes I wouldn’t even get to the fourth visit because eventually, this is what would happen. The manager would come out because Amber and Katie have been talking about me. Oh, hey, how are you? Oh, good. Thank you. Nice to meet you. My name is Ian. I just want to leave you a business card. Here’s where the one-card trick comes in. I’ve only left three business cards at this point at most. At this office. I would hand the broker one business card. It would happen like clockwork all the time. Here you go. Thanks and the broker stated Ian Ian Ian. Let me tell you something about marketing. Don’t leave somebody just one business card. Leave me a stack. Oh, oh, are you sure? Yeah. Okay, let me go get those for you. So now, instead of giving him a stack that he’s going to throw away, he’s asked for my business cards, there’s a complete change in mentality now. So now he has my stack of cards. So then I can go back in and talk with them.

I’ve already friended them on Facebook, the admins and the broker and some of the agents will sometimes pop in and out. Now as new agents are coming into the office, they asked the admin, hey, who does everybody recommend? Well, Joe over here, but I tell you what, Ian’s really good and the broker has a stack of his cards here. Oh, yeah, I’ll give him a try. So that’s our lead into the whole office, or the admins get to know them. Most of the time, they’re actually really nice people because they have to deal with the public all the time and sometimes, we can just come in and brighten up their day a little bit. Now, they like us. Now they’re going to help us along.

So only leave one card, only talk to the admin at first we want to talk to the agents and stuff that are walking around, ignore them for the moment, we’re in it for the long game, and visit revisits the office every two to three weeks and keep a log. There’s a home inspector that I know in my area. He’s doing two, four-hour routes a week. So he works full time. Great inspector, but he takes two four-hour segments each week to do a couple of different routes and it’s already getting him to work.

An inspector who left my company years ago did the same thing. He did 100 inspections his first I think it was like five months after he did this. Now I will caveat it with this. That wasn’t the ideal situation they gave you it actually really really stinks to do this. It’s never going to end up just like that. I’ve had it honed over almost 20 years of doing this but it didn’t start out that way and it probably won’t start out that way with you. So that guy who did 100 inspections in the first five months. Awesome. Except he did six to eight months of rejection, basically visiting offices day in and day out.

So we need to basically embrace the awfulness of visiting these offices because there’s going to be a lot of rejection. We’re going to walk into an office admin doesn’t care broker says, Hey, we’re to have a home inspector, okay bye. That rejection doesn’t bother me because I just touched them once I still go back and visit them. Hey, I know you already hate me. Home Inspector, you know, two, three weeks later, just want to say hi, here’s one business card. All I’m trying to get through is basically just four times of interacting with them or talking with them on some level. So we’re working our way in. So maybe the home inspector that that office recommends, is not giving them a whole lot of attention. So we just want to be there. When they start to reject that home inspector, well, who’s the next guy on the list? Well, Ian’s right here. Basically, we’re casting our bread on the water and seeing what comes back and it all comes down to math.

So I’ve said this before, in the podcast, our average real estate agent that we have in our system gives us about 10 inspections a year. So let’s say we have lofty goals, and we want to be a single inspector that does, you know, 1000 inspections a year, we only need 100 referring agents. I mean, what if we want to do 200 A year. We only need 20 referring agents. So in my area, there are over 4000 Real estate agents, I don’t need 3980 of them. I only need 20. I can have 3980 Real estate agents hate my guts and completely reject me. If I want to do 200 inspections a year. I just need 20 of them to be like, Yeah, I’ll give you a shot. So one of the problems is I almost called this podcast, don’t go fishing because I remember this one guy. He said I’d get so discouraged, I’d go fishing afterwards. Then all I did was go fishing because it wasn’t working.

The difference between somebody who is successful at visiting real estate offices and someone who’s not is the person who gives up, you’re going to get rejected, embrace that. Embrace the vast majority 99.9% of people on these calls are going to reject you. Awesome. You only need that point of 1%. We only need 20 agents to do 200 inspections a year. At that point. Now we can start building our marketing machine that happens around the other stuff.

Now I will give this bit of information. The first thing would be the first mistake that most guys make when they start visiting real estate offices. We talked about the uniform, the logo and all that stuff but they pick the wrong office. They pick, you know Coldwell Banker in the area has, you know, 800 agents, I want to talk to Coldwell Banker. This office has 80 agents, I want to talk to them because I can get it all done with one visit. Ignore those offices. Those offices are so big, and they get so much attention because you’re listening to this podcast right now but so was a lot of your competition, they’re doing the same thing that you’re doing. I always ignored offices, if it had over 20 or 30 agents, my ideal office would be anywhere from three to 10 agents because number one, they didn’t have home inspectors knocking down their door advertising. So oftentimes I would go in and be like, Oh, well, hello. Oh, okay. No, oh, you want to visit us? Yeah, sure. So I wouldn’t even have to get to four touches, sometimes the first or second visit, I’d be doing an office presentation. Now, that’s a whole different story. We’ll get into that in another podcast, bringing bagels and all sorts of things. I have Office presentations. But the first thing is to get to that point and it’s a lot harder, if not near impossible to get to that point, by visiting the larger offices and finding every small office in your area. We may worry, well, they don’t do enough volume, it doesn’t matter because let’s say we go to an office, and they are just small potatoes beyond small potatoes, two or three agents in the office. So there’s a broker, her son, and just some random agent who’s just starting out. So we meet them, and they still do a few transactions a year. So now we get to meet the other agents on the other side of that transaction, we touch them one time, then we leave them a card, then we send a, you know, a follow-up email. That’s the only time I like email marketing, following up with them versus the cold, sending out a whole bunch of emails to them. That’s just not effective, that’s spamming people instead. So we’ve now let’s say they only give us three transactions a year. Cool. That’s three other agents that we get to now meet, and they get to watch us inspect and if we’re truly awesome, then they’re gonna want to refer us if we’re truly awesome at what we do. If somebody gave us the opportunity to perform an inspection for other agents to see if they want to refer us we do it right. Well, that’s what those referrals are. So don’t be upset with small beginnings.

So to review, have all of your battle gear ready? You’re going into battle by visiting these offices. Has your online presence all been set up with your logo? Have a fantastic website, and have your uniform also picked out. We should be walking billboards. Second, get to know the admin only leave one business card and make a route. Find all the small offices in your area and visit them on a regular basis every two to three weeks and take notes each time. The final and most important one, is to not give up because of rejection, enjoy the rejection because out of that rejection will still come to some people that will refer us and that’s what we build our business off of. Remember, 99.9% of agents can completely reject us and we don’t need them. It’s that small percentage.

So this is just a short little rant from Ian Robertson over at inspector toolbelt talk. Hopefully, this information helps you, and if you’re just starting your business offer just try to boost things up as things slow down slightly here. Then take some of these pointers, and try to apply them to your business. To be honest, it’s really not that much work and it’s near free marketing. So stay tuned for our next episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk and Beon actually might be back as we do our Q3 market review looking forward to that podcast. So thanks for listening.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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