Charge More - Deliver More

The secret to building a thriving home inspection business even in challenging markets comes down to a deceptively simple principle: "Raise your prices until the phone stops ringing." Tom Perenzino, owner of Modern Home Inspections in Connecticut, reveals how this philosophy helped him build a company charging over $1,000 per inspection on average—more than double the national average—while capturing 3% market share in one of the country's most difficult real estate environments.

What separates premium inspection businesses from the struggling majority isn't just higher prices, but the comprehensive value they deliver. Perenzino's "one call gets it all" approach turns basic home inspections into complete property evaluation packages including septic, radon, water testing, and specialized services. This approach transforms a $675 inspection into $2,800 service packages that clients eagerly pay for, appreciating the convenience of coordinating through a single provider rather than juggling multiple vendors.

The psychology behind successful pricing proves fascinating. Contrary to inspector fears, most clients don't balk at higher fees when they understand the corresponding value. Perenzino recommends never ending client conversations on price, but instead discussing cost early followed by a thorough explanation of included benefits. This approach, combined with strong operational systems and dedicated support staff, creates a seamless experience that justifies premium rates while allowing inspectors to focus exclusively on delivering exceptional inspections.

For solo practitioners and small firms, Perenzino offers counterintuitive advice: charge more than larger companies. With limited availability and consistent demand, single inspectors should leverage their expertise through premium pricing rather than working themselves to exhaustion at bargain rates. The resulting financial foundation enables investments in training, equipment, and support systems that further enhance service quality, creating a virtuous cycle where higher prices enable better service that justifies those higher prices.

What will you do with this information? Will you systematically test price increases in your market? Consider expanding your service offerings? Or continue assuming clients won't pay more? The evidence suggests that quality service commands premium prices in every market—the only question is whether you're ready to claim your true value.

Check out our home inspection app at www.inspectortoolbelt.com
Need a home inspection website? See samples of our website at www.inspectortoolbelt.com/home-inspection-websites

*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

Transcript

Ian Robertson  
Tom Paranzino, welcome to the show. How are you? 

Tom Paranzino  
I'm well, thanks for having me. 

Ian Robertson  
No, the gratitude is on my side. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule, and you truly have a busy schedule. Congratulations, your company had a baby, from what I understand.

Tom Paranzino  
Yes, we did. 

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. And you guys are scrambling to get everything together. One of your employees, their wife had a baby. And so I appreciate you guys, you know, coming on and despite all the rescheduling and things that you have going on.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, absolutely, when the baby comes two weeks early, you know, you're running around trying to get things filled so..

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, never on time. Are they, right? 

Tom Paranzino  
Nope.

Ian Robertson  
Stinking babies coming early or late. But listen, we have you on the show today because you were actually messaging me, and you told us something very important to the show that we have talked about for many years and we haven't talked enough about this season. So you said, Ian, I was listening to one of your other podcasts, and you're right. We deliver a better service now, and our average inspection fee is a little over $1,000. 

Tom Paranzino  
Yep.

Ian Robertson  
That immediately set a set a light off on. And I'm like, I need to talk to this guy. So Tom, tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into that. Your name, your company, where you're located, anything like that.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Tom Paranzino. We covered that already, but I'm the owner of Modern Home Inspections. We're based out of Connecticut. We've been open for six and a half years. I have a team of four inspectors, some operations folks, some ancillary people, a couple separate septic inspectors, and a RADON mitigation installer.

Ian Robertson  
Oh, wow. Okay, that's quite a large company. 

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah.

Ian Robertson  
And you're located in Connecticut, right?

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah.

Ian Robertson  
You said that. You know what's pretty amazing about what you do, I'd like everyone to understand, you have all these people that work for you. You're charging $1,000 on average for an inspection, delivering an amazing service. A matter of fact, our podcast is called "Charge More, Deliver More." But I follow the markets in a large swath of the US and Canada, and you're not very far from me in Connecticut there, Connecticut is actually one of the markets that are hurting the most.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah. I believe I saw a report the other day that Connecticut, the Northeast in general, was the worst in the state or the country, rather. And I believe Connecticut was on the top of that list.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. So I want to make sure that we emphasize because one of the things I hear people say is, in my area I can't charge more, in my area I can't do, this in my area...And then insert whatever, I'm going to call it an excuse. 

Tom Paranzino  
Sure.

Ian Robertson  
You know, I might get some flack for that. And you know, if you give me flack, everybody just go ahead, shoot me flack. I like listening to it, but um, we have you on in one of the hardest markets in the country right now. We had Preston Kincade on one time, and he's in one of the hardest markets too. 

Tom Paranzino  
Yes, he is. 

Ian Robertson  
So what you're doing is doable for all of us. So what motivated you to start charging essentially about two and a half times the national average for inspections?

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, I think it became a natural progression, and, you know, to kind of piggyback on things you've talked about before. You know, it's not just a home inspection. So there's a lot involved, and there's other services that people are looking for. Sometimes they don't even know that they're looking for those services. And as we have grown over the years, it's kind of been a progression of someone asks for a particular service and we don't provide it. Maybe it's the first time we heard about the service, and we start looking into it and realize, hey, that's kind of in the same umbrella, and there's a few services that we just started looking into, getting, you know, trained and certified and start providing. There's other services that were a little riskier, like septic, for instance, where there's some specialized training, a lot of, you know, some equipment and stuff that's needed. And in those cases, what we looked to do was find someone that was willing to subcontract with us, and we would do that for a while, until we kind of had proof of concept that it works. And then for quality control reasons, we start looking at, how can we bring this in house? So we've kind of systematically done that throughout the years, and now we've built this list of services. In fact, our company slogan is "one call gets it all." So you know, when someone calls in and they're looking for well, septic, radon, everything with their home inspection, they don't have to call three different companies. And particularly in our market, that was the norm. And I particularly remember the day that I knew this was the right path when I had someone, and we were having some scheduling difficulties with the client's agent, and she was only available on a certain day, or something along those lines, and we didn't have an opening in that time slot. And the client called back, you know, I said, good luck. Here's a couple people you might call that I know do good work. And she called back about an hour later, and she said, you said you have Friday at two or whatever it was open. I said, yeah. And you could do all three services, the home, the well, the septic, all at once. I said, Yes. She goes. All right. I don't care if my agent can be there or not. I'm scheduling it right now. And I was like, okay, this is the right path. And then we hear from agents too. It makes, you know, the referring real estate agents' lives simpler. They look better, all that stuff where they just say, hey, call this guy, call this company. They'll get you set up. They'll get everything done for you.

Ian Robertson  
Man, I wrote down a bunch of stuff while you were talking there. You just, you just gave us several actionable items and several gold nuggets all in that. So here's a couple things I wrote down. And this is something after my own heart, ancillaries is where the money's at. 

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, definitely. 

Ian Robertson  
We turn a $400 or $500 inspection into $1000, $1,500, there's mornings where we walk away from the morning with almost 1500 bucks, yeah, just for the morning. 

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah. 

Ian Robertson  
And the client's happy, and we give them a great service, because we're standing there like we're charging you $1,500 for our morning. We're going to make sure you get a great product. And they're like, this is totally worth it. I didn't have to call five people, and it's all inclusive, like, there's something to be said for listen, I inspected the whole house, so I noticed the Orangeburg piping inside of the house. So I know that I'm going to have a problem out at the septic tank. I know there's going to be some issues that otherwise wouldn't have been connected. So it benefits everybody. 

Tom Paranzino  
It really does. 

Ian Robertson  
But you said something about proof of concept. That was a really cool way of getting proof of concept. Can you reiterate that for us? Because I want everybody to hear that.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll use the septic as a prime example. You know, I had met a couple guys on a septic inspection that were hired by the client directly. I was doing a home inspection early on, and we kind of hit it off. They were cool guys, and we just started chatting, and they mentioned that they'll do discounted home inspections or septic inspections for home inspectors, and we have an opportunity to mark it up 100 bucks, 150 whatever it was. And I said, oh, that's pretty awesome. And we started doing it almost right away. And did that for a couple years, and started noticing that, hey, this is a real thing. It works. The only downside ever was that, you know, I can't quality control, what this other company is doing, but that stuff you can work through, too, that's not that big of a deal, as long as everyone's very clear on the expectations and all that stuff. And we did that for a handful of years, and I decided one day, okay, now let's do the math. Let's see what it looks like. Let's see what our investment costs are, and so on and so forth. And the math worked out, and we pulled the trigger and brought it in house, and so now we have three septic inspectors on our team.

Ian Robertson  
Man that's awesome. And as a side point, septic inspections are my favorite. If we only ever did septic inspections for the rest of our lives, I'd be thrilled. They don't take nearly the level of intensity as a home inspection. Way less liability. You have to be completely ignorant and not looking at all to miss stuff. And, worst case scenario, septic systems, you're just a complete idiot and you miss it. It's like, okay, well, the tank is five grand.

Tom Paranzino  
Right.

Ian Robertson  
All right, so it's not like a $50,000 roof, and people leave you alone when you're standing over a hole full of poop.

Tom Paranzino  
You're not wrong. You know, for the sake of opening up a whole other can of worms. I will mention that part of our business model with the septic was we do white label it for other home inspection companies in our market, and that has kept us booked out about two weeks.

Ian Robertson  
White labeling inspection services. Now there's something I'd like to talk a little bit about. Did you have a little bit of market pushback with that? Because I've heard of other people saying they'd want to do it, but then they're like, no, nobody would ever do it. I've never actually met somebody who's white labeling quite that way.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, we have had zero market pushback on it whatsoever. You know, we started doing it right away. You know, obviously we're doing our company's stuff. The one thing that we did do is, even though we operate as one internal team, we did make the septic division, so to speak, its own legal entity. And that was very intentional, so that, you know, our colleagues in our market, didn't feel like they were hiring a competitor. You know, we didn't want to blur those lines. We're not trying to take your agents or your inspections or any of that stuff. We're just providing you a service that you can make some extra money on and, you know, make you look better also. And, you know, so the business practices and the way we go about stuff for our, you know, our partners in the home inspection space is the same way we do things on the home inspection side for us. And so it works out very well, and it keeps those guys more busy. In fact, our third inspector is in training right now because we've been at over 100% capacity for weeks.

Ian Robertson  
Man, well, if anybody ever wants proof of concept, there it is right there. Well, first of all, anybody who's listening, most I think you know what white labeling is, but white labeling is basically one company provides a service for another company, and it makes it look like the other company is doing it. So how white label do you get? Do you show up with the other company's shirts and labels or?

Tom Paranzino  
No, white label might maybe not an exactly appropriate term. We're really the subcontractor for them, so we don't try and hide who we are, and one of the main reasons for that is we provide post inspection support for that home inspection company's agents and clients, they're absolutely able to call us with questions, and, you know, referrals for people who, you know, will repair septic systems and maintenance tips and stuff like that. So we didn't want to completely white label it, because then those home inspection companies, possibly especially the guys that are single operators, they might not have the bandwidth to be able to, you know, manage that stuff. Plus it's a different animal.

Ian Robertson  
Well, that makes a lot of sense, because I can't imagine that you would be able to give your clients any kind of support if it's completely white labeled. Inspector doesn't really know what you looked at, and he's trying to tell people, well, subcontractor, so cool, yeah, it's still white label, but it's kind of like a different tier of it. Man, you're doing a lot of cool stuff out there. Do you have a background in business? Or is your background, what's your background?

Tom Paranzino  
My background is a little bit diverse. I did come from the corporate world. At one point, I was running multiple Verizon Wireless corporate stores in my younger years. I had owned a wholesale car business, where we did repair work and sales and stuff like that. And then, believe it or not, I've been in the fire service for a long time as well, so as a firefighter paramedic, and actually, I still work as a career firefighter paramedic two days a week, two 24 hour shifts a week. So my background is a little bit diverse. So I don't have, you know, a business degree or a marketing degree, or any of that type of stuff, I kind of, I personally, have always leveraged common sense and, you know, paying attention to what's going on around me, and then trying to really structure systems and processes around the stuff that we do so that it works. But yeah, my background is not necessarily in business.

Ian Robertson  
Well and you mentioned a degree there. A lot of us think a degree maybe makes us qualified. I don't even have a high school degree, but, you know, you could go to college for music, but you could never play like Eddie Van Halen. He didn't go to college for music, you know? Yeah. So that's pretty amazing. So what made you decide to start raising your prices and vicariously raising your level of service.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah. So sometimes, and I will say pricing fluctuates from time to time. And, you know, market dependent, season dependent, and it's one of the reasons that I we don't post our pricing online. A, we want to talk to the person and explain how we're providing value, not just some, you know, random service. We use the term, you know, when people are talking to us, you're comparing apples to oranges, not apples to apples. You know, we don't do the same thing as every home inspection company. So we don't necessarily just raise, raise, raise, raise, raise. Obviously, that's the goal. But sometimes I will raise or lower prices on the back end on my ops team. I don't necessarily tell them, you know, and there's some statistical reasons behind why we do that, but the goal is obviously to to raise fees for a whole host of reasons. We can pay our people better and provide better support and value and systems and all that stuff. But, you know, one area that we decided not to discount, so to speak, was okay, I'm adding 10 services. Am I going to get a discount? And, you know, I had the realization that if they're going to call a home inspection company, and our price is pretty similar to every other home inspection company, for a home inspection, probably on the higher end of normal, and then they're going to do radon, and then they're going to do well and water testing, and they're gonna do a septic, and they're gonna call three different people for those three different services. They're not getting a discount to do that, so we price them fairly, but we don't necessarily discount because someone's done a bunch of different services with us, and the net result of that is a high ticket. And you know, I'll give an example. We have an inspection on the calendar for next week. That is a $675 home inspection, a $2,800 ticket. 

Ian Robertson  
Oh, wow. Can I ask you what brought it up to $2,800?

Tom Paranzino  
Absolutely, a well inspection, water testing, and they did a slightly more advanced water test, septic inspection, mold testing, Connecticut does have a very specific foundation problem here, and we are certified to evaluate those, so they added that service. 

Ian Robertson  
I've heard of those yeah.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah. Termite inspection, I think that's it.

Ian Robertson  
But still, that's a pretty fancy ticket and you know, a lot of people criticize when we talk on the podcast, one of the biggest flack we get back is, I want to give people the best home inspection for the cheapest price. That bothers me so much, because that's like saying I want to give you the best steak for the cheapest price. You're still going to end up with a cheap steak.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah. I like to say that we're charging more so that we can provide a good value to people, and we're not racing to the bottom. We're trying to build a top tier team, the A plus players that do their job very well, provide good service and all that stuff. So you can't do that if you're trying to race to the bottom with price.

Ian Robertson  
And that's important. You're not a single inspector firm. So a single inspector firm saying, listen, I'm the best inspector in the universe, and I choose, for some crazy reason, to charge $250 for all my inspections. Okay, strange, but you do you buddy. But you have people, you cover a larger service area, and you hire people. If you charge less, would you have the same level of personnel that you have now? 

Tom Paranzino  
No, wouldn't be able to afford it.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and I guess that's the point. When people it, I'll tease my uncle here for a while. My uncle I was very close to, he used to get irritated at the people at McDonald's when they wouldn't make his burger right. I'm like, and even as a kid, I'm like, well pay three more dollars for the burger. But none of us would do that because we're like, it's McDonald's. We went there because at the time, dollar McChicken and, you know, $1 whatever burger. And it's like, we get what we pay for, but then we're not happy when we pay for it. Have you been following some of the stuff that, some home inspection forums, but some of the stuff with AI that people are worried about in our industry, have you been following some of that? 

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, very closely. 

Ian Robertson  
So one of the things that personally I feel, and I've heard others express it, is that AI eventually, and I don't think it's soon, I don't think it's gonna be in the next couple of years, will eventually make the barrier of entry so low that somebody with very low skills can hire a bunch of other people with low skills to go in with AI, scan a house, find like 60% of the stuff, and then give people a McDonald's version of a home inspection. 

Tom Paranzino  
Very possible. 

Ian Robertson  
Guys like you, I don't think are gonna go.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah and I guess we're kind of circling the point that we're both saying, high quality work is never going to go out of business, because there is, what is it, not Longhorn, but Texas Roadhouse was named the number one steakhouse in the country. Yeah, I know we laugh. It's good. I don't mind it. And it put out all these other small steakhouses in areas when it moves in, but it doesn't put out places like Ruth Chris's, even though that's a chain, or these big, fancy ones down in New York City, they don't care about Texas Roadhouse coming in and pushing them out. 

Tom Paranzino  
No, I don't think so either. I think there'll always be a place for quality work.

Tom Paranzino  
Right.

Ian Robertson  
Do you think that your business model is going to be sustainable, though? Like, how far do you think you can push it?

Tom Paranzino  
Good question. You know, when, in relation to AI, I can't necessarily answer that question, because, you know, it's moving so rapidly, you know, we're expecting to land somewhere around 10 to 11% market share in Connecticut. That's kind of like the next phase for us, but we are leaning heavily into AI in a bunch of different ways too, in fact, I've mandated my operations team spend 10% of their time either utilizing or playing or researching AI products and we're using it in a bunch of different ways that make them more effective and the field team more effective. So, you know, I don't know what it's going to do to our industry as a whole. I know that we will pivot and make it work no matter what.

Ian Robertson  
Oh, and I 100% agree with that. Higher end companies like you are going to own it and not worry about the lower end losing out to it. It's just a natural way of things. You just said that, and I really just want to emphasize this, you said you're going to get 10 to 11% market share is what you're planning on in Connecticut? What do you have now, if you don't mind me asking?

Tom Paranzino  
We sit right around 3% market share.

Ian Robertson  
For all of Connecticut?

Tom Paranzino  
Mhmm.

Ian Robertson  
Holy cow man. Okay, so, charging the prices that you do that, people are like, whoa, that's crazy, in one of the hardest markets in the country, you own 3% market share in an entire state? 

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah.

Ian Robertson  
I think you should do this podcast.

Tom Paranzino  
I don't know about that. You know, we do have a financial coach that's industry specific, and, you know, there's some evaluation of our market size and all that stuff. And you know, we came to the determination that 10, 11% was very doable, even up to 15% you know, was doable. It's not easy. It's a lot of work, but doable, you know, in some smaller markets, so we'd be considered a mid sized market, some very small markets, there's inspectors out there with 30, 40% of their market share. So, you know, if they, if they cover three counties or something like that, and you know, there's 10 inspectors in those counties, and you know, it's reasonable for some of those to get 34% market share as the market size grows. You know, market share numbers are obviously more difficult to obtain, but in a market our size, it is reasonable to get that 10, 11% market share.

Ian Robertson  
That's amazing. So I think all of us, I am learning a lot from you. All of us can learn from you. If somebody is sitting here listening to the podcast right now saying, okay, this is like the 50th time that Ian talked about this, raising prices. I raised my prices $25 last year. So I'm good, you know, and I laugh, because somebody just sent me their new price list, and it was literally out of their whole price tier, there was, like, 10 price tiers on their list. They went up $25 on seven out of them. And I'm like, okay, that's a beginning. That's incremental, but that's your first price increase in four years. What advice would you give specifically to one and two man shows, because that's where I see the problem at the most. And I'm working with a company right now, and he's hiring his first inspector, and he's just like, we're not making much money. I'm like, because you can't charge $350 for a home inspection and pay that guy, cover your expenses, step back from your own inspections and still make good money, you'd have to have 500 inspectors.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, no, that's really true. And I just want to make one quick point that I think a lot of single men, and I certainly didn't when I started in this, I didn't know that as you grow an operation, you know, your profit margin obviously decreases. I think everyone probably knows that. But I think what a lot of people don't know is that in our industry, specifically, if you're going to, if you're going to grow an operation, and have, you know, multiple inspectors and support team to on the backside of that, if you're doing things well, your profit margin is going to be somewhere around 20% and there's some fluctuation for years that you're putting marketing in or training people, and so on and so forth. But long term, that's kind of the goal, right around that 20% mark. So if you're only charging $350 and that's even your average fee, you know, you're making 70 bucks on that, and you still gotta pay your people and pay your software and insurances and all the stuff that go along with that. I might have an unpopular opinion on one and two man operations, but I think they should be charging more than I do, and I think that, you know, as a multiple inspection company owner, I have a duty to my people to keep their calendar full as best I can, and I have to be price sensitive at times. You know, we're always looking on how to provide more value so that we can continue raising prices over the years. But if you're a very good, reputable, single man shop or two guys, whatever, your calendar is probably full, and one thing that you can do when your capacity is maxed out, is raise your prices. And one of my friends years ago, he owns a successful business in a different industry, and we were just talking about price, and he said to me, in these exact words, raise your prices until the phone stops ringing. And that is never, it's never left my head. And I'm like, he's right, you know, I'm not saying go out there and just gouge everybody and do something crazy, but you should be systematically raising your prices. And listen, if it's January and you're in a market where it's dead like that, I know, some areas of the country it's flip flopped, but, you know, anywhere it gets cold in the winter and the real estate market slows down, you know, bring your prices down a little bit, if you have open slots on your calendar this week and get some work in. And I'm not saying drop them down 350 bucks. Drop them 50 bucks, whatever it might be, you should be shopping your competitors, by the way, also, so you know what room you have to stay competitive. But you know, if for the last two weeks, and you know, I'm a single guy, and I do 10 inspections a week, or that's all I have available, and I've had 10 inspections for the last two weeks. Guess what? Next week, raise your prices 50, 75, 100 bucks. The people who are referring to you because you do excellent work, they're still going to use you. And I can't tell you how many times in the inspection community, in some mastermind groups I'm part of where I hear people say, I raised my prices 75 bucks for the first time, and no one batted an eye. It's true. They're calling you for a reason. Are there price shoppers out there? 100%. And the bigger you get, and you get into digital marketing and all those types of things, you're gonna get price shoppers without question. And you know, our team's KPIs around that should be closing 65% of those clients that are just price shopping, but 95% is the KPI for referral clients calling in.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, and you said some great things there, and I'm going to remember that, if anybody remembers anything from this podcast, raise your prices till the phone stops ringing. That's a good simplification of very complex math. Well, you know, I mean, you just quoted some fairly complex math, and you work off of statistics, there's some complex math of, if you have a lot of demand, raising your prices or increasing your product are the only two ways to address that in reality.

Tom Paranzino  
Correct. 

Ian Robertson  
So, why, whereas home inspector's like, if we're charging 350 for a home inspection, our phone's ringing off the hook, why would we hire more home inspectors to feed and defeat a desire rather than raise our prices and control that desire and make more per inspection? When you were a single operator, I mean, did you start off low and go high, or?

Tom Paranzino  
I actually started..so in Connecticut, I think your market might be similar, where you have to intern under somebody?

Ian Robertson  
No, actually can intern under New York State, but it's not required. It's 100 fee paid inspections in New York, that's one of two ways to get your license. In Connecticut you guys are very different. You have to intern and you usually have to pay the person, right?

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah. I paid 1000s, yeah, over $10,000 I paid to have somebody intern me. Yeah. I actually took his pricing model, and I added 50 bucks to it day one, because I always thought he didn't charge enough. And I started that way. And then I just, every once in a while, with no statistics to back it, because I certainly was not tracking metrics and things like that back in the day like I do now, where I kind of live and die by numbers. But I would every once in a while, just raise the price a little bit, like I said before, to see what happens. And I also would be blown away when people still just booked the inspection.

Ian Robertson  
And I think that's the key. We all worry that everyone's gonna bat an eye, but everybody who's raised their prices just goes, nobody batted an eye. Unless you're just completely pricing yourself out like a crazy person, most people are gonna go, oh, okay. You know, I go to the gas station. I order a slice of pizza. I don't sit there and compare it to, you know, how much did you charge before? Like, this is the pizza I like. Even my mechanic. I'm pretty sure he's charging more than he ever has, but I like my mechanic. He does a good job. And I'm like, I'm not going to look for the cheapest mechanic. That's my car.

Tom Paranzino  
Absolutely. I also think it's important for people, when it comes to pricing, as the business owner, to not get hung up on pricing mentally. So when you're talking to people about what something costs, you should take a few hours someday and sit down and write out all the reasons why you think you are the best at what you do, and when someone's talking to you about price, you can talk to them about value and the things that you do and the things that are unique to you. And you know, at the end of the day, the average consumer just thinks home inspection, they're all the same, and that's your opportunity to let them know that what you do is different or better, or whatever. And, you know, I think they're called USPs, unique selling points or whatever, and you should have those. And if you have people that are answering phones for you, they should have those.

Ian Robertson  
You know, that's a fantastic point, because early on in my career, I used to think that everybody was looking at price. It's not as high a number of people looking at price as we think they are. It's kind of like one bad client makes all of our other clients look bad. You know, one grumpy person in the store ruins the rest of the day for the clerk. One price shopper makes us think that everybody's asking about price. There was an inspector recently. He's like, Ian, my agent said he didn't like this. And I'm like, okay. He's like, everybody's talking about it. I'm like, how many? Comes out it was just this one person, but that one person had affected his thinking process to think that everybody thinks that way. I'm not a price shopper. When I call people, I'm like, just a reasonable price. I'll usually ask that last, I'm like, just do the job right or just show up. People aren't as much as price shoppers as we think they are, and the price shoppers are the ones we want to avoid anyways. We don't want to work for them. 

Tom Paranzino  
They are the most difficult clients typically.

Ian Robertson  
Oh, my goodness, if you don't mind me asking and without sparing you my stories, why are they the most difficult clients in your opinion?

Tom Paranzino  
It just seems like they're the neediest post inspection or the most likely to complain that, you know, you missed something very minor or that wasn't in the scope, or they sometimes are the people that didn't even read their inspection report, and then they call you with, you know, a complaint, and it turns out it was written right in their report. You know, obviously that's a generalization of price shoppers, but they do, it does seem to follow that path.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, anecdotally, we're not classifying anybody. Anecdotally, yeah, that's kind of what it's going to be. You know, there's always going to be the single mom trying to make her way, and she's gonna ask about price, different than a quote, unquote price shopper, than what we're talking about.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, and obviously, like, price matters to some people, and, you know, from a slight psychology standpoint, like our phone team, the goal is to never end the conversation on price. So the price has got to come before, earlier on in the conversation. And then you explain all the reasons why the price is what it is, and that, you know, if you just end on price, so it's $750 and then they're like, all right, I'll call you back. But if it's $750, and here's all the things we're going to do for you, here's the things that are included with your inspection, very different conversation, psychologically.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, it is. Actually we have a podcast on our script, and that's one thing that somebody taught me a long time ago, never end on price, always end on why you're awesome. Something I did for myself psychologically was I trained myself to almost be a little offended when people ask price, like, not let it show or anything, but like, I trained myself so that way it wouldn't get me focused on, all they care about is price. So now I'm like, oh, internally I'd be like, how dare you. But it gets us out of that mentality of what we think people are looking for and then we can ask ourselves, is that maybe what we tend to infer our own emotions and thinking on things and other people. 

Tom Paranzino  
100%.

Ian Robertson  
So maybe we are price shoppers, you know, maybe we're always looking for the bar again, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't mean everybody else is.

Tom Paranzino  
You're right. And I'll admit, when I was the one answering the phones, I would be afraid to position some ancillary services at times, because I'm like, okay, we've reached enough for this person, you know, like they can't possibly spend another $150 but as soon as I took myself out of the equation, who's going to be the most emotionally attached to this entire business, and I had an operations team doing that. I'm like, holy cow, they sell way more than I do.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. We get in our own way sometimes. So is that what you did is you hired someone else to sell for you? Did your prices go up then, it sounds like?

Tom Paranzino  
Yes, systematically, just keep kind of climbing up and up with that. Yeah. So, you know, we have two people that answer phones Monday through Friday. I still take the nights and the weekends for the most part and answer the phones, but, yeah, they do a much better job than I do, plus the phone gets answered every time, as opposed to, you know, have to call people back and you miss that job.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, nice. I've always felt that that's important. Even as a single inspector, if we're answering our own phones, we're just missing work. So we say, well, I can't afford to hire somebody. If we're charging $1,000 for average inspection fee, if we missed three phone calls, that's $3,000 we missed that week.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah. And it's honestly more of an investment than it is an expense, because not only, like you just said, are you not missing work, and so just do the math on what one or two missed jobs a week is, probably pays for that person at a gross number, but it provides, if you do it right, you set up the right systems and processes, you now have a support team to support everything else going on. I don't have to upload, you know, lab reports, and I don't have to track things down or reschedule things, or any of the things that make the inspectors be able to just have a seamless, go do a great inspection and be awesome to the client and agent. The operations team is the unsung heroes in the background making it all look perfect. And that's obviously not without mistake, but, but they are a part of that value that never really gets seen, but it gets felt by everyone involved in the transaction.

Ian Robertson  
So you actually pre-answered my last question, because the podcast is, charge more, deliver more, and those are the things that we don't always think about. When we charge more, we can have a support team, support system, a more seamless interaction with our clients. If we find ourselves getting multiple emails or sometimes angry emails, hey, where's that lab report? Hey, we've been waiting on this for three days. Those micro interactions add up.

Tom Paranzino  
Without question. And you know that is its own work in some manner, right? You have to be diligent about putting really defined systems and processes in place. You know, the example you gave uploading lab reports. We have a process for that. When they come into the email boxes they all go to one, one person's job is to upload them, and she also has a weekly audit process to make sure every service someone paid for has a corresponding report, and if it's not there, track it down, maybe it hasn't come in yet, and get it uploaded so there's no delay. And those are the types of things that particularly for your real estate agents, because they deal with you more than just one time or two times, they're the ones who really eventually feel that even if they don't know that's part of the process.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. It's like an old painter told me one time. He goes, the devil's in the details. People will look at a wall and say, hey, that looks great. He goes, they don't notice all the details. They just notice at the end. Wow, this looks better than what the other guy did. 

Tom Paranzino  
Very true. 

Ian Robertson  
Yeah. So those micro interactions is a big part, in my opinion, of the value that you deliver to somebody because you charge more. 

Tom Paranzino  
I totally agree. 

Ian Robertson  
People get what they want without knowing that they want it.

Tom Paranzino  
I totally agree. I've told people that, outside of extenuating circumstances for geography, my inspectors never pick up radon machines. 

Ian Robertson  
Nice. 

Tom Paranzino  
We have someone that does that. 

Ian Robertson  
We do too, actually.

Tom Paranzino  
Yeah, I just want these guys to go do great inspections. We'll handle everything else well.

Ian Robertson  
Then think about that too. I've always said this, the worst thing that I ever had to do as an inspector was go pick up radon tests. 

Tom Paranzino  
It's terrible. 

Ian Robertson  
Oh my goodness, the sellers there, half the time, you know, they're in a bad mood because you found some stuff and trying to coordinate getting in. And I'm like, it took half of a home inspection schedule time slot to be able to go and try to pick this thing up. You know that, in of itself, allows your inspectors have a clearer mind, happier day, focus on doing a great job, because that's really what we're selling is the home inspectors mind.

Tom Paranzino  
Allows me to attract A players. 

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, you know, we could do like eight podcasts out of this, I really like meeting people that know their numbers, know their business, and funny, you've done several things that I've done over the years, and I'm really impressed with what you've done with it.

Tom Paranzino  
It's been quite a journey. 

Ian Robertson  
Oh yeah, it's not linear, right? It's like that old cartoon where it shows a guy standing on a cliff, and they're like, look how successful he is. And on his back, it shows all the scars, yeah.

Tom Paranzino  
Tons of days where I said to my wife, I hope this pays off someday.

Ian Robertson  
Well, you can tell that it has paid off. You have a great business. You have 3% of the market share of Connecticut. And you know, the market right now is not great. The real estate market is looking harsh and all this other stuff. And you're owning it, so you're living proof of that. And the fact that you took time off with this big crew, big company, lots of stuff going on to talk to everybody today about it. I can't thank you enough. I'd love to have you on another time, anything, any kind of subject you want to talk about. We'd love to have you on. But Tom awesome job, thank you so much for sharing. And everybody, if you want proof that it works, raising your prices and delivering more, look at Tom, perfect example.

Tom Paranzino  
Thank you, Ian. I really appreciate you having me on. This was fun.

Ian Robertson  
Yeah, appreciate it. We'll talk soon, Tom.

Tom Paranzino  
Awesome. Have a great day. 

Ian Robertson  
You too. 

Tom Paranzino  
Thanks, Ian.

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.

If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.

*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.