I wish Neil was closer. I would sub out all my inspections to him!
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Mark, I was new to the business. I started the business in March 2016 and started sending these right away. This is a copy of the one I did at the beginning of 2017. The only change was changing 2016 to 2017. I sent about 1500 of these in 2016 and maybe 500 in 2017. I also dropped a total of about 500 at real estate offices. The goal was to build the business as fast as I could, not so much to make a bunch of money. I had another business that paid my bills. That business was started pretty much the same way. Relentless direct mail and lots of footwork.
Keep in mind Joe, That was a $100 off “coupon”, not a price sheet. I was the new kid. The coupon was good for 1 inspection, where I took it back. I don’t need to do that now and I do very little marketing aside from the website.
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I’ll probably use your idea. Im still trying to get my foot in the door.
Steven,
I didn’t do much more than what I listed above but I did a lot of it. I’ve been in sales (in one form or another) for about 30 years. Much of it was commercial construction sales, as well as boat and car sales. I ran a car dealership for 8 years and had a lot of sales training and trained a lot of salespeople. I’m really surprised how many people go into business and have never had any sales or marketing training and never even read a book about it. No business plan, no marketing plan etc. A lot of new businesses owners expect fast returns. I didn’t and I don’t let it get me down because it happens to everybody. This isn’t my first business. There are tried and true methods that do work. To me it’s basic math… contact as many potential buyers as possible and be relentless with your efforts. If we were all afraid of rejection, we’d all die virgins. The more women you ask out, the better your chances. I wanted to meet the agents and once I did, I stayed in touch. Just go to any real-estate listing website and click on the map. Every red dot will have an address of a potential buyer and the name of the listing agent. Send them something to get you name in front of them.
April, 6 months ago I contacted a realtor (that helped me sell a house and buy a different one) while trying to get in some marketing via phone calls. She seemed over joyed and ecstatic to “finally get a quality inspector on the list” (her words), making several promises to get me to the top of the list at her agency and sending me all kinds of work. Guess what? It’s been 6 months and haven’t heard a thing from her or anyone in her agency. I’ve even reached out to her 6-8 more times since… Don’t hold your breath on only one RE agent, but by the same token don’t get discouraged either. There are many different ways to sell your business, it all just depends on what the market is doing in your area and how much competition there is… For example, where I am, it’s a seller’s market and the inspector to RE ratio is about 20:1, so needless to say competition here is fierce. Not too many older homes are moving since values keep rising, but new construction is going ape. There is a lot of good advice to be taken from this forum, use it wisely… be patient… good things will come…
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I’m definitely grateful for this forum already. I will be asking many more questions and am definitely open to the advice I get. It’s just me here trying to run this business so I’ll take all the help I can get. I still have plenty to learn. I just want my customers (when I get them) to be happy with my work. I have a very strong work ethic but that doesn’t help if I’m clueless lol.
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Hi April, good luck. Spend some time on your website and really get it perfect. It has several errors.Think of it like your digital resume.
Oh, heck yeah. It’s a great idea. I did this also - “back in the day”. To give you an idea how long ago - my coupons were for $190 inspections. I handed out stacks of them at RE offices. It worked like a champ. I was instantly busy.
Which brings me to this advice to any new HIs that may be reading this…
Be sure to include a clearly defined expiration date on your coupons or your print ads. Such as “this offer expires xx/xx/2020, and will not be accepted after this date”. OR if you’re going to let the coupons ride indefinitely - do not include a fixed price, but instead do a “$50 Off” or “20% discount”.
Then you won’t suffer my heartache of having someone pull a three year old $190 coupon out of their pocket to pay for their $500 inspection.
Just sayin.
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My husband and I got our HI licenses about a year ago and work as a team on home inspections. I do all the marketing for the business. I started out visiting all the real estate companies in the area last fall and asked to have a short intro at the beginning of their weekly meeting. I also joined the local realtor association as an affiliate. That was a great way to put our face in front of alot of agents at meetings and social events. (I know all of this has changed as of now but hopefully things will get back to normal and you can tuck these thoughts away for the future)
I used WIX to develop my website. It has a bit of a learning curve but really love the tools they offer and customer support is great! Lastly I looked up all of the real estate agents on their company websites and made a contact list. I have about 200 agents on the list and they are broken down by areas so I can send target specific emails.
I won’t lie it hasn’t been a walk in the park, but each time you do reach out or do an inspection (remember there is a selling agent too) it is contact made. Hang in there and keep plugging away. Best of luck! Oh yeah I would also get my Radon certification. At least around here radon testing is very popular for a real estate transaction.
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Stay away from Homeadvisor. I think i still have a $200 credit and still constantly get calls about their new system. I used them for 1 week, got like 6 leads, all were bogus… left over leads from angies list. At $45 a pop, they would have bombed me by months end.
This has been my experience as well. I used them for 3 weeks. I paid $100 and got $200 in credit for $300 total. I’ve gotten around 10 leads (with a few instant refunds). I’ve only spoken with a couple people ever. 1 of which just said don’t call back and hung up. I have also called all of them in under 1 minute apart from 2 I got around midnight. I did end up booking 1 job that was an Angie’s list rollover. Since I had the free money I will come out ok but if it had been all my money the job would do little more than break even. HA for me just isn’t a sustainable business model.
I know a guy near me it works ok for as this is his side gig but if you’re going full time long term HA is basically like an amazon business. They essentially control all aspects of your business and can change the rules on their whims. You end up bidding down your stuff just to make up for lost money. The other avenues I’ve used so far I can leverage value better and have had better success with.
I have also seen in my area as I assume is normal everywhere It is a 100% bottom price game. My friend won a my job we both were sent because I was a little higher.
I got the same deal. Once that 200 bucks is gone I will be to. I watched a webinar they did and it had a company on there that solely relies on HA. He literally said it doesn’t work for you its your fault. He has ppl in his company that return all these leads phone calls so he doesn’t even handle that part. He said they call 5x first day 4x the second and so forth. I dont like feeling like I’m bothering ppl so 5x is a bit much for me. I really want my business to succeed but I also don’t want it to show how desperate I am. Lol
I’ve got one site that I’m using. Ive been underbid so much recently, that I put a $100 inspection offer. I had 2 leads, but lost them because I did not include a termite inspection. Pretty amazing.
Wow, yeah they tried to get me to watch that but holy crap 5x. That’s insane and if I was the consumer man I would hate them and HA. I’m surprised HA promotes that. Yeah unless your just paid to call people thats complete nonsense.
@tfreidinger Dang man, doing it for a 100$ is steep. HA takes half that and with other stuff if you scratch$25 you’d be lucky. That sucks. I think that’s the mentality HA kind of promotes though that the $100 add on service should be part of the $100 total unfortunately.
I am curious if some of these leads are real or not, that’s why I went super cheap. Like “hey, its free for a 5 star review!” Thumbtack let’s you see the competitors, and when the leads went out to 6 other inspectors, its not to promising.
I used HA for 3 years. I learned that the first person to call the client usually gets the job, if there is a job. Often you get people who haven’t made an offer yet but they just want to know who is available and what they charge so they know who to call when they do get an accepted offer. HA won’t refund for those, it “isn’t their fault” we didn’t “book the job”. Or a realtor who has a client looking for homes in a new area so the realtor is just looking for info on HI’s in the area. Again, we get charged for those “leads”. I have a HI near me who has an answering service take his calls and schedules inspections for him, and they agreed to call back on HA notifications for like $5/call. He said the service usually books 4 out of 5 of those leads, so it works well for him. That phone service is a pretty slick way of dealing with a busy schedule and not wanting to interrupt an inspection or while driving to take a call from a new client. They charge either a monthly fee or a per call fee.
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