World's largest inspection company releases short video on importance of being a CMI.

Really a video on marketing, widgets mostly.

Yep, typical late-night infomercial

CMI is a huge marketing benefit that adds trust and peace of mind. The results speak for themselves.

It is sad that a CMI is resulting to selling their customer’s information for a few free widgets.

The Elite Group is expanding into Northern CA and in my area. One thing they do not advertise is that not all of their inspectors are their employees. Up till today all their termite inspections were outsourced to other companies. I believe they just got their Branch 3 license. The only have 2 home inspectors and I do not know if they are CMI to be honest. They spend a lot of time training realtors on things like social media etc to get their foot in the door. The issue I have is their “Other Guy” sales approach. They present that they are the only ones providing the services obtained from P Nathan Thornbury’s group which is not true. I have a good friend with a great inspection company here in the area who is also a CMI and they offer the services as well. I know the Elite Group manager here and he is a great guy. Just feel their video is a bit deceptive.

That being said, I think promoting the CMI designation is a great thing to do. One question I have is what the Boards perception on the use of CMI by a company is if all their inspectors are not CMI? I know it is difficult to have all CMI as many inspectors are new and do not meet the criteria. There are a growing number of multi-inspector companies out there. Just asking for my own education.

You make a good point. We have a lot of CMIs who advertise CMI all over their websites, but have junior inspectors working for the company that are not CMIs. We want CMIs to be able to both use their CMI status for marketing and also become multi-inspection firms (which generally requires hiring newer inspectors). So we’ll have to give this some thought and make a policy to address this as more and more of our industry consolidates into multi-inspector firms.

We might need an “Owned and operated by a CMI” logo for them or something.

I agree completely Nick. CMI Inspectors deserve to market themselves as such. And I also fully support companies growing to multi inspector firms. At the same time we need to protect the designation as well as the public from misrepresentation. I like your idea of a logo for these companies Maybe even a CMI and CPI Inspectors Employed Here. I think even a single operator could youse your CMI Owned & Operated Logo. Thanks for listening Nick.

Yep. We’ll have to create that as we now are in an era where multi-inspector firms are common.

A lot of these issues in our industry, issues in the past, and issues that will come in the future are not predictable. We have to deal with them as they develop.

I had two cool books: “How to Build and Run the World’s Largest Inspection Association.” and “How to Administer the Inspection Industry’s Highest Professional Designation.” Those two books had chapters describing in great detail exactly what we should do for every scenario, but I misplaced them. :wink:

Hmmmmmmmmm… Maybe that is what they mean by Evolution. :slight_smile:

Is there a CMI vid we could all use?

If you have any future plans to come to Boulder, we’ll produce a custom one for you. No charge.

A little too far for me a 1738 miles.

That video does nothing more than make CMI look like a group of widget sales people, and kinds dumbs down the whole Inspection industry.

Jim

Come out to Boulder and make a good video with us. You direct it.