What’s Your Difference?

Have you thought about what makes you appreciably different from other home inspectors? If you haven’t, you’re not alone.It’s notoriously difficult to be objective about what makes you (and your home inspection services) unique in the eyes of the marketplace. Fortunately, there’s a straightforward way to find out how the marketplace perceives you and your services: Ask your customers.

And when we say “customers,” we mean both real estate agents and homebuyers. While the vast majority of your referrals probably come from agents, it’s still important to understand how homebuyers view you and your service— if for no other reason than the fact that home-buyers provide the bulk of online reviews. You’ll want to gather information from both groups.

Here are four basic ways to approach soliciting information from your real estate agent customers:

1. Ask them in person.

This is the most direct path but not necessarily the one that produces the most objective results. You can do this informally—invite one of your real estate agent partners to join you for coffee or lunch and engage them in conversation about why they work with you. Dig into what they like and what could use some improvement.
You could do the same thing over the phone, but you won’t be able to evaluate their body language, which tells you whether they’re being sincere.
And speaking of sincerity, that’s the downside with this approach; it’s unlikely that anyone will be entirely truthful with you about any negative aspects of your service while they’re sitting right there with you. However, since our primary purpose is to discover what you do best, it’s okay to skip the criticisms and focus on the positives in this case.

2. Ask them via email.

This is a similar approach to asking in-person, but a good deal less intimidating for your real estate people, as they don’t need to answer any questions extemporaneously.

3. Gather a focus group.

Invite a small group of real estate agent referral partners to participate in a
roundtable focus group. You can secure a meeting room in a municipal center, hotel, coworking facility,
restaurant, or other venue in neutral territory. Over refreshments, dive into some conversation that
uncovers what your agents like about you and your service, and what they wish someone would do differently regarding inspections.

4. Secure a third party to conduct research for you.

It’s an undeniable part of human nature that
most people will tell others things about you that they would never say to your face. You may want to
find a third party who can gather information from your real estate partners and feed it back to you. If
you don’t want to hire someone for this, arrange a trade deal with someone you know who would like to
gain the same kinds of insights about their business.
They ask questions of your customers, and you ask
questions of their customers—then you get together
to compare notes.

Gathering information from homebuyers is less complicated than interviewing real estate agents. You already have their email addresses, so simply set up a brief survey (via surveymonkey.com or similar) and email it to your homebuyer customers as soon after the home inspection as possible. Consider sweetening the deal to increase response by offering some kind of free service or other premium; getting this information is important enough to warrant the cost of the premium. Compile the resulting data and look for trends.

Once you’ve gathered this information, take the
time to write down what you’ve discovered about
yourself and about your inspection business. Chances
are you’ll find one or more common threads emerging
around your strengths and weaknesses. The strengths
form the basis of your differentiation, so consciously
focus on your strengths and continue developing
them, while you simultaneously work on mitigating
any common weaknesses that were revealed.

We suggest distilling your newly discovered
differentiation into a statement or two that captures
the essence of what you have that nobody else does.
Share it with people who are important to you. Print it
out and post it somewhere where you’ll be reminded
of it frequently. This statement forms the basis of
your personal brand.

In the process of gathering this data, it’s likely
you’ve also collected some testimonials. Whether
they’re from real estate agents or homebuyers, make
sure they’re displayed on your website and that they
also find their way into your promotional materials.

The whole idea here is to make yourself
memorable. And to be memorable, you need to be
different, because the human brain categorizes and
retains information by evaluating various attributes
and taking note of comparative differences.

If your service is perceived to be the same as
everyone else’s, then buyers will naturally gravitate to
the only attribute they can compare: Price. And that’s
not how you want to be evaluated.

A little time spent understanding your professional
differentiation will help you build a stronger brand,
which can directly enhance your bottom line. Knowing
the difference makes a significant difference.

Opinions or statements of authors are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of ASHI, its agents, or editors. Always check with your local governmental agency and independently verify for accuracy, completeness, and reliability.