Home inspectors, like people in many businesses, should never stop courting new prospects, says Dave Park, owner of Advantage Inspection in Raleigh, North Carolina. He mentors home inspectors across the southeast to maximize their marketing programs, earning the nickname The Maverick Builder. Here he talks about how to keep your business on the up and up.
A home inspector friend and I were talking one afternoon about how to improve his selling skills. He has been an inspector for 13 years, but as of late his business has been slow. In the next sentence, however, he sparked up and said - with a great deal of pride, ‘I’m a great closer. Just put me in front of a prospect, and I’ll walk away with an order eight out of 10 times.”
“Then why isn’t your business growing by leaps and bounds? Why aren’t you making tons of money?” I asked.
A perplexed look crossed his face as he pondered my question. He stared at the ceiling. He gazed at the floor. And in a soft voice said, “I don’t really know why I’m not doing better. I guess I’m just too busy to be calling on people.”
And that’s precisely his problem. He didn’t realize that selling isn’t about being a great closer. Selling is about being a great opener. It’s about creating opportunities. It’s about discovering what people want and need, and then giving them the solution to their problem. Selling is about making the customer’s life better, easier. But when you’re not opening customers - creating opportunities - you’ve nothing to close.
I then asked him these seven questions:
- How many times do you dial the phone each day for the sole purpose of scheduling an appointment with a realtor?
- How much time do you spend dialing for appointments each day? Do you block out time to call on your calendar?
- Where do you get your leads?
- How many times do you attempt to reach a person before you decide he isn’t a prospect and move on?
- How many new people do you call each day? People you’ve never attempted to reach before?
- How many people are you calling from your database that you’ve called on five, 10, 15 times but have never bought from you? How do you feel calling on the same people who - even though they may be friendly - always tell you that they aren’t in the market for a new home inspector?
- What are your annual sales goals? Quarterly goals? Monthly goals? Weekly goals? Daily goals? What daily activity must you generate to achieve these goals?
With each question, he was getting more nervous. His body language told me that he didn’t have any systems or methods for looking for - and finding - new customers. “What’s keeping you from looking for new realtors?” I asked. “What do you do every day?”
He explained that he goes into the office at about 7:45 a.m. each day and spends most of the morning doing paperwork and reads e-mail. He then goes on a scheduled inspection and works on the report.
Next is lunch. Then on to another inspection and more paperwork. By the time he leaves, he’s put in a full day but there is one thing he never gets around to doing — calling new prospects. He avoids the phone like the plague.
Ever since I started in sales, I always wondered why bright, talented, knowledgeable and successful home inspectors never continued to grow in their businesses. Why were they always struggling? Why were they living a feast or famine existence?
I’ve watched inspectors start their careers like a rocket roaring into outer space. But within a few short years, their business had leveled off. With the passage of time, their business started a slow decline as their best clients moved on. Why did this happen? He stopped looking for new business. He stopped being a hunter-gatherer. He stopped prospecting.
- Sales is about looking for prospects every day.
- Sales is about getting on the phone every day.
- Sales is about solving problems every day.
So we went to work.
- We changed his attitude. He began to see the telephone as his friend, instead of his mortal enemy.
- He developed a great Elevator Speech which enabled him to keep his conversations going. His days of having five- to 10-second “We aren’t in the market” phone calls were over.
- He started prospecting and looking for new people to call on. He attended networking events. He began asking for referrals. And even started calling on people whose names and photos had appeared in the business sections of the local paper.
Within a month, he had turned his business around. He was meeting new people, asking great questions, solving problems, closing sales and making money. He had learned an important lesson: Selling isn’t about closing, it’s about opening!
