As a home inspector, how do you differentiate yourself from your competition? Are you more thorough, do you have a better report, are your prices lower? What things are you doing to stay a step ahead of your competition? If you're not thinking about this, then you are not maximizing your business or your income.
We usually think of these differentiators as being our 2 sided business card, our thank you cards to the real estate agents, our newsletter, or some other thing that helps us stand out from the crowd.
There is one big differentiator that you can use that sounds elementary, but has been confirmed by informal research.
Getting personal.
You know instinctively that there are small things having nothing to do with our technical competence that can give someone else a good or bad impression of who we are.
Perceptions are reality; first impressions are lasting; emotions always win over logic.
In talking to fellow inspectors, they will talk about wearing new uniforms, or name tags, buying  a new truck or getting certified in infrared technology.
But there are some basic things that take precedence over everything else, and if we don't pay attention to them, we will not even get to the starting gate.
Last year I conducted an informal survey of real estate agents, sellers, and buyers all having contact with home inspectors.
I talked to instructors at the Kaplan ITA inspector school, and with a wide range of inspectors at one of the national conferences.
I compiled the top pet peeves that agents and clients had about their experiences with home inspectors.
The top three pet peeves are personal! They have nothing to do with technical competence.
Here they are: 1.
Inspector tracks dirt and mud in to the house after inspecting the outside 2.
Inspector smells like cigarette smoke, has bad breath, or has body odor 3.
Inspector will not look the female client in the eye when talking to the clients Wow! Are you kidding? We're nowhere near nice uniforms or new trucks yet.
If this is your competition, you have it made.
We can fix this! And guess what - this is your competition, because these complaints got repeated over and over in various forms during my questioning.
Now that you've stopped laughing, realize that the good news here is that these things can  be easily corrected.
If you're not paying close attention to your personal hygiene, you should be.
I know that by the second or third inspection in a day you're probably not exactly sweet smelling, but if it's a problem, that third client doesn't care if you took a shower in the morning and started out clean or not.
Worst case in summer, bring a change of clothes with you.
  If you're not wearing booties into the house and not paying attention to tracking dirt in other ways, start now.
  Lastly, realize that most of the decision making your clients do is done by the female.
They tend to schedule and organize everything around the buying of the home, and they can understand what you are saying as well as the man can.
It's probably a built in mechanism to help the other male not think you are hitting on his girlfriend/wife, but you still need to look her in the eye and accord her equal attention when you are doing the walkthrough or describing the items in the report.
If you're already doing these things, and I'm sure you are, then pat yourself on the back and feel terrific knowing that you are WAY ahead of your competition!