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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Ian R: You know, I actually really do like our intro music, and I like the sultry voice that you usually have in the intro. Welcome to inspector Toolbelt.
Beon D: Yeah, I’m hoping it doesn’t sound like that. It’s more like this is Inspector Toolbelt Talk.
Ian R: I think that sounded exactly like how I put it, I think. In post-production, I think we should have David add some smooth jazz right now. And yeah, I’ll start doing the beyond voice. Welcome to inspector tool belts on Beon. And we’re going to talk about tool belts.
Beon D: And then we’re going to wonder why our listening ratings went all the way into the toilet.
Ian R: Yeah nobody really wants to hear me talk like that.
Beon D: It is funny, because today’s we were going to tackle the topic of communication at some point. So are we doing that one first? or are we doing that one second?
Ian R: No, we’re talking about communication today. We didn’t communicate
Beon D: You didn’t tell me. But yeah, so I was doing a lot of reading up on communication. And one of the tips was to read it or to come across in a neutral tone. So I was practicing a neutral tone. Like I told my wife, so I tried it to my wife, you know? She said, it sounded like I was spaced out. Because I’m all like, Hey, how’s it going? Man? Yeah. I sounded like Fillmore from cars, you know?
Ian R: Is this how you guys spend your weekends?
Beon D: No, it’s when you have a podcast and you’re bouncing things off of your family.
Ian R: Oh, my goodness, I’m crying over here. It’s actually good that we’re talking about this, because this is something that comes up in a roundabout way in the home inspection industry all the time. Home inspectors, we sometimes will complain about the outcome of something instead of the root cause, like sometimes, hey, the client got upset because I said this, or the agent was upsetting me about my inspection. Or I didn’t land that inspection when I talked to them on the phone. That was the outcome. But interestingly, the communication part is often the part that is lacking that causes those issues. So that’s why we have this how to become a better communicator as a home inspector.
Beon D: Yeah, no, that is a good point, you know, because we can also sometimes get stuck in doing a post mortem of something and just trying to, you know, figure out whose fault it was, or who did what, or spent waste a lot of time communicating about, you know, whose fault it was, instead of just maybe focusing on what the solution to the situation is, as you say, at its core.
Ian R: Yeah, and really communication is half our job. A lot of times we focus on, I know a lot about a house, I know more about a house than anybody else in the universe. But if we can’t communicate well, it’s like having a Ferrari engine with no wheels on the car. It’s not going anywhere. I’ve had a lot of inspectors, email me, and I laugh every time I see it, because they’ll say, here’s a problem. Okay, I don’t get it, can you explain a little bit more, and then they’ll keep sending messages after messages not explaining the issue, when they’ll usually end it with. I’m sorry, I have a hard time expressing what I’m thinking. But that’s half our job, we have to recognize an issue and be able to communicate it. So that’s why it’s such a highly relevant subject to the home inspection industry, it’s half of our job, but it’s often the half of the job that we might lack in, I’m going to be honest with you. I communicate but I tend to be wordy. I think you’re a better communicator than I’ll ever be because you can concisely give thoughts, you know, and maybe that’s just me overthinking it, but you know, all of us can improve on communicating. That was a weird way to end my sentence. But yeah, that’s it that’s another example of I could be a better communicator.
Beon D: Yeah, well, it’s you know, there’s different formats for communication as well. And you know, we individually are more inclined to be better at communicating, communicating, communicating
Ian R: This is the best that we could have ever done for this.
Beon D: Yeah, David’s. going to love this one.
Ian R: I think he should leave most of that in there. Those are the best parts
Beon D: Yeah, so anyways, but coming back to communication with communication comes in different formats. You know, obviously we email we texting you talking to people on the phone, you’re talking to people in person. And each one of those different ways of communication has, has completely different rules to it. And we may be strong in one area, but weak in another. We can just apply the same style of communication across all formats and that’s maybe a mistake that a lot of us do make.
Ian R: Yeah. And that’s why we’re going to talk about those three things in person, in writing, and in our reports how to communicate well, because those are going to be three completely different ways of communicating. And also like how you said, there’s going to be different rules, because the points that we’re going to share with you are proven techniques to help us communicate better. These are things that we know work that corporations use, professional communicators use, these are things that will actually help us to streamline our business.
Beon D: Mm hmm. Yeah, no good point.
Ian R: So let’s get into it. Let’s talk about first of all, in-person communication. Because that’s obviously going to be important for to what we do a lot of us as home inspectors. So there’s some guys out there that you know, your clients not on-site with you or the agent that referred you is not on-site with you. But for the most part most of us are going to have in-person communication with clients, the father in law, the weekend contractor, who thinks he knows everything, the plumber who comes in and starts inspecting the roof, oddly enough, and just everybody in the world is going to be in the house while we’re trying to inspect.
Beon D: Yeah, what I was just thinking with that is, it’s probably a good thing to really try to think about communication from the perspective of the person that you’re communicating with. Because how you feel about a person determines a lot about how you’re going to approach communicating with them. And maybe by default, a lot of us are just kind of, on the defense against everybody, like you arrive at your job. And there’s a whole bunch of people waiting, and you just kind of ready to go with any one of them. But to really just try and identify who the different players are, what their perspective is why they may be asking questions. And you know, if you have the correct view of them, and may also help just with your even just your tone and the way you approach communicating with them.
Ian R: And that’s the point, one of the biggest recommendations that they make for in-person communication, is to communicate with the person, instead of communicating at the person. We’re all very good at communicating at a person that comes naturally. Here’s information. There you go. I remember my wife had to have surgery one time, and there were two distinct doctors that I remember, she had some sort of medical emergency, we’re sitting in the hospital, and the doctor comes in. And without even looking at us, says, Hey, here’s your problem. I don’t know why you didn’t come in sooner. Here’s all the issues that could happen. And you could potentially die from this. I’m going to go talk to a surgeon and he walks out of the room. No questions, no eye contact, no, nothing. My wife was crying about I don’t know. It was a hectic day. So maybe like three hours later, another doctor came in. And I said, What’s the news? I’m all antsy, what’s the news? And he goes, hang on a second, pull up a chair, sit with me, sat down with me. And he said, you guys doing okay? And all this can be stressful as everything. All right, I’m like, Okay, I’m calm down. And he looks at my wife makes eye contact and says, Okay, so this can be a serious situation. But we can also fix it too, here are the options. And here’s some of the consequences. I’m going to go re-talk to the surgeon and see about getting this scheduled. And he walked out of the room, I never felt better. But interestingly enough, it was the same exact information. It’s bedside manner. So communicating with a person and at them are two different things we tend to communicate at instead of with. So what are some ways that you find it’s best to connect with a person without spending a lot of time sitting down having a glass of wine and having them over for dinner?
Beon D: Yeah, that could be an expensive approach to good communication.
Ian R: Plus, it also gets really weird when you invite clients over for dinner.
Beon D: Yeah. When it comes to having a conversation with someone, you know, you mentioned sort of one-directional compensation because we all have something to say. And maybe if you’re considered the one who’s the expert, you know, you feel that it’s your job just to talk about the topic. But it’s good to think of a conversation as throwing something from someone to someone and expecting it back, you know, like a ball. But you can also maybe it’s like a kind of like a hot rock. Because you don’t want to be holding on to it for too long. You want to have a conversation with someone. And if you’re finding that you are doing a lot of talking, try to think of ways you can break up the conversation, to engage the other person to give some input as well because they have something to say. And even if they don’t, it turns a monologue into a conversation.
Ian R: Did you use to play hot rock instead of hot potato when you were a kid?
Beon D: You know, we were poor. So
Ian R: alright, hot rocks, instead of hot potatoes, people.
Beon D: You know, we used to do it on the beach. Sometimes we’d have a fire on the beach and have rocks at the bottom of the fire. Every now and again. You know I mean when you’re a teenager you have Really smart ideas. So used to take a rock out from under the fire and toss it around so you could hold on to it.
Ian R: Ladies and gentlemen, the designer of inspector Toolbelt. There we go. So when it comes to communicating too, going back to the conversation, we kind of sometimes just need to get in and get out. But interestingly, going back to that doctor scenario, those two doctors spent the same amount of time with us. It didn’t take any more time. So for instance, sometimes it can take more time by not communicating well. So I pull up on site, the father in law is there, two different agents and a bunch of people, everybody’s antsy before I can even start people are asking me questions saying, are you going to fail this bla bla bla bla bla, I always found it good to just stop. Because if you do the whole inspection like that, it’s going to take a lot longer. You know, with COVID, and everything, may people may not be comfortable, I was going to go around, shake everyone’s hand, make eye contact with each person. Hey, how are you? What’s your background? Do you have a knowledge of construction? Oh, interesting. You know, my dad used to do this, my uncle used to do this, or, you know, my cousin has a business like that. Now, just in that, two, three minutes, I have a connection with at least some of the people there. I would give my driveway speech. And then at the end of my driveway speech, I’d say what are your concerns? They would tell him to me, most of them would be, you know, ridiculous. You know, I’m worried that the kitchen sink sounds weird when I turned it on. Okay, not going to be the end of the world. But I listened, I would acknowledge, and I would make note of it and go check out those things, no matter how weird it sounded to me. By the end of an inspection, if there’s quiet time, I would know how many kids they had, where they went to school, how they grew up, you know, just about every bit of information that I could about them. They felt connected to me. So now I’m not just a cold outside source. I’ve had clients defend me, like an attorney got upset one time, he’s like, why didn’t he marked us as a more severe defect, and it really wasn’t. But my clients called and said, Hey, if the attorney calls you, I told him to, you know, stay in his place. That just came from two, three minutes of connecting with a person.
Beon D: Yeah, that’s a great approach. I’m thinking of a mutual friend of ours, that we have, who is good at just sort of plowing into sticky situations. I mean, it does kind of help that he’s a six-foot-seven guy, you know, so when he walks into a room, everybody gets his attention. But, but when what he used to do often very well is he would walk in maybe sometimes a tense situation. And he’d identify a person who knows who he knows a little better. And he walked right up to them and loud, you know, like you said, grab them by the hand like, Hey, how are you how the kids doing? Or How’s your wife, or how’s whatever. And immediately, everybody’s gone from thinking about where the problem was to thinking about somebody’s family and their family, and oh, hey, he knows this guy really well, and it just sort of diffuses so it’s just a technique, just, you know, sometimes we want to match the energy that we’re being communicated to, or at with, but that’s a common mistake to make.
Ian R: And it’s interesting, because in reality is just being human. But it is actually an old sales technique. You have a disgruntled customer, that’s exactly what you do. You go, you really personal information, not overly personal, we want to have boundaries, but you know, personal information and connect with them. Now, it’s really hard to stay upset. It’s like the oldest sales trick in the world. Also, maybe we’re not really great at doing that. Say, Hey, I’m great with houses, but connecting with a human being is just not my thing. Alright, cool. So there are some just straight-up techniques that we can use too. We talked a lot about making eye contact. By nature, people make eye contact with people that they trust, and they view eye contact as somebody that is trustworthy. So making eye contact with people not staring at them until they’re uncomfortable and being weird about it. When you walk right up to them, smile, and make eye contact and that smiling is important. Even if we don’t feel like smiling. Smile. Have a bag of dad jokes on the ready too. Because sometimes I find it, even if they’re not funny, it just kind of
Beon D: Did you say dad jokes are bad jokes?
Ian R: They’re one in the same. Okay. My dad joke game has been on since I started inspecting, because I always found that even if it’s the same joke, people roll their eyes and chuckle at how bad it is and diffuses a situation, it’s just human nature smile and eye contact. Also, note body position are their feet pointed towards you. If not point your feet at them. There is proven science behind how we’re postured and how other people view our posture, arms folded or body turned away from the other person automatically puts the other person on a defensive. That’s why if you’ve ever talked to a really good salesman, the first thing they do is turn their body towards you. And they usually have an open gate. In other words, arms talking at their side, you know, gesturing a little bit, Never will you see them, close their posture and point their feet away from you, it automatically removes the connection. So if we’re struggling with communicating on-site with people, just do those couple of tricks, stop what we’re doing for a minute, turn towards the person who’s talking, smile and make eye contact, it’s pretty simple.
Beon D: That’s a good suggestion. For myself, I tend to be nervous in person and it shows with, you know, I can’t keep my hand still, I want to, you know, be kind of like either rolling my hands or, you know, putting them in and out of my pockets. And the funny thing is, I look at somebody, sometimes, this is what I used to do look at somebody sometimes who I feel is poised, and look at them and see what they doing differently. And they would just be kind of standing there with their hands on their side. And for me, I don’t know, in some situations, it just feels weird to do that. But what I ended up having to do is I actually, if a situation is going to be sort of something that’s going to, you know, be a little bit more intense, I’ll take with something that I can hold in my hands, you know, either an iPad or a folder or something. And somehow, it just makes me feel a bit more secure. And you can stand and maintain good posture, you know, just be poised. Because when you’re fidgeting around and shuffling around on your feet and moving back and forth and being jittery. Immediately, whatever you’re going to say gets discounted, and you may add to the volatility of the situation. So it’s just posture is a very important thing.
Ian R: Yeah. So it’s taking that same information and putting those suggestions into it so that we have good bedside manner, we can say the same exact thing. But our posture, how we’re standing, whether or not we’re making eye contact, that all matters a lot. And just one more trick, I was reading one time that it is hard with, you know, COVID going on. And maybe people don’t want some physical contact. But interestingly, they found that when you touch somebody on the shoulder, it immediately dropped their guard, like their muscles on tensed and people were more engaged by touching them on the arm. I would not in a creepy way anyway. So hopefully not like I would be talking with talking with a guy on site, my client, and he seemed all anxious about and they come up and I tap them on the shoulder be like, Hey, let me go show you something, that one tap would just turn them around. Because it’s almost like a comfort thing, physical human contact, and it’s just a pat on the shoulder. Hey, let me show you this over here. And he felt engaged and connected. So obviously, you want to have boundaries and things like that read the situation. Don’t go around just touching people.
Beon D: We’ve just created a bunch of creepy home inspectors. No, but yeah, the point is a good one. One more thing I just thought of is, I know what happens to me often, especially when somebody is may be demanding something from us is you feel you need to respond as quickly as possible, you know, that dead space is not permissible. But really, in those moments, be careful with responding immediately, you know, because your emotions are going up. Make sure you’re kind of thinking through what you’re going to say first. And if they are going at you with something you don’t know the answer to, tell them that, you know, yeah, I can make sure I’ve I figured out what was going on there, I can get that information for you. But sometimes we feel obliged just to have to react immediately. And that’s often a very basic communication mistake.
Ian R: Yeah. And so just to conclude this first section on, on how to communicate in person, one thing I will conclude with for that point is when we are inspecting a house, people want to know the quote-unquote, big points. Sometimes he should listen to the Joe Ferry podcast, because sometimes we focus so much on liability, oh, I don’t want to give this item a severity or I’m just going to give them the information, let them sorted out. Come on, if there’s a roof collapsing, come down from the attic and say, Hey, guys, let’s step over here and let’s have a serious conversation about an issue. That while I want you to have everything I point out checked out. This is the item that I’m really concerned with. We don’t need to freak them out. But we also don’t need to give them you know, plain Jane butter and toast for big items and small ones and if it’s a small item be like, alright, outlets, the outlet isn’t working, it’s a GFCI. They’re like 15 bucks at Home Depot, you know, not the end of the world, guys, let’s, let’s focus on the roof. Be genuine with people. If your mechanic told you that your wheel bearing was about to go in the same sentence as your windshield wipers needed to be replaced, and he didn’t tell you the difference, or the severity of each, you’d be like, Hey, come on, man, let’s, let’s focus on the wheel bearing and we can get the wheel windshield wiper fix later on. So communicate that that’s where a lot of the issues come from. clients get angry later on, I wished he had made a bigger deal about this, or I wish they hadn’t made a big deal about this tiny little issue that really wasn’t a big deal. Communicate some severity, it does help our client,
Beon D: I just wanted to add to that point, again, human nature is when you got bad news to somebody, we kind of feel obliged that we got to soften it a little bit like, oh, man, this is really bad news. But you know, maybe there’s a chance it’s not or, you know, you water it down. And so the last bit you say is the only thing the person remembers, you know, oh, great, okay, it’s going to be fine. But sometimes you just do have bad news to deliver. And, you know, it’s got to stand on its own merit, you need to communicate that clearly.
Ian R: And let’s be honest, a lot of people don’t read their inspection report. So I had a client that I wrote in big red letters, Hey, your HVAC system is the vent has venting into the attic, and your back wall has water running down it. They weren’t there. And I tried to communicate it to them. Later on, they called me back and they’re like, hey, you know, we have water coming in the back wall and our HVAC system vents into the attic. I’m like, I know, they’ve never read the report. It’s right there. Big, bold red letters, that just shows they need that communication. If we let them know, hey, there’s going to be an issue that you need to address in your report, they’re going to read that report. If everything is just a level five out of 10. They’re not going to read the report. So that’ll save us a lot of hassle. It’ll save our clients a lot of issues down the road.
Beon D: Yeah, well, for sure. Alright, let’s move on from in-person to on the phone.
Ian R: Yeah, I think this is the biggest one for a lot of us as home inspectors we talked about in person a lot. But on the phone, and selling our services is probably one of the hardest things for us to do. Because, you know, it’s not like we have a product that we can demonstrate right there. It’s not like we can say, let me show you how good I am. We need to communicate to them. Why hire me? This is this is my value. And how do we go about that? So I think the biggest and number one rule about communicating on the phone or selling our services, and this goes for after the inspection before the inspection whenever but be genuine, the best salesman in the world don’t have to sell because they’re genuine about what they’re saying. I’ve always loved that there was an amazing salesman, and I just he sold cars and he could sell a six slice toaster to a one-man family – snow to an Eskimo. But he never sold you anything that you didn’t need. He could sell that. But he wouldn’t. He was just super genuine. And I said how do you how are you such a good salesman? He goes, I have no idea. Because he was genuine. He wasn’t doing any tricks. If we’re genuine on the phone, people are going to pick up on that. So when somebody calls, answer professionally, first of all set the tone for the conversation. Hi, this is Ian Robertson from such and such inspection company, how can I help you today? set the tone real pleasant and be genuine. So once we have that mindset, it allows us to maybe apply some other quote-unquote tricks to making a phone conversation go a lot easier. What was some of those be Beon?
Beon D: Well, one of the things that’s always good to remember is, you know, even though somebody can’t see you when you’re talking to them on the phone, I mean, take this podcast, for example, nobody can see the expression that you have on your face the inflection, but everything is felt from your voice and how you’re coming across. But if you are smiling, or if you are not that tone can be heard in your voice. Like right now I’m totally not smiling because Ian’s goofing around while I’m trying to have a serious conversation.
Ian R: can the audience hear me smiling? Right now?
Beon D: So he’s smiling. But that difference in tone comes across on the phone as well. So you know, if you’re having a bad day and you know things are not going well and you’re not feeling the greatest. Probably not the greatest time to do sales calls because it’s going to come across.
Ian R: Yeah. And obviously we’re not always going to have the opportunity to say hey, I’m not going to take this call. So we have to kind of force it. So I always found that if I smiled even a force smile. It still came across on the phone that’s in print. That’s one of the biggest phone sales tactics is a smile because your voice literally projects differently from the musculature in our mouth, and the human brain picks up on that. Okay. Beon’s laughing at me again. Yeah. Another thing that we want to do is in addition to that is ask questions. Sometimes we have a sales pitch. Nobody likes a sales pitch. As a matter of fact, people like it so little that out if I have one, I’ll let them know. I’ll say, Hey, do you want my sales pitch and they’ll laugh on the other end, I’m like, hang on, and only take 30 seconds. And I give them my sales pitch. And we laugh about it at the end of going back to that human connection thing. But people don’t like that. So they call this a hey, what you know, the question is always how much is a home inspection? Hey, how are you? My name is Ian. Well, tell me a little bit about the house. Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, I know that area. What are some of your concerns about the house? By the time I just asked a couple of basic questions, and they’re almost always the same ones. That person was vested in me. That person was already connected to me. And they trusted me. I don’t think most of those people ever really called another company. And if they did, they almost always called back and they said, that Ian guy, I got a good impression from him, it was just questions. Even if the answer doesn’t matter, technically, oh, I’m concerned about you know, the color of the wall in the living room. Oh, interesting. What don’t you like about the color? And I’ll we’ll take a look at it. You know, I’m sure it’s not going to affect the structure of the home. But you know, we’ll take a look.
Beon D: Yeah. I was just thinking as a client; it would make me feel like you have a vested interest in my situation. And that whatever you’re going to charge me is going to be customized to what my need is, you know, so it Yeah, it imbues trust. Yeah, but it did make me think of that. One funny story I heard where a client was adamant that the home inspector had missed an important detail. He didn’t report a defect in the bathroom. And he couldn’t for the life of him see what she was talking about, and ended up being the wallpaper, I guess, it was pretty, pretty.
Ian R: See, she needed to be able to communicate. But ask lots of questions. And sometimes, you know, we’re just not in a great position to be able to answer the phone, and to be on our game. So what I always had was a script, I actually kept a piece of paper, I would have questions on it that I would ask, and certain points that I would want to bring out. And there’s actually one if you go to fullviewdigital.com, we have a script right there, you can, you can go right on our blog, and you can use my script. But that would keep me on track. So when I wasn’t feeling it, I just got out of this nasty crawl space. Somebody was upset at me, whatever. I put on my smile, and I go right to my script. This script helped because it would keep the person on track and lead them to where you wanted to go. And I was always adjusting it. You know? Okay, that question kind of leads to a couple things here. So maybe I’ll change how we how I asked it. I also found keeping the conversation for at least five minutes. That is important. So a lot of guys are thinking that’s a long time to talk to a customer on the phone, especially during the busy season. But I did the math one time. If I just answered the phone and gave a price, it would be just you know, one or two minutes, but I’d lose like three leads that I would get very few of them. So now if I kept the customer on the phone for at least five minutes, asking them questions about the property, and just talking with them. It was an insane, close rate. It was like 95 to 98% close rates, we had really high close rates. Because that by that time the person is vested in you, they don’t want to go and call and make five to 10-minute conversations with other people. And to be honest with you, some of the people were really cool. Like I’d stay on there 10 minutes and just talking Oh, I went to that school to oh man. Did you know John? you know, and now I was kind of connected to them too. Either way, but um, we don’t have to have that connection all the time. But keeping them on the phone for five minutes, and asking them questions, invariably sealed the deal. Have you ever called a contractor Beon and realize that there was just a whole bunch of noise going on in the background and a bunch of craziness?
Beon D: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And they’re trying to do stuff. So you know, the phone has probably slid halfway down their face and you know, you can hear half of what they talking about. Sure.
Ian R: Yeah, that is the worst possible thing we can do. I’ve called I’ve called a contractor before to do something on my house and it’s like, yep, yep. And I could hear the wind blowing. Uh huh. Door slammed switches to his Bluetooth. Uh huh. And then ask a question. What’s that? There’s no connection there. We’re not sealing the deal. And after an inspection, people might have questions. We want to follow the same rule. Stop overdoing and sit somewhere quiet. It’s only a few minutes. If we really want to have that inspection if we really want to have a Happy client, take five minutes, turn off all the noise and focus on them. If we can’t do that, just do the best we can. But we do not want to make it a practice to be slamming truck doors and talking and wind blowing into the phone try to be inside, I would almost never answer phone outside of the house. Even if I was alone, I, I’d crawl into a crawlspace just to get into somewhere. So I could quietly talk to somebody super weird, but it was effective.
Beon D: Yeah, and it’s about you know, all of these points as I just thinking about this section on the previous one. It’s about accounting for the human factor. Because in the end, communication is not just this thing you do it is a connection with other people. We’re not just talking about stuff, we’re not just handling sales calls, we’re talking with people. And you know, people respond to certain things and communication like to even that last one simple one, if you got all kinds of noise in the background, you basically sending the message that I got something else going on right now, you know, you’re not the most important thing. So really just remembering that with all communication, it’s people on the other end, and you know, think of how you would like to be communicated with.
Ian R: And it’s really all subliminal communication is like an iceberg. The very tip of the iceberg are the words that come out of our mouth. Everything else around it, is how we actually communicate, like you just said, we communicate that we care about a person, hang on one second, let me step inside, so I can give you my full attention. That says a lot. There’s a lot of subtext to that, or asking questions and listening and responding. There’s a lot more communication and that it’s interesting. The same letters in the word listen are also in the word silent, just stopping and listening to somebody that communicates more than we could have ever said.
Beon D: Yeah, for sure, good points.
Ian R: But those are the first two things. So in person on the phone, how can we communicate better with email, and I guess maybe, I think this is probably the worst part of communicating. And it’s because we project our own emotions on an email, I’ve gotten an email from somebody that was pretty benign. And I was in a bad mood didn’t really know it, and a lot of stuff going on, and I respond harshly back. And then later on, I read it, and I’m like, I’ve done this a lot, you know, like, oh, man, they really didn’t mean anything by it. And their response back was very pleasant. And I’m like, as just a jerk, because we project our own emotions on written text. It’s like how two people read the same book, when they get two completely different impressions from it. So we need to be very careful how we communicate by email and by text message, because it is by far the most misconstrued form of communication.
Beon D: Yeah, no. And it is even when you have a time to sit down and actually properly give something your attention. But the reality is nowadays, we all have email and text message and whatever other means of communication on our phone. So you usually on the fly, you know, with trying to get work through all your notifications. So you’re just giving a bunch of quick replies. But really, it’s a dangerous thing that one can get into if you’re not giving that communication with your clients the proper attention.
Ian R: Yeah, and people, in general, are stressed. But on top of that, when they’re buying a house, they may have the seller being like, hey, you know, I’m not going to fix this, you have to deal with it. The attorneys like, Hey, you’re going to lose your deposit and the agent saying, hey, you know, you shouldn’t have bought that car. And you know, your parents are on your back, because they’re like, oh, this house is close to us. They’re stressed. And when we send a what they view as a curt email, say, would they ask hey, can you tell me more about this water heater? They’re asking about the water heater, we may have had 50 emails from other clients complaining, they just want to know about the water heater, when you say I said the water heater was fine. It’s going to be fine. You just need to stop worrying. Now they’re projecting their own emotions on something that you projected your own emotions on. And it keeps building on each other. They’re going to make the situation escalate instead of deescalate. So what are some ways that like you’ve worked in a lot of situations with a lot of email communication, what are some ways that you’ve learned to communicate well with an email, even in some of your corporate training?
Beon D: Yeah, a couple of things come to mind. The first one is to always proof an email and a message. Once you’ve written it through, you know, it’s not just sort of like a once do and hit the send button, stop and reread it, make sure you’re making sense that you know, grammatically everything’s good but also the tone of your email, or your text communication. The other one that I can think of as well is, you know, the way that you structure a message sometimes we just sort of, obviously write as things come into our mind to reply, but that may not be the correct order to structure the reply. And just like it is, you know, for anybody writing copy for a newspaper or a blog or anything else, you always giving attention to how you divide up your content by your subheadings. And by your topic sentence, your lead sentence after the start of your subheading. It’s very similar with emails, if you do have different things to communicate, make sure they separated, and that you always leading with the most important point first, because if somebody’s skimming, they’re going to be reading the first sentence of every paragraph pretty much as they skim through, and maybe the last sentence. So remember that with email communication, especially.
Ian R: Yeah, and also don’t forget about pleasantries. One of the most important things that I’ve learned from my research on how corporations communicate, is pleasantries are important people read over them, they’re like, I don’t need any pleasantries, but we actually do. So if somebody sends you what sounds like a curt email, Hey, tell me about this water heater going back to that a better response, instead of directly answering the question is to say, hey, exclamation point. How’re you guys doing? Hopefully, everything is going well, let me take a look at my report. It looks like on page 32, I said this. I hope that helps. And then end with a smiley face. I call it the smiley face rule. I’ve had these big corporations and other companies and all of their communication with me put a smiley face and I’m like, why in the world are they doing that? But then I realized I’m like, they kind of said something that really wasn’t very nice, but I felt okay about it. Because they asked me how I was doing. And then they made a smiley face at the end. I’m like it made it feel not as bad. So we may say, Hey, I don’t want to be a 13-year-old girl and send smiley faces. But I call it the smiley face rule. We are in person communicators by nature human beings are. So external communication calls for some sort of visual cue that somebody still cares about you and the tone of their email. And to be perfectly frank, an emoji helps. It really does.
Beon D: Yeah, no, it’s a good point. There’s a lot of companies now notice even that are including emoji in their subject lines for emails, not for the same reason. But it does kind of make it stand out, you know. But yeah, it is generally more accepted in communication now, even professional communication.
Ian R: Yeah, I have attorneys that’ll send me smiley faces. But it’s interesting, because we tend to avoid doing it. Because we don’t want to come off as being playful or this or that. But corporations have no problem asking you how you’re doing. And then giving the information and then putting a smiley face at the end. Just that simple. Those two simple things. Hey, how you doing? And a smiley face at the end after your content can really deescalate a lot of situations that come up in our industry. Another thing to keep in mind is not to make it seem passive aggressive, it can be used too much. Like, hey, you know you missed the inspection, smiley face. I don’t know where you were smiley face. And now you’re coming off as being a jerk. Make sure you’re kind of like you said, proof the email, Remember, Google used to have that feature called Google Goggles.
Beon D: I don’t remember Google Goggles.
Ian R: Google Goggles did not live long. But I love that premise.
Beon D: Say that fast 20 times.
Ian R: Goggles, Goggles, Google Goggles. I sound like a baby now. But I remember that feature, because it was made for people who were knee braided, that you could put it on your email, and you would send an email, and it wouldn’t send it right away. In an hour or two, like send a message. Hey, here’s your email again. Did you really want to send this? Schedule the send, you can have most emails, press schedule, send. And then depending on email service you have it’ll say hey, do you still want to send this or this or that. And there’s other apps that you can use, just or just simply leave the email there for a couple of hours. Go play with the dog, go for a walk. And you know, go talk with your family come back and say is this really the email that I still want to send 99% of the time I find it’s not. So put your Google Goggles on?
Beon D: Yeah, that’s a good one. I had never heard of that feature or used it before. But it sounds like a good idea and something senses
Ian R: it was a short-lived I mean; you’re making an app for drunk people it was short-lived.
Beon D: The other thing I was thinking of with email communication at one just very basic tip is if I’m writing a very important email that is important to get right, I will leave the address of the person that I’m sending it to out of the to field so that if for some other reason, you know the dog jumps up and hit send or I hit the wrong button. You don’t get an incomplete email that goes through to somebody you know. So just like a little tip, put in the person you’re sending it to put in the email address right at the end. But the other thing I was thinking of as we covering all these different methods of communication in person on the phone, text message, email, it’s also important to remember and be able to determine what method of communication is the best for a specific situation. Because in this world, it seems like we default towards using text messages, especially way too much. And it is just not a very effective means of communication for important things, especially if they are things like liability or very customer service-intensive things that we communicating about. So make the decision whether it’s time now to transition from a text message to a well-thought-out email, or even a phone call, you know, make sure you choose the right communication method for what you need to communicate.
Ian R: Yeah, and if we’re going to communicate with text message, we’re like, Okay, this is just a quick, hey, I’ll be there in 10 minutes or something like that. That’s typically what you want to keep text messages to have a pattern of checking your grammar autocorrect has gotten us all, at one point or another, I have had some pretty embarrassing stuff happen. So just check your text messages very thoroughly. Talk to text is something that I get made fun of a lot, because I use it a lot. And it never comes out right. So there’s going to be misunderstandings with written communication plan on those misunderstandings. So we get an email back or a text message. And it just sounds rough. And doesn’t sound right. Just know it’s probably a misunderstanding. Interestingly enough, we had an agent recently that we found some issues in the house, and we wanted them addressed. And the agent sent us an email. And it sounded like she was just trying to rake hot coals over us for for being so hard on the house. So we kind of let it lay low for about a day or so we’re like, Well, let’s not respond. But let’s see what happens. And I’m glad we did because she actually sent an email just this morning, apologizing she goes, Oh, my goodness, I just read my own email. That is not what I intended. I was irritated at the seller in the seller’s attorney for saying that you made those things up. But we saw them with their own eyes. You are one of the best inspection companies out there. And I’m so sorry. I sent that without proofreading it. So, like you said before, let it lay for a little bit, you know, come back the next day, take a look at it. Because we were injecting our own emotions on it are like, Oh, this sounds kind of rough. But when she read it, she’s like, oh, yeah, I could see there was a misunderstanding there. She was totally on our side. And she was happy with our work. But I think the most important way we communicate is in our reports, that’s going to be the big one. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. But I actually teach a course in New York state on how to write a report, there are certain things that you need to have in your report. First of all, you need to identify the issue. We don’t want to talk about causality. But I’ve seen a lot of reports say things like moisture was present in the roof, or in the attic. But they didn’t say where it was or how bad it was, or, you know, was it around the chimney or the roofing shingles bad they just said there was moisture in the attic, you know, that doesn’t give me anything as a client, we need to identify the issue. Roof Leak, noted, moisture noted around chimney could be related to the chimney, qualified roofer, etc. We also need to mark severity. We talked about that before in person talking about, hey, let’s have a conversation about this serious issue versus Oh, yeah, that’s $15 at Home Depot, you know, electricians are $70 an hour, it’s probably, you know, two hours to do this work over on the side of the house, we need to do something similar. We’re a little more formal in our reports, that’s why I’ve always loved reading systems. If it’s marked as a major issue, it’s going to be a major issue. It’s a maintenance item, it’s maintenance. So that kind of clears up a lot of issues for me, but make sure we let them know the severity. And then third, let them know what to do next. That doesn’t mean we tell them how to fix it. But if I’m just Joe homebuyer who’s never seen a hammer in my life, and I see you know, water heater, do I call an HVAC company? do I call the general contractor? What am I doing? Is this an engineer that I need? Tell them Hey, the next step, contact a plumber and get a second opinion or an estimate. So we want to do those three things identify the issue, clearly. And I feel like I shouldn’t have to say it but unfortunately, I review hundreds and hundreds of reports from other inspection companies every year, identifying exactly what the issue is, it needs to happen otherwise, we’re going to be spending a lot of extra time clearing that up later. Severity and what to do next. Those are three critical things in our reports.
Beon D: Hmm, yeah. Obviously, with myself, I, you know, don’t have the background there, as a home inspector when it comes to reports, but being exposed to processing a lot of the reports, obviously, with a software, it seems like there’s two extremes and, you know, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s either trying to put as little as possible in your report, because an inspector may be scared of liability. So I’m only going to say, absolutely the minimum that I have to. And then the other side of it were, folks may feel that your report needs a lot of text and a lot of content to make it look like a legitimate report, you know, so you counting pages need to be up there. So I guess using though that advice you just gave will help you to get somewhere in the middle.
Ian R: Yeah. And that’s exactly what I tell guys, when I teach the course, get somewhere in the middle. There’s an ancient proverb that says, in many words, there is transgression. If you’re going to fill your report with, you know, 500 words on this one, issue 1000 words on another, here’s all of the standards of this, and this and this, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, maybe we maybe have another inspector on here sometime. And you can argue the point with me, but, you know, eventually, we’re like, Oh, hey, baluster spacing is too wide. And here’s an 800-word article on why that’s bad. But now, maybe the risers were off by a half an inch. But we didn’t note that. We can explain that all day. But if we were putting that in our standards, we just in many words, there is transgression, we just created more opportunity for people to find fault with our work. So I’m all about not just giving them the bare minimum and not giving them a book. Give them what they need. Here’s the issue. Here’s how severe it is. And here’s what you do next. And that’s really what it comes down to.
Beon D: Well, no argument from me. But that sounds like good information there. It makes perfect sense.
Ian R: I feel like we have communicated this podcast very well Beon how about you?
Beon D: Yeah, look, we all the work in progress. I guess that’s the bottom line.
Ian R: I feel amazing about it.
Beon D: Yeah, you know with communication, I think the worst thing you can do to yourself is just to say, Oh, well, you know, I’m just like the so I’m just like that, or I can’t do that. Because if you flip the bit on yourself, then you’re done, you’re not going to get any better. And it’s always going to be a problem. But when it comes to communication, it actually is a skill that can be acquired, you can learn to communicate better. But then you have to be conscious of where you’re falling short, and how to improve it. So don’t give up on your communication skills, whether you are good and would like to take it to the next level. Or do you feel like you really can’t, and you’re not good? Don’t stop trying. Because with every time you try and practice you will get better. And ultimately, you’ll see the return in your business as well.
Ian R: Yeah. And like we said at the beginning of the podcast, it’s half of our job as a home inspector, we find issues and we communicate it. So like Beon on said. It’s a skill that we need to develop and it’ll help our business, the better we communicate, the more people are going to like us refer us and hire us, because then we’ll have that Corvette engine that we mentioned before, but we’ll have wheels on it.
Beon D: Awesome. This was a totally radical podcast.
Ian R: If we could insert that music now. That’d be fantastic.
Beon D: All right. Let the music. Take it out. Thanks, guys for listening. Thanks Ian. Always great to have all this information at our fingertips.
Ian R: Awesome to have you back Beon.
Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].
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