PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Hey there IT crowd, Ian Robertson here, from Inspector Toolbelt. On this episode we’re going to talk about how to properly visit open houses. Now this episode is done on request, actually. We had a listener email us and say, hey guys, can you do an episode on visiting open houses, which we get requests all the time. But I have to caveat this episode, I kind of avoided doing this episode because of all the marketing strategies out there that have worked for me over the years. This one always worked, visiting open houses, always worked, always had great results. But I always hated it. It is not my favorite marketing strategy. I have no idea why, just goes against my nature, just not what I like to do. But it was always effective. So I do have some rules and strategies that I did to make it effective, even though I hated it. I didn’t do it as much as I should have. I would do it when I could. It wasn’t a main marketing piece of mine, because of just..I don’t know, I don’t know, if you don’t like visiting open houses, write in, and tell me why you don’t like to visit open houses. I’d like to hear your reasons. My reasons were, I don’t know. I just didn’t like it. But a couple things to keep in mind. And I’ve always told this to every inspector that I’ve helped, every inspector that I’ve worked with personally in my own companies, if you’re going to visit open houses, follow these basic rules. So, first of all, before we ever go visit open houses, have our stuff together. Go back to our branding episode. We should have our logo, business cards, our vehicle lettered up, our logo on our shirt, logo on our hat, everything with our logo on it. One of the biggest mistakes that I’ve ever seen home inspectors make, is they go to these open houses, wearing a plaid shirt, not really set up in business, but they said, hey, I can inspect. That’s just throwing time and money out the window. It’s the same principle as visiting real estate offices. If we’re not set up with our brand, and just, you know, heading into battle with a sword and shield, why bother going to an open house, It’s just not, not the way to do things. So first of all, make sure that we are lettered up on our vehicle, branding everywhere, and have cards at the ready. So keep that in mind, if we don’t have those elements, do not start visiting open houses. So first, to start visiting open houses, finding out where they are is super easy. They’re usually done on Saturdays and Sundays, in my area Sundays after, Sunday afternoons are probably the most typical time that I see open houses happen. So you just look in the newspaper, if you are still using a newspaper, or I just check Facebook pages. So you can see where all the open houses are, you know, addresses, picture of the house, who the agent is. Write all that stuff down, and plan a little trip out. So you can use, I like to use Trello to keep these kinds of things organized. Make a card for each open house. Who’s going to be there? What time is the open house at? All those kinds of things. So be prepared. It might take you a half an hour to plan out a trip of 10 to 15 open houses for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Take the time, it’s well worth it, rather than showing up and saying, okay, who’s here, what’s going on. So first of all, prepare, look at the Facebook pages of every real estate office around, and make out a little map of where you’re gonna go first and what times you’re going to be there. Before we get into how to visit the houses, what to do when you actually walk up the door, here’s a marketing idea if you haven’t tried it yet. If we’re brand new and never did an inspection before, this won’t apply to us. But if we’ve been around for a little while, and we know a couple of brokers already, even if it’s just one or two, or maybe we know a hundred, talk to those brokers, and offer to visit their open houses as a safety strategy for their agents. So first of all, you’re doing a great community service. If you’re a full grown man that knows how to handle himself. You know, if I’m a broker, and I have, you know, 15 agents out there, yeah, I’d love for you to go visit them, and make sure that they’re okay. The world that we live in is not nearly as safe as it used to be, and agents have been killed at open houses. So, use that as a marketing strategy. Sit down with a broker, say hey, you know, just want to let you know, if you’d like, I’d like, I can visit all your open houses for you and just check on all of your agents. Make sure things are safe. You know, give it a little walk around. I tell you, it’s had great success, brokers love it, especially if you know the broker well. So there’s just an idea. So now if we’re just cold calling open houses, a couple things we need to keep in mind. Really quickly, we look like a giant creeper if we don’t do it right. So we want to be judicious. We don’t want to sit out front of the house writing things down, looking around, putting on the inspector hat, which is really hard to do, oh, that foundation is cracked and this and that. Don’t look like a creeper. Walk straight up to the front door, knock on it, and announce yourself. Before you do that, though, look around. Are there other people at the open house? Remember, these open houses are how agents market, not only the property that they’re selling, but how they get new prospects. So anybody in that open house is a potential client for that real estate agent. So if we show up when other people are there, we’ve just destroyed that marketing opportunity. Imagine if we were marketing to an agent, and then all of a sudden a mortgage broker just busts in and stepped in front of us and the agent. We would be upset, wouldn’t we? It’s the same thing for those real estate agents. So plan on 10 or 15 houses but maybe skipping about half of them. Because if you pull up and there’s people walking around, don’t go. The best open houses anyways are ones where people aren’t there anyway. So the agent is just kind of sitting in a chair, it’s actually kind of funny, we’re hearing agents talk about it, they just kind of sit there, and wait for people to show up. And sometimes nobody ever shows up. Except for maybe the home inspector. So if there’s nobody around, walk up right to the front door, knock on it, and announce yourself. Don’t mask why we’re there. Hey, I’m just talking with people, you know, I was driving by and this and that. Say hey, I’m visiting open houses today. My name is Ian, I’m a home inspector. And I just want to stop by and say hi and leave you my business card. Cool, direct, and it makes an impact on the agent. And it means that they’re, you’re not just going to sit there, and hang out with them. Again, avoid sounding or looking like a creeper, stay towards the door, don’t wander in, into the house, like deep into the house, like we’re in the back of the house hanging out in the kitchen. Because especially if it’s a young lady, and we’re just some dude walking in, it might just make them nervous. So stand by the door, it makes people feel a little bit more comfortable when they can see that you’re not pushing your way in. Now, if you’re invited in, different story, just be judicious with that, obviously. Next thing is, have a marketing anchor. So a marketing anchor can be anything. We talked with Mike Crow, and people make fun of the candy bowl and all that stuff. But it’s actually a tried and true marketing anchor that has been around for thousands of years. You have something to bring, that gives you another reason to be there besides your direct marketing. It’s simple and effective. So in other words, are you bringing them a little goodie bag? So, crossword puzzle and an individually wrapped cookie with your sticker on it, awesome. Or maybe coloring books. I always love coloring books for open houses. Hey, you know, if you have some people come in with some kids, I tell them, here’s a couple of coloring books. And of course, they’d be coloring books with my logo on it. Pictures of inspectors that they could color, little packages of crayons that I get a pack of five for at the dollar store. Perfect, they love that. And they would hand them out to the kids, free marketing for you and something for the agent to keep kids happy while they’re trying to sell the house to a, to maybe a family. Always have a marketing anchor. Do not let your marketing anchor be chintzy. Spend some money, spend some time thinking about it. It doesn’t need to be complicated. But you know, I see guys talking all the time about, you know, measuring tapes with your logo on it, cool, do that. But don’t walk in, and leave them just a, just a business card, if you can help it, or leave them a pile of flyers about all the warranties and things you have. Just stop for a minute, and give them something useful in the moment. If they’re sitting there in a chair, crossword puzzle, or, you know coloring books or whatever it happens to be, have a marketing anchor, and make it useful to that agent. Next thing, keep it very brief. If the agent wants to talk for a while, cool, but a basic marketing principle is leave people wanting more. If you overstay, they just have a weird impression of you. Keep it brief, even if they want you to stay, like oh ma’am, stay another five, ten minutes or whatever. Maybe you could take a look at this in the basement. Alright, cool. But leave when they still want you to stay. That leaves a desire in their mind to use you again. See you again. Have you come back. Again, very basic marketing principle, leave them wanting more. We stay there for an hour, they don’t want any more. So they want us there for an hour, stay for ten minutes. So keep things brief. Second thing, or not second thing, but the next thing is, talk about them. That is always going to be an important marketing thing. If we’re doing real estate office presentations, visiting real estate offices, talking to anybody, marketing them, we should never talk about ourselves. Always use the 80/20 rule. 80% should be about the other person, and then 20% will be us. So if we walk up, don’t say, hey, I’m a home inspector, this is what I do. This is why you should hire me, I’m the most thorough and these are, what things I offer and this and that. Say, hey, you know, how’s the market going? I saw your open house, you know, there are several open houses today. But, you know, are things going okay, you know, how, how are things looking with this particular neighborhood? You know, I grew up down the street, how about you? Whatever it happens to be, talk about them for the most part. And then they’ll ask you things. One of my favorite things that would happen during an open house, and this may be one of the reasons why I didn’t like them, is when I would go, people would say, or the agents would say, oh, hey, while you’re here, can you look at this? And it would just annoy the tar out of me. I’d go downstairs in the basement, look at a bowed foundation wall, or you know, look at a sag in the floor, whatever they had a question about. And I don’t know, it just never really, it never really ended up great, because if I saw an actual defect, I would tell them about it. And they would be like, oh, well, they’d get almost kind of huffy. You know, so keep it superficial. So okay, oh, yeah, there’s a little bow in the foundation wall, you know, you might want to have that checked out. But you know, the home inspector for the buyer is obviously going to see that too. You know, in my experience, older houses this and that, and just kind of keep talking, you don’t need to do an actual inspection, say, well, you need to get this fixed, you should never sell this house like this. Pull back on that. Remember, that we’re there for a marketing purpose. So, always leave a card, and maybe a brochure, maybe a brochure. Never, ever leave a stack of cards on the table. Remember, we do not want to hijack their marketing opportunity. That’s another thing, I would actually hear agents complain about that. Oh, I had an open house. Home inspector came in with a stack of cards on the table next to mine. It just leaves an icky impression. So stop for a minute, leave a card with the agent, along with your marketing anchor that we just talked about a little while ago, a little goodie bag or whatever it happens to be. And then leave it at that. We don’t need to market to their people that they brought in. We’re marketing to them. So again, do not leave a stack of cards and brochures everywhere. Or one of my favorite things that I saw inspectors do, like the pamphlets you would pull out of the box that they’d leave out front on the sign, open house, pull out a pamphlet, home inspectors have stuffed their cards in there. Nothing ticks an agent off more. They had to take that thing apart, pull your cards out of there, and all you did was annoy them and not pick up any clients anyways. So, from the beginning to the end, it’s a super simple visit. Only go when no one is there, besides the agent. Go right to the front door. Do not inspect the house, look around, start poking at things, go right to the front door, knock on it, and announce yourself. Stay close to the door unless you’re invited in farther into the house. Keep it brief, talk about them, leave them with a marketing anchor, and then before we leave, leave them a card, and then off we go. It’s a very basic, quick touch marketing piece. If we try to make it into something bigger than it is, it won’t be effective. But again, going back to that, if you know a broker, do that wellness visit, wellness check, or whatever you want to call it, of hey, you have 15 open houses today. I’d like to drive by all 15 personally, do a walk around, make sure all your agents are okay. I have seen a lot of happy brokers with that. So how to properly visit an open house. That’s it. Keep it simple. I don’t like doing them, but they are effective, and hopefully this information helps.

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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