PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
So, welcome back to Inspector toolbelt Talk, and we have on with us again, the Swede himself, the person who gets me in the most trouble on a podcast together. How you doing, David?

David Nyman
Doing well, thanks, Ian. Nice to be here. Sorry for the off screen antics.

Ian Robertson
Good to have you back. That’s okay. Like I said, you’re probably the most likely to get me in trouble on our podcast. I don’t think I need to introduce you again. You’ve been on a few times. David basically kind of runs the show on the back end here. But, you know, I was thinking about, David. We’ve done this podcast, this will be season three. And I’ll talk to some guys and they’ll be like, oh, man, it must be really cool having..like, I think people have an idea of what a podcast looks like. You know what it is? It’s a 40 some odd year old man, basically in a pillow fort, talking to people.

David Nyman
I was saying, I need to build myself one of those pillow forts, I get better sound on my end too.

Ian Robertson
Well, you know, it’s like, you think you’re being really cool. Like, oh, man, I have these soundproof panels, and they’re this and oh, man, this must be awesome. Then my wife comes in. And she peeks at me through one of the openings, and she’s like, are you having fun in your pillow fort? Like, totally, like, demoralizes me, but it’s true. Yep. So welcome to the Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We are talking to you from our pillow fort. This is actually a continuation of our last podcast. So we talked about some quote unquote, psychological tricks. So basically, just some little things that, that make business a little bit easier. Last time, we kind of focused on how to deal maybe with people a little bit better, like if there’s a complaint or the contractor or father-in-law’s on site or something. This time, the points that we have, basically have a lot more to do with sales. So this is kind of right up my alley, I love these points. And most, if not all of these, I’ve used to one degree or another. So let’s get into it, David, I think you have the first one for us.

David Nyman
So, this is actually something that we probably have seen, because it’s a natural human tendency with mirroring. So the idea is that, you know, you want to make someone more comfortable, you’d basically mirror what they’re doing, mirror their way of talking. But you can do a slight change in their way of thinking and acting, just by mirroring them, but introducing a slight change. And that way, kind of like steering them like a, kind of like a boat, you know, going from the way that they were thinking and talking and steering them towards maybe a more positive way.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, you know, it’s funny, I think of that episode of The Office where Andy is going to anger management. And he’s like, I’m going to, I’m going to control the situation by mirroring. And I think we talked a little bit about mirroring in the last podcast. But this is a little bit of a different level. It’s taking the energy and tone of the person you’re talking to. Somebody calls you, and they’re very excited, hey, we need to get this done. And we kind of emulate that same energy. But then we also mitigate it at the same time. So we’re not just going to take their lead, we’re going to mirror them, then they feel on par with us. And then we can take it down by calming our voice, and then they tend to calm down with us. Or maybe they’re thinking about price. And we’re like, oh yeah, price is important. You know? And then what about this? You go, oh, yeah, you’re right. What about this? Now we’re mirroring them and guiding them to where we want them to be. It’s pretty effective. It’s a little bit hard to do, though. I mean, do you find yourself easily mirroring people?

David Nyman
I think, I think it does happen, you know, we all want to fit in. So you know, I think it’s something that does happen very easily for a lot of people in social setting. But to be honest, I thought when you were going with an Office reference there, when everyone dressed up like Dwight, I thought that was the one you were going to go with.

Ian Robertson
That’s also a good episode. No, but I caught, I caught a salesman salesman doing it to me one time. I was buying a bed at a furniture store. And he started like almost mirroring me. And I’m like, oh, this guy’s good. Like he was doing it very subtly. I’m like, I’ve done that same thing, chicken recognize chicken. So it’s effective, it works. The one that I have up next is one of my favorite subtle sales techniques. And I love this one on a phone call when somebody is trying to, you know, get a price or feel us out to see if they want to hire us. But it’s changed the perspective from I to we. It’s a very simple thing to do. But what it does is subconsciously connect people to you. So people will say..and, you know, it’s little subtle ways, but people will call and say hey, I’m looking for a home inspection. Oh yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. What kind of home inspector are we looking for? And I just interjected the “we”. Well, we’re looking for…and then they start using the “we”. And then all of a sudden, the plural aspect kind of connects them to us. And then we tie them to the inspection. Oh, well, you know, I want to make sure you look at this. Well, when we’re on site, we can really take a close look at that heating unit. You know, when we’re working together, we can talk about this. And it just kind of connects people to you. It’s oldest sales trick in the world, is connecting people to you automatically bonding them subconsciously, by instead of referencing ourselves, we reference us together. It’s a nice little sales technique.

David Nyman
We’re in a lot of trouble now. We’re really messed up.

Ian Robertson
Well, I also noticed I said, we use the “we” a lot. So what’s our, what’s our next one, David? Let’s move on before we get in trouble.

David Nyman
I think we are in trouble already. So yeah, for our next point, this is something that I think a lot of people are going to have a hard time with, admitting your mistakes. I think we see politicians, they, they will go out of their way to never admit they did anything wrong, ever. And I think that’s, you know, society in general. But in fact, you know, admitting your mistake, when something legit, legitimately is your fault, admitting to that mistake, you know, apologizing, people will actually find you more trustworthy. I’ve seen it as we do support for our app, you know, someone comes with a concern with the app, and like, always, am I doing something wrong? You tell them, you know, I think that’s actually an issue with the way the app is set up, but let me help you to figure out what’s going on. Nine times out of 10, they’ll be like, oh, thank you so much for helping me with that. And they don’t see it as a shortcoming on your end, even though, you know, if there’s an issue with the app, there’s a sort of shortcoming on our end. But they do appreciate the honesty, instead of us trying to, you know, put the blame on them and saying it’s user error.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And there’s obviously the morality aspect of it, you know, admit your mistakes. But when it comes to psychological, I hate the word trek, but psychological method, we should go out of our way to find ways to basically admit a mistake. I’m sorry, I pushed the wrong button on my phone. Give me just five minutes, or I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you quite right. It’s a trust campaign. Every time we’re closing a deal, working with a client, doing sales with an agent, it is a trust campaign. The minute we apologize for something, we find something really, really small. I’m sorry, I know, even if we’re early to like an office presentation. I’m sorry, I would have been here earlier. But I, you know, I got stuck in traffic, or, you know, I went to the wrong building at first, but, but I’m here now. It automatically endears you to people and disarms them. So it’s actually a good method to not make it look like we’re always bumbling, but find ways to apologize for small things that people really wouldn’t even take offense to. Disarms them and builds a relationship. It works with real estate agents, it works with clients on the phone. But the next one that we have is one of my favorites. Because magicians use this. And I use this as an example all the time. But if you are a nerd, like David and I, you probably love..

David Nyman
Speak for yourself.

Ian Robertson
Hey, okay, if you’re a nerd like me, you probably love every board game that’s overcomplicated, but I’m just going to use a simple one, Catan. You know, I love to play Catan. But people are very predictable in their patterns. People will often pick a card in the middle of your hand, if they’re taking one. If you offer people to pick a number between one to 10, more often than not, they’re gonna choose three or seven. But if we ever watched a magician, they’re going to rely on those patterns. So I have always used those patterns to my advantage, because patterns deviate sometimes, but by and large 80% of the time, they stay the same. So the best way we can utilize that is to write a script. So I’m always big about scripts. But if somebody says something once, very likely, everybody else is thinking that, or going to say it to one degree or another. So make a little chart. When we answer the phone, what do we say? And then as we go through each client, say, okay, they said this, and draw a little chart, where did you go after that? By the end of, let’s say, six months, you’ll have a chart to handle 99.9% of people when they come in and close the deal. So okay, they asked about price. Now I move down to this box. Okay, they said this. Now I’m going to move to the box to the right. We can predict what people are going to do for the most part in just a simple little chart. It’s really, really super amazing, because after a while I didn’t even need the chart. I would just say, “And let me guess. This is what you’re really concerned about.” “How did you know?” And you know, I didn’t tell them, hey, I have a chart and like..I’m a magician. I just say, you know, 1,000 people before you asked the same thing. But why do we want to reinvent the wheel? Have a chart, have a script, follow it, and it’ll work every time, or most of the time.

David Nyman
I gotta admit, though, like, after seeing this one, I did change my gameplay for Catan.

Ian Robertson
Right?

David Nyman
But now next time I’m playing with you, I know I’m gonna go for the edge cards.

Ian Robertson
See now I know that pattern, and I’m gonna put it in the middle. Or will I?

David Nyman
I know that…yeah, there’s no end to this. But no, that is actually an amazing way to think about it too. Because the more information we have, the more data we have, you know, keeping track of our calls, like you said, we will notice patterns, but only if we actually keep track of it. You know, it’s so easy to forget from one call to the next what actually happened in the last one, but, but by having, you know, somewhere where we keep a record, that will help us to, you know, get that data that we can use for production.

Ian Robertson
We don’t need to blow it out of proportion, we don’t need to have a big thing. But, you know, oftentimes people wonder, well, how did Walmart become so big when all these other stores were around before them? Patterns. You know, they knew people did X, Y, Z, they did this, then that. And they just followed the pattern. If we can follow the pattern, we’ll be the world’s best salesman. Salesmen, all over the world use basic human patterns, if you’ve ever read a sales book, they say, here’s the pattern of what people do. 80% of the time, people are going to follow this pattern, the other 20% of the time, just adapt it a little bit. And it works. We’re not as complex creatures as we’d like to think, what’s your next point there, David?

David Nyman
So next, we have the illusion of choice. So I like trying, I’d like to try this one out sometime. So for example, you know, you can ask a person, you know, you can either ask them, when can come over to, you know, help me out installing that light? Or you can ask them, would Saturday or Sunday work better for you to come over and help me install that light? So they do get a choice, just not doing it is not a choice. But they’re much more likely to agree to something, you know, when they have a few options, instead of just the question straight up, you know, when can you do this?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, you know, I used to use that a lot when I was contracting many, many moons ago. I would say, so which one of these two options for your bid would you like to do? And I didn’t say, you know, would you like to accept our bid? Say which one of these two options, and then more often than not, they’d pick one of the two options, and the deal would be sealed. So, I like how you put that, the illusion of, of choice, you put it, right? That’s how you said it? Yep.

David Nyman
Yeah, they don’t have a choice.

Ian Robertson
So, just giving them options that all lead to us. Some people will pick up on it, they’ll be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I haven’t made a decision yet. But you know, if we are answering the phone, and we offer home inspections and radon, at the end of the conversation, instead of saying, you know, let me know what you think. Give me a call if you want to schedule, say, which one of these two options do you want, do you want the home inspection or the home inspection with radon? And now they still feel in control, but we’ve only given them options that all lead to us. Yeah, like a corn maze.

David Nyman
And really, a corn maze. Very disappointing corn maze.

Ian Robertson
Alright, so let’s move on to the..I’ll just move on to the next one. This one I’ve always liked with agents, have we ever lost an agent, and then like, maybe not even just lost them, maybe they just kind of haven’t referred us in a while. Retaining an agent as a referral source is much cheaper than going out and gaining a new agent, statistically speaking, because they’re going to provide more value to us by just having history with us and more volume, because we’re not testing the waters, acquisition cost, etc. So it’s better to retain an existing agent. So, oftentimes, what we want them to do is refer us. So when we go and start a conversation, oftentimes I hear home inspectors say, well, it’s been a while since you referred me. Worst possible way to start that conversation. Instead, start with examples where you cooperated, and it succeeded in the past. And mentally that builds, you know, builds a foundation of what you’re going to say next. “Oh, hey, John, it’s been a while, great to see you. You know, just the other day I was thinking about that, that one radon test, remember where the seller tore the, tore the equipment off and tried to fake it? Yeah, I remember that too. Yeah. I was really glad that I was able to get that new radon test in there. And it worked out for that buyer. They’re happy in the house, right?” “Yeah.” “Oh, yeah. Good. Hey, I just wanted to check on ya, you know.” Then we can bring up, you know, hey, we’d love to work with you again, because we just built a mental picture of “Man, this guy was awesome.” Instead of starting it off on the negative, start off on the positive. It’s um..there’s a psychological term for it, but basically, start off any interaction with an agent that has not referred us in a while, in a while, with examples of cooperation and success. Not of how awesome I am, but where you work together, and it was successful.

David Nyman
Yeah, yeah. Maybe a less corny example than the radon thing you have there.

Ian Robertson
I like my radon example. I’ve used that a lot of times. There was this one agent that referred me a ton. And I’m like, man, remember that one time that I forget what it was, it was something funny, like I got stuck trying to get out of the crawlspace. And I’m like, remember, you had to grab my feet. And you pulled me out. And the agent was laughing. And it was just a good memory. And he goes, man, that was, that was fun. Yeah, you know what I got an inspection next week, let’s talk.

David Nyman
Remember that time we wrestled down the squatters?

Ian Robertson
Oh man, don’t get me started on that. It’s been about a year now. It just came up in my Facebook memory of doing the interview with Bob Madewell. About his example of getting attacked by squatters. But that’s a different podcast.

David Nyman
Yeah, if you haven’t listened to it, that’s a pretty enthralling story.

Ian Robertson
It was wild, man. He’s, he’s still, he’s still not an inspector now, because, I mean, he’s a successful real estate agent, but you know, he was seriously injured. He couldn’t, couldn’t inspect anymore. All right, what you got next there, David?

David Nyman
So, this one I have actually used many times throughout my life, I call it the grabbing reflex.

Ian Robertson
Okay.

David Nyman
When, when you hand people things, nine times out of 10, they will just grab it. So you know, of course, it depends on what we’re trying to accomplish here, as a home inspector, most likely, you know, we’re trying to maybe hand out flyers or, or business cards. But I remember as a kid, I made good use of this with a butter knife. Because if you hand someone a butter knife, and they go to grab it, you just pull down, and they get butter all over their hand.

Ian Robertson
I was wondering where you were going at, how this applied, how this mental trick applied to home inspections. But that makes sense.

David Nyman
Yeah, it applies in no way whatsoever.

Ian Robertson
No, it does, though, it does. Like…I guess the application is, like you said, if we’re handing out brochures or business cards, just hand it to the person, and then start the conversation that way. Nine times out of 10 they’ll take it. But it is funny, people have a grab reflex. And going back to the magicians, magicians use that all the time. They hand people stuff, and their attention is automatically drawn to it. I watch this one magician. He’s like, when I hand people stuff, they automatically look at what I hand them, and not what I’m doing with the rest of my body or hands with the trick. So it helps them to focus on that. Hand them the business card. Hi, my name is Ian, and we’re are automatically handing them the business card. That’s a good one. I didn’t know how all that was gonna play.

David Nyman
Even though, there are some people. It doesn’t work every time. You know, there are some people that I think have trained themselves against the, maybe it’s my family members after the butter knife incidents, but they actually have trained themselves not to grab things when you pass them out to them. So you know, it could backfire. Because then you’re standing out there with your, your item in your hand and awkward.

Ian Robertson
Well, nine times out of 10 people will do it. So..

David Nyman
Yeah.

Ian Robertson
The next one I have is…this one was kind of funny. I was reading this article and it talked about, if you want people to move for you, don’t make eye contact, and start walking. And I’m like, that is the most useless psychological trick, but people will move for somebody who appears busy. Like it’s almost getting railroaded, like, are they going to run into me? It’s a natural reflex. But if you make eye contact, they don’t move. So I’ve used this on inspections, and it just popped into my head as I read it. I’ve used this on inspections. If you have a crowd of people, it gets super annoying. And you feel like you need to engage with them and say, excuse me, excuse me, can you please move. Instead, don’t look at them, and just start walking, and people will move for you. And it does work you know, so don’t make eye contact unless you need to, and then just start moving, and people will get out of your way. I mean, that’s not exactly a sales trick or anything, but it was actually pretty useful.

David Nyman
Yeah, I try not to make eye contact ever with people, so…

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no. Making eye contact’s uncomfortable, unnatural.

David Nyman
It is, it is. I don’t know why we do it.

Ian Robertson
Well, another sales trick. I’ve mentioned this in a different podcast, if you do not want to make eye contact. So this is marketing for introverts 101, if you don’t want to make eye contact, stare at their forehead just above their brow. People can’t tell the difference, and it feels engaging. So it’s that little spot right in the middle of your forehead just above your brow. So, you don’t like eye contact, look at their forehead.

David Nyman
It’s easier if they have a unibrow too, because, they have more to look at.

Ian Robertson
Like Jay Wynn. Yeah, we’re gonna have him on the podcast, we’re gonna have him on the podcast again, and I’m going to just stare at his unibrow, it’s glorious. He listens to the podcast whenever I drop a J bomb. He’s like, what?

David Nyman
I’m sure he’ll appreciate that one.

Ian Robertson
He’s proud of it. Yeah, we gotta have him on. Yeah, we’ll have him on here in another week or two, another drinking with J session. So it’ll be fun.

David Nyman
I do have a question, though. With a unibrow, do you say, I want to pluck my eyebrows? Or I want to pluck my eyebrow? Because technically, it’s just one.

Ian Robertson
That’s a good question. Also, if you have a unibrow that’s so thick that it connects with your hairline? Is it really an eyebrow anymore? Or is it just part of your hairline?

David Nyman
It’s bangs.

Ian Robertson
All right, well, let’s move on to the next point that you have there, David.

David Nyman
So, people will be more favorable to an idea that you present if they think it’s their idea. Because everybody wants to think that they’re smart. So, you know, you can accomplish this by doing a simple concept, you know, leaving some gaps, waiting for them to fill in that gap. And then oh, yeah, that’s a great idea. You know, just making sure that, you know, you want to guide them in the right direction, but at the same time, you want to leave it open enough that they feel like they had something invested in this idea. And they are going to appreciate it much more than if you just present the whole thing on your own.

Ian Robertson
So how would, how would we apply that as a home inspector? I guess I’m trying to wrap my brain around that, like, sales, or how would we do that?

David Nyman
Well, I mean, for example, ancillary services, you know, you’re like, oh, yeah, yeah. Looks like you, you know, you have a, you know, some, some moisture intrusion here, you know. I know you said you didn’t want a mold inspection, so I’m not gonna bring that up, but what do you think about this situation? And they’re like, you know what, maybe, maybe we should have a mold inspection. Instead of like, directly telling them that you need one.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so like, on site sales, so we do that a lot with sewer lateral scopes. So we get down there. Oh, this is, uh, this is an older pipe, you know, could be Orangeburg, but you didn’t want, you didn’t want the sewer scope? Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, maybe we could get the sewer scope. Oh, yeah, that is a good idea. Now, it’s their idea. They initiated it. They didn’t feel like they got sold on it. Okay. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that’s a good application. I guess that’s a little bit of a trickier one to do, you know, trying to make it sound like their idea. So I guess maybe like a little script or something, a little, however, whatever we happen to remember to say on site, and kind of practice it.

David Nyman
Exactly. And I think it takes a lot of reading of the situation as well. You know, some, some people might never come to the same conclusion that you would.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, that’s true.

David Nyman
From a situation. So that, that is, you know, yeah, this guy is not gonna get it.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, some of this takes a little bit of thinking. And some of it takes a little bit of reading of the situation. But I think by and large, they work. I mean, most of these I’ve used to one degree or another. One thing I will say is, it’s kind of like a Jedi mind trick. Like, you can use it on most people. But, you know, eventually somebody is going to be like, yeah, that doesn’t work on me, son, don’t do that.

David Nyman
Dirty tricks.

Ian Robertson
They’re not dirty tricks, though. They’re just, it’s human psychology, you know. And most of it comes down to just being a good person. So you think about spending time with somebody, talking with them on the phone, being a good person, going out to lunch, you know, looking somebody in the eye, whatever it happens to be. It’s teaching us how to be more human with other humans. People tend to appreciate that. The other day at the grocery store I was walking around. And this lady just looked upset. And so she looked, she looked towards me, and I looked her right in the face. And my wife says, you gotta stop looking people in the face, and I don’t know what I’m doing. She looked at me, and I smiled. And she let out this big sigh and smiled back and kind of like gave me this little tiny nod and walked away. I’m like, I think I made her day just by being more human. Like she just needed someone to smile at her. And I was just being weird. And I’m just like, hey, yeah, I didn’t know what I was doing.

David Nyman
Nice unibrow!

Ian Robertson
No, she didn’t have a unibrow. But there was something interesting that came up. It’s been a couple of weeks now, but um, this has nothing to do with the psychological tricks. But did you see that HomeBinder and Repair Pricer were acquired by IGO? Yeah. So for those who don’t know IGO, they have a coaching system and stuff like that. But they acquired HomeBinder, which basically helped home, homeowners keep track of their home, when to change out, you know, filters on your furnace, and when your roof was put on, and keep track of all that stuff, and Repair Pricer, we’ve had Christian Adams on twice now, great guy. They give cost estimates, using artificial intelligence and real people to give accurate cost estimates on things in our reports. So that was kind of a big deal that they were acquired by IGO.

David Nyman
Yeah, how big is IGO?

Ian Robertson
I don’t know how big IGO is. I do know that, what does he call himself, Nick Gromicko, made a comment. And you know, the form, on the forums, comments can change and get edited over time or whatever. Not saying that he’s going to edit his comments. But if you look at his comments right now, it says that he is the strategic, like, guy, he’s on, sits on the board or something like that for IGO, and he actually pushed for it. And he said that they are now competition for Porch. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. Because Porch wants to basically build not only into our industry, but they want to have the whole home process. They want to have contractors, you need your driveway sealed, we have the guy. They want the, that homeowner from beginning to end of the life of that house. And that’s what IGO’s trying to do. So, I just thought it was interesting, more consolidation of our market. I thought it was kind of an odd consolidation. I remember when HomeBinder got started years ago. I’ve always liked those guys, they’re good guys over there at HomeBinder and Repair Pricer. But if you hadn’t heard, you heard now, and there you go, another thing happening in the market. I just thought it was kind of interesting. Nick Gromicko kind of pushed for that. But, hey, good for Nick. Yeah, hopefully that works out for him, if they can get the special sauce all mixed up just right. They can have it done. Sears tried it years ago, lots of people have tried it. Angie’s List tried it and failed. And matter of fact, Angie’s List tried it, and they could have been bought by what was then Service Magic, which became Home Advisor. But they didn’t, and then they ended up years later selling at a much lower number than Service Magic had offered them, because they, they couldn’t control the process all the way through. Sears couldn’t do it either. So Porch hasn’t been able to do it. So if IGO can do it, cool, more power to them, you know, maybe that’ll help out the inspection industry. But it’s kind of a tough, tough sell, to be honest. A little bit of inspection news there for you if you haven’t heard that information before. Any more psychological tricks that you want to tell us about David?

David Nyman
No, I just like the staring at people.

Ian Robertson
Okay, well, we didn’t get in too much trouble on this podcast. But it was a fun one.

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].

If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.