How to Market Your Business to Real Estate Agents

by Kendra Budd, Editor

Home inspectors everywhere can almost agree on one thing— marketing to real estate agents is exhausting. But, to make matters worse marketing your home inspector business to real estate agents during a slowdown can feel impossible.

The world of technology has vastly impacted the way we market ourselves and our businesses. From email campaigns to regular posting on social media (and commenting too!)—the possibilities are endless.

If you want to make a huge impact during the slowdown, you’ll need to make in person connections. Right now, real estate agents are more likely to use and refer home inspectors they trust and have strong relationships with. Simply handing out a stack of business cards won’t do. You need to market yourself—the inspector—as the product, not only your business.

Ian Robertson, creator of Inspector Toolbelt Talk podcast, recently discussed how home inspectors can realistically market themselves to real estate agents by teaching them how to brand, make connections, and accept failure.

Here’s what we learned.

Branding

Before a home inspector can begin to market themselves directly to a real estate office, Robertson believes they must do some housekeeping first. Inspectors should be taking a close look at how they reflect their brand both virtually and personally.

There are three essential functions to building a successful brand as a home inspector.

1. Uniform and Logo

Robertson firmly believes that every home inspector needs a uniform and logo to both work and market themselves in. “If you don’t have a professional logo or uniform, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. You won’t go anywhere because you don’t look like a professional,” Robertson says.

2. Website

Having a professional website will be one of your biggest assets as a home inspector, because real estate agents will use this to both research and recommend you. Robertson knows this from his personal experience as a business operator.

If someone recommends himself as a contractor, “The first thing I do is look for a website. If they have a junky website or don’t even have a website at all, I would never recommend them. So why would an agent recommend us if we don’t look like we’ve ever existed?” Robertson iterates. Having a clean, easy-to-use website versus having a website that was built quickly or not having one at all can severely affect your business. Your online presence is just as important as your in-person persona.

3. Business Cards

Obtaining business cards is only the first step—you also need to make sure they look good. There are several ways to achieve this. A good business card will have your website, full name, business number, and of course your logo. Remember, the logo is what makes you memorable.

However, you don’t want to just use any website to print off these cards. “If you’re getting free business cards, like from VistaPrint that has their logo on it, you’re just throwing away money,” Robertson warns. This tends to be a turnoff to most real estate agents. If you can’t afford professional business cards, then you might be too new to the business or maybe you just don’t care to make a good impression. Whatever the reason, spending money on professional and original business cards will help you be more memorable and build your brand.

Branding essentially refers to marketing yourself. The way you just even subtly present yourself out in public is key to getting business. “Logo, uniform, and online presence. Don’t show up to offices until you have that,” suggests Robertson. Once these three marketing tools are in place, you’re ready to make your in-person connections.

The Four Touch Rule

Making connections with real estate agents and brokers can be daunting—especially when everyone else is doing the same thing. The foundation of any good relationship is trust. “People recommend someone that they trust, and we as human beings trust on a very arbitrary basis,” Robertson reports. So, how do we build that trust if it’s just random?

Robertson says the best strategy for building trust is something called the four-touch rule. “The four-touch rule has been a hard-set rule in my business model, and millions of others around the world for a long time. Once we’ve ‘touched’ a person four times as a salesman, then that person starts to trust us,” explains Robertson. Basically, after making a connection four times with an individual, trust begins to build within the relationship because they become more familiar with you.

Building up a four-touch relationship with a client takes a lot of tenacity and patience. When Robertson first started, he treated his visits to real estate offices as work instead of a chore. “I would get up and pretend it’s my 9–to–5 job—put on my uniform, and then in those hours I would visit real estate offices. But it was more than that too. I was very methodical,” says Robertson. This includes keeping a log of notes and building a route of real estate offices to check back in on every two to three weeks in order to build up those connections.

Consistency is key, and Robertson uses a fake scenario to help better explain the four-touch rule. First he tells us his two strategies are only leaving one card, and getting to know the admins of the office. “Don’t try to get past the admins— make them your ally. They are the most important person in that office because they are the gatekeeper to the broker and agents,” Robertson explains. The one card trick will come into the scenario later.

Continuing with the scenario: Robertson learns on his first visit that the admin’s name is Amber. He’ll take note that Amber has a picture of a golden retriever on her desk before giving her a business card—this is the first touch. “Next time I go back in, it’s a new admin, let’s say her name is Katie. I’ll say, ‘Hey Katie, I don’t know if Amber mentioned me, my name is Ian. I left my business card with her a few weeks ago, hopefully she’s doing good.’ Then Katie tells me that Amber had to take her dog to the vet. Then I say, ‘The golden retriever, right?’” Robertson narrates.

Making this connection with both Amber and Katie prompts them to start talking about Robertson, becoming the second touch. Not only that, but Robertson now has new information to work with—he takes note of Amber’s sick dog. By his third time in, he can ask Amber about her dog, which will prompt her to talk about Robertson even more—the third touch.

The fourth touch is usually when Robertson would meet the manager of the office. By this visit, or touch, the manager is more inclined to meet the person the admins keep raving about. Once this happens, now is the time to invoke Robertson’s one card trick.

The One Card Trick

Usually, home inspectors will leave a stack of business cards, along with candy or even a gift basket. Robertson believes this page 32 8 to be just a waste of money. Robertson explains, “If you leave an office a stack of cards, they’re going to throw them away. If you leave a gift basket they’re going to eat all the goodies inside and forget all about you.” Real estate agents get tons of business cards from home inspectors; it is unlikely they will keep them all. You need to build up the relationship until you’re confident enough they won’t throw your stack of cards away.

Once you meet the manager, broker, or agent in person, you’ll want to use the one card trick on them. “I would hand the business card to the broker, and it would happen like clockwork. The broker would stop me and say something along the lines of, ‘Let me tell you something about marketing, never leave me one business card. Leave me a stack.’ So now instead of giving him a stack of business cards he’s going to throw away, he’s asking for them. There’s a complete change in mentality now,” Robertson explains.

Now, the office is chasing after you. By utilizing the four-touch rule and only leaving one business card, you have piqued their interest in your business. Of course, this is an ideal scenario and it shouldn’t be expected that this will work out perfectly every time.

Enjoy Rejection

Robertson has seen a lot of success from home inspectors who use the four-touch and one card rule. “There’s a home inspector in my area who takes a four hour segment each week to do these routes, and it’s already getting him a vast amount of work. Another inspector who used to work for me did the same thing, and got over 100 inspections in his first month,” says Robertson. However, these two marketing strategies are not going to guarantee you work.

The example of the four-touch rule above was an ideal situation. Home inspectors shouldn’t expect to see extraordinary success right away. The road is also paved with rejections, which Robertson doesn’t necessarily believe is a bad thing.

If a real estate office rejects you, keep going back on your scheduled route anyway. You want those four times of interaction. “We want to be there when they start rejecting their other home inspector,” Robertson explains. If you’re continually making progress at building a relationship with an office, they’re more likely to go to you when things sour with your competition.

“The difference between someone who is successful at visiting real estate offices versus someone who’s not, is the other person gives up. You’re going to get rejected. Embrace that. 99.9% of people are going to reject you. Awesome. Realistically you only need 0.01%. Once you’ve accomplished that, you can work on building your other marketing campaigns,” Robertson emphasizes. Rejection is often disguised as a great opportunity waiting down the line.

Final Thoughts

Marketing to real estate offices is only one of many strategies of building a lucrative and successful business, but it’s a great stepping stone. It may not come easy at first and there are likely to be bumps in the road and plenty of rejection. But it works!

Using Robertson’s techniques might be the boost you need. To hear more of Ian Robertson’s podcasts, visit https://inspectortoolbelt.com/home-inspection-podcast/

Stay safe out there! WRE

Quick, very good price, easy to deal with, helpful and knowledgeable. Been with OREP for years now.

—Gary Nakamura

I switched my E&O to OREP last month and saved $349 bucks.

—Dave M.

It literally took 1 minute to renew. I had my new insurance info later that day. Thanks OREP—keep up the great service. —Jeff Wood