We all want to be the most successful inspector out there. We all want to be on the short list of inspectors for all the agents. We all want to be everything to everyone.
But that’s not really possible, is it?

We couldn’t work for every real estate agent. It’s physically impossible. There are simply not enough hours in the day to do all the work that we’d have to do to make everyone happy.
Well then, maybe we don’t want all the agents, we just want all the agents in our area.
That’s it, we’ll just do all those inspections.
But that’s not really possible either, is it?
Most metro areas in the U.S. average around 200 – 300 home sales a month. Even if you’re really fast, it’s not feasible for an inspector to do that many (good) home inspections.
So, the question then becomes, if it’s unreasonable for me to believe that I can reach every real estate agent, how many of them should I be marketing to? Like most things in the inspection business, the answer is a frustrating “It depends.”
Where someone is on the timeline of their inspection career has a big impact on the amount of marketing they must do to stay (or become) relevant. When we start out, we need to cast a wide net, working every angle to try to find anyone who will recommend us to their home buying clients.
Our first foray into marketing should be our biggest. Then odds are stacked against us when we’re just beginning, and we need to search high and low to find an agent or two who are willing to give us business.
That doesn’t mean, however, that we should be driving all over creation, stopping at every real estate office within a 200-mile radius. When trying to grow our business, bigger is not always better. If we start out with an overly ambitious inspection territory of 50 real estate offices, it makes it impossible for us to visit each office on a regular basis. We’re much better off choosing a smaller number of offices that we can visit often enough to become well known.
When the agents see us regularly, they start to remember us, and that’s really what we’re looking for: to become someone they think about whenever an inspection needs doing.
We’re much better off concentrating our efforts on a smaller number of potential customers so that we can become a household name more quickly. The sooner we’re able to wow one client, the quicker the word will spread (and the sooner other agents will be calling us as well.)
That’s really what our marketing efforts are all about: getting a few people to use us, like us, and tell their friends about us. Agents are much more inclined to use a home inspector who one of their friends has recommended. Which is why it can seem so hard to gain traction in the beginning: we don’t have anyone to talk us up.
It all comes down to impressing someone so much that they’re willing to use their valuable social collateral to spread the word about our business. They’re willing to put their reputation on the line to make sure that other people know how good we are at what we do.
That should really be the goal of all our marketing, whether we’re just starting out or going into year 25: to impress a small number of people so much that they become our marketers. If we’re able to amaze the right person, the rest of it will all fall into place.

We shouldn’t waste our valuable time and resources trying to market to everyone. We can’t serve everyone, so why should we chase after them? We’re better off strategically choosing a smaller, more manageable target audience and doing everything in our power to astound them with our product.
It will save us a lot of driving, too.
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Thanks, Joe
