Inspector John wrote to me in
response to success Tip #8.
John wrote:
I have stopped running ads in the yellow
pages, but I never looked at the biggest ad
as the person being desperate, but instead as the one having the
most money
and therefore most successful.
But what do I know.?
As my long time subscribers now, the e-mail Tips are
brief and to the point. I am posting my response to John here
for those who are interested in additional details.
John,
Advertising is a difficult and
costly thing to do. There are no hard and fast rules that work for
every business or are going to work everywhere. One person can look
at something at it triggers something positive in them another
person can look at something and it triggers something negative. I
like to use music as an analogy. Both rap and country-western music
are very popular. Yet, I don't now very many people who like both.
If you turn on a radio station that plays a certain type of music or
has a particular talk format, you will notice that the advertising
for the identical products is different depending on the audience.
Yellow Pages ads go to everyone. It is harder to write an ad to
appeal to such a broad audience than it is to write to appeal to a
targeted audience. The Yellow Pages publishers have lots of
statistics that they pullout of their hats. I don’t doubt that the
statistics are valid but it is very easy to lie with statistics.
The fact is that the statistics are always from industries that do
well with Yellow Pages advertising. Call any Yellow Pages salesman
and ask to see statistics on the effectiveness of advertising. They
will be happy to show you how well it works for flower shops,
muffler shops, and lawyers. Ask to see the statistics for home
inspectors. I’ll bet dollars against stale doughnuts they don’t
have them.
All my Tips are intended to get inspectors to think. None of them
are going to make sense to everyone nor will they work for
everyone. Success in business can be boiled to one essential skill,
the ability to always optimize for your constraints. We used to
joke in graduate school that no matter what a course was called, it
was really a math class about "optimizing for constraints". The
concept literally made its way into every class.
My Tips don't tell the whole story. If they did, there would be
much more to learn from them but fewer people would learn anything
from them because no one would read them. It is personally
rewarding to me to get e-mails from guys like you about the Tips.
At least I know that you are reading them and thinking about them.
Coincidentally, I am just finishing another short e-book that I am
going to try to do an online class with. It will be a good test of
how much interest there is about learning business skills. As with
so many of my articles and other writings for inspectors, it grew
out of the Tips for Success newsletter. I have done quite a lot of
business consulting and training for construction contractors.
Construction contractors, especially the larger ones, are usually
very interested in the business side of the business. I once had
the CEO of one of the largest contractors east of the Mississippi
attend one of my project management classes at BGSU where I taught
Earned Value Analysis (EVA). I had already known some of his
employees for many years and they had attended my classes. He was
so convinced that this was essential knowledge that he sent every
one of his engineers and license holders through the class.
To the best of my recollection, I have never had a single home
inspector tell me that they believe they need to learn the skills
needed to run a business until they are in trouble. Only then, do
they come to me looking for help. Even then, they almost always
believe that the answers lie on the technical side of the business.
The saddest part of this is that most of the inspectors who are
failing are not failing because of lack of technical skill or
knowledge about houses. They are failing because they don't know
how to run a business.
The class I am putting the finishing touches on starts with some
tough talk about business. I go from there into a section on
scientific decision making. I don't know if anyone will read it or
not but it is important stuff. The decision making exercise in the
course is a model that I developed for people who are looking to
start a business or change occupations to compare businesses and
occupations. It is not a complex model but I am not so much
interested in having inspectors learn the arithmetic involved as I
am in having them learn the concept of doing structured analysis to
make important business decisions.
Advertising is risky business.
Yellow Pages advertising can work but only if you do it right.
Remember one important fact when dealing with Yellow Pages sales
representatives, the larger the ad they sell you, the more money
they make.
Take care, George
Sign up for our free Tips For Success Newsletter! Essential tips for success in the home
inspection business. These are the things you NEED to know!
FREE ELECTRICAL COURSE
Approved for Four Hours of NACHI, CMI, MSI, and CFI continuing education
The course focuses on identifying the common causes of
electrical fires, explosions, or electrocution hazards. You will learn which
parts of an electrical system are most important to inspect and how to inspect
them. Identifying and diagnosing electrical problems is not as much about what
you can see as it is about what you cannot see.
You will learn how to evaluate an electrical system based
what you can see without disassembling anything. You will also learn why you
may sometimes get false readings from electrical testers and what to do about
it. You will learn how to properly perform the tests that will tell what you
need to know about an electrical system.
With your free subscription you will get
access to the Free Stuff section of our web site
Don't miss these
free Tips for Success
articles, e-books, and tutorials in the Education Section
You will receive a link to the Education section with your first Tip For
Success
Mike's Dilemma
Get a Great
Domain Name
An Opinion on
Performance is Mandatory - NOW
AVAILABLE!
Determining the Size and Type of an Electrical Service
