Mike Kessel and Casey Raymond are members of a small, but proud minority of professional home inspectors. Their only business is performing home inspections. Many home inspectors only offer the service as a sideline, which is how Mike and Casey began.
“We were both working as salesmen for a plumbing distribution company,” said Mike.
“Casey and I were good buddies, and we saw a lot of complementary qualities in each other. Casey spent many years in the construction business, and I have a solid background in business. We just clicked.”
“After a few years of working together, we started daydreaming about opening our own business. We talked about it for a few months and then started studying for our home inspection certification exams,” said Casey.
“Once we were certified, we filed the paperwork for a partnership and started doing home inspections on weekends.”
Their start-small strategy worked. Within two years, they had enough business to concentrate on their own business full-time.
Mike and Casey credit much of their success to their diverse service offerings. Many part-time home inspection services concentrate only on conducting pre-purchase inspections. That is, they examine homes on behalf of prospective buyers.
To expand their market, Mike and Casey began promoting their services to home sellers.
“By marketing our service as one that can help homeowners command higher selling prices and drive faster sales, we really tapped into an unmet need,” said Mike.
“Once customers were educated about the benefits of home inspections as a sales tool, our business really took off.”
The partners also attribute their growth to another marketing decision they made.
“Our ads listed our cell phones. Mike had one number, and I had another. At the time, it seemed like a good idea because we could make our own appointments without relying on an office staff,” said Casey.
“An important part of home inspection service is educating the property owner,” Mike added. “If you’re constantly answering your cell phone, you aren’t serving your customer very well. Advertising our cell phone numbers was a bad idea.”
Mike and Casey decided to rent a number from their answering service and have them filter all their incoming calls. “That was a game changer!” said Mike.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how good it was to let someone else juggle the who, what, when, and where,” added Casey.
“The best part was that the answering service staff would coordinate Mike’s schedule with mine, so we made the best use of our time.”
“It also really improved the customers’ perception of our professionalism. Instead of seeing what they knew were cell phone numbers, we provided one business number to call that was answered 24/7.
That really set us apart from the other guys, especially in this market,” concluded Mike.
Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s book The Profitable Answering Service.
With over three decades of industry experience, Peter is the publisher and editor-in-chief of TAS Trader, covering the telephone answering service industry.