Posts

Business Resolutions for 2022

January 11, 2022

By Kimberly Stevens, NPI Inc.’s Marketing Coach As we enter a new year, we look forward to new opportunities. About a quarter of people make a resolution to improve themselves in the new year. However, less than ten percent of those individuals will actually follow through on their goals. Here are some simple resolutions you can make as an entrepreneur to grow yourself and your business! Keep Learning One trait that every successful business owner has in common is that they never stop being a student. You can always find new ways to better yourself and make your business operate more effectively. This year, make it a habit to continue your education. This can be in the form of attending conferences, talking to fellow inspectors, and following news updates. Listening to audiobooks or podcasts is another easy way to get useful information. You can play them all day in your car through your phone! Clean Your Email List Email marketing is a highly effective way to stay in contact with your customers and reach out to new ones. But if you haven’t updated your mailing list in a while, you might not be seeing the results you want. Kickoff 2022

How Energy Audits Can Help You and Your Clients

January 4, 2022

By Jon McCreath, NPI, Inc.’s Technical Supervisor & Training Administrator Add-on services are a great way to upgrade your business. Your customers will feel better protected in their home, and you can add an extra revenue stream. One additional service that can be beneficial to add is energy audits. These audits help the homeowner understand where energy is being “wasted” in their home and how to decrease it. More Homeowners Going Green Preserving the environment and decreasing individual impact are important topics to a majority of homeowners. Close to 70 percent of homebuyers would prefer a greener home, with almost half willing to pay more for one. It’s estimated the average homeowner spends at least $2,000 a year on electricity costs. By lowering each monthly bill by a few dollars, the savings will really start to add up. Within the next few years, the green material market will reach over $360 billion. As more and more younger buyers enter the market, the demand for eco-friendly housing will only increase. Equipment Needed Performing an effective energy audit requires some specific tools. An infrared camera (which you may already have) will help identify any equipment that is inefficient or spot heat loss

Pricing Your Services the Right Way

December 14, 2021

By Kimberly Stevens, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Coach Finding the right price for the services you provide can be pretty tricky. Set them too high, and your customers will look elsewhere. But price them too low, and you might find it hard to break even. If you’re a new business owner, you might be stuck in a gray area about the best way to set prices. Research is Your Best Friend The best way to figure out what’s a reasonable amount to charge is to check out other businesses near you. Look at their websites and see if they have their pricing listed. You can also look at what other services they add and any deals they offer. Just a little bit of leg work will prove to be valuable as you get up and running. Flat Rate by Square Footage One of the common pricing strategies among inspectors is a set dollar amount based on the property’s size. This system is mainly used for residential properties that aren’t as extensive as larger commercial jobs. You can start at the lowest size you commonly inspect and increase by a certain range to the largest. This helps ensure that you’ll get paid

Why You Shouldn’t Neglect Your Inspection Tools

December 7, 2021

As an inspector, you have a variety of different tools to help you do your job. Drones, electrical outlet testers, gas sniffers, and more all give you the information you need to educate your client. But with so many different pieces, it’s not uncommon for equipment to malfunction. What Can Happen The most obvious answer to what’ll happen if you don’t maintain your equipment is that it simply won’t work correctly, if at all. If this happens to you in the field, you can find yourself stuck in a tight spot. You’ll either have to scramble to replace the broken tool or reschedule the inspection. Perhaps the worst outcome is that you mark a component incorrectly on your report. This can lead you into a wormhole of liability and result in a costly payout and possible lost business. Do Your Research Beforehand To avoid having to constantly repair your equipment, look into the best tools for the job beforehand. There are lots of different brands on the market, and each has their own set of pros and cons. If you belong to an inspector message board, see what others have asked about. Read reviews on the products prior to purchasing

Tips to Streamline Your Report Writing

November 30, 2021

By Jon McCreath, Technical Supervisor & Training Administrator Every small business owner knows that time is one of your most valuable assets. The more time you have and the more effectively you use it, the bigger you can grow. For inspectors, one task that can eat up most of your day is putting together your final report. If you find yourself staying up late into the night to finish reports, you may need to rethink your process. Fast vs. Fine-Tuned First and foremost, it’s important that we differentiate between rushing a report and finding beneficial shortcuts. Remember that as an inspector, your report is your safeguard from liability. A quality report keeps you protected from possible repercussions and maintains your reputation. If you begin to rush through things for the sake of saving a few hours, it can come back to bite you. As a new inspector, it might take a while before you start seeing a difference in your writing time. That’s OK! It’s best to get comfortable first, and then you gradually start smoothing things out. Before the Inspection Saving yourself time on the job starts before you even show up at the inspection. When you book an

Too Many Red Flags? When to Turn Down a Questionable Client

November 23, 2021

Being a small business owner, it’s important to build a large referral base to avoid stalling out. However, sometimes you’ll have to weed out certain customers that have become a hindrance. It can be hard to turn someone down, especially if you’re new to the industry, but it’s something every business owner has dealt with. Here are some early warning signs that you may think twice about signing on with a customer. They don’t communicate well or at all. You can tell a lot about a person based on their communication style, and it won’t take long to figure them out. It’s usually easier to get an understanding of someone over the phone than it is through text or email. You’ll be able to detect certain tones they use with you and how they’ll treat you should you work together. But even digital conversations can raise some red flags. If they take forever to respond to calls or emails, expect immediate responses from you, or try to reach you at inappropriate times, they might have unrealistic expectations of you. While you want your customers to feel like a priority, it shouldn’t come at the expense of other relationships. They want

Crawl Space Safety: What to Know Before Heading In

November 16, 2021

By Jon McCreath, NPI, Inc.’s Technical Supervisor & Training Administrator Performing a complete home inspection means you could find yourself in some tight spots, one of these being the crawl space. Like the attic, crawl spaces can be intimidating, since you don’t know what’s in there until you look for yourself. While you want to inform your clients of any dangers in their new home, you also need to prioritize your safety. Crawl spaces can be full of hidden dangers. Crawl spaces are one of the most forgotten and neglected spaces in a home. Chances are most homeowners have only been in their crawl space a few times (if at all), and likely only for emergency maintenance. In most cases, you’re essentially going in blind, and there are a variety of dangers you can encounter: Each home can vary in terms of what you might encounter in the crawl space. In older homes, you may need to prepare for a more deteriorated underside with rotting wood and substandard framing. If you’ve noticed animal signs around the home, it’s a safe bet you’ll encounter something furry or slimy in the crawl space. Always use your best judgement and your SOPs. First

Millennial Home Buyers Overcoming Obstacles

November 9, 2021

By Adam Kiesel, NPI, Inc.’s Digital Marketing Assistant This past year’s housing market can be best compared to a high-octane car race. Short listing times along with people itching to go from renter to owner made for a hot seller’s market. Millennials were one of the major players, throwing their hats into the buyer’s ring and quickly snatching up homes. As the markets begin to slow down and level off, millennials are trying to keep their footing and overcome some of the hurdles they’ve faced. Don’t Look at the Label Millennials can often times be judged simply because of their age. They may be written off as too young or too inexperienced to accurately navigate the housing market. The reality is that they’re one of the more informed buyer groups. Millennials make up nearly 40 percent of the homebuying market, meaning they’re not going away, they’re only growing in number. In fact, most older millennials are repeat buyers and aren’t uninformed about the process. While it’s easy to assume, doing so could lead you down the wrong path when it comes to serving this group. What They’re Buying Like every buying group before them, millennials have their own wants and

10 Most Frightening Field Finds

October 26, 2021

Every Halloween season, there’s no shortage of freaks and frights that are sure to stand your hair on end. Our inspectors have come across their own collection of spooky finds on the job site. Here are some of the most chilling! 1. Nobody’s home. (Stephen Fotiades)Starting things off, you might not think there’s anything peculiar about this photo. It’s just a curious homeowner checking on the inspection, right? Not this time! While checking out a vacant property, one of our inspectors snapped this phantom face. Hopefully they don’t mind someone new moving in! 2. Fake face, real scares! (Mark Naquin)You can probably see by the inspector’s expression that he wasn’t expecting this surprise! Another curious onlooker in the window, this one at least belongs to a (hopefully) inanimate mannequin. You never know what you’ll find on the job! 3. A different kind of fright.This crawl space looks like it’s been taken over by web-spinning spiders. But it’s really the telltale sign of dryer lint buildup over time. While maybe not as scary as a colony of eight-legged arachnids, mass amounts of lint pose a serious fire hazard. (Check out this blog on how you can prevent a problem like this

Leverage Your Yelp Listing for a Better Reputation

October 19, 2021

By Zach Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s SEO and Marketing Specialist Collecting reviews for your business is essential to attracting new customers. Over 90 percent of consumers use online reviews in their final decision on a business. That means you can never have too many, especially too many positive ones. In addition to collecting reviews via Google and Facebook, Yelp offers another outlet for your customers to rave about the good work you’ve done! Yelp is as popular as ever. A somewhat common misconception is that Yelp has slid into the background behind Google. Yelp is still as relevant as ever, with nearly 200 million visitors to the site every month. 28 million of those unique users come through the Yelp app. As popular as Google has become, Yelp comes in at a close second for the most popular review platform. Nearly all “Yelpers” choose to spend money with a business they find on the site, so not having a listing means you’re missing out! You want a listing you have access to. In addition to not letting business pass you by, you don’t want someone else to control your listing. Yelp allows users to create a listing with your business’s information,