Empire State of Mind
Empire State of Mind
Remote Workforces and AI: Shaping the Home Inspection Industry
Prepare to be enlightened as we bring you an invigorating discussion with Sterling Cox and Jordan Flint, the dynamic duo behind the Inspector Call Center (ICC). We venture into the intriguing world of the home inspection industry, as Sterling and Jordan unveil their revolutionary approach that goes beyond mere call center services. Tune in for a captivating narrative of their journey to attracting the crème de la crème of talent and enhancing the customer experience in the industry.
We don't just stop there! Dive deeper into the world of virtual workforces with us, as we explore how ICC is leveraging this model to recruit quality talent from across America. Jordan shares his insights on managing this remote team, from the initial recruitment phase to fostering growth within the company. As we venture further, we'll delve into the nitty-gritty of their innovative strategies - from brand building to tackling the challenges of the job upfront.
But wait, there's more! Brace yourself as we take a deep dive into the future of the home inspection industry, with a focus on the impact of software and automation. Get up to speed on how AI tools and CRM systems are becoming game-changers in customer interactions and data tracking. We also traverse the challenging terrains of the pandemic-induced drop in inspection volume and how businesses can navigate this landscape strategically. So, gear up for a mind-expanding conversation with Sterling and Jordan and discover how ICC is trailblazing the home inspection industry.
Contact IEB -
- web: www.iebcoaching.com
- email: support@iebcoaching
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Contact Matt -
- email: matt@dciabq.com
- IG: @the.matthew.williams
We believe the purpose of owning a business is funding your perfect life. Welcome to the next generation of growth and opportunity in the inspection industry. This is the Empire State of Mind. Empire State of Mind Helping build companies with faster growth, higher profits and more time freedom. Finally, a podcast for the home inspection industry and beyond. This is the Empire State of Mind and this is your host, Matt Williams.
Matt Williams:Well, welcome to the show. I am excited. I have some amazing guests with me. Today I got the guys from ICC. This is Inspector Call Center and I can't wait to introduce. We have Mr Sterling Cox and Jordan Flint. How are you guys doing today?
Jordan Flint:Well, happy to be here.
Matt Williams:That's good. All right, jordan, how are you doing?
Sterling Cox:Yeah, excited.
Matt Williams:You're excited. I like it too. Now you have a bit of an accent Sterling. Where are you from? Sound a lot smarter than I am.
Sterling Cox:Yeah, you definitely do. It's a British accent.
Matt Williams:What's that From England? From England, okay, that's good. How long have you been in the States? 13 years, okay, all right, all right, that sounds good. Now do you go back to visit often?
Sterling Cox:Yeah, I was actually born in France and grew up there, so actually my parents still live down there. So I go back every summer with the kids trying to teach them French and get them some expertise and pleasure to Europe.
Matt Williams:That is fantastic, man. How many kids do you have?
Sterling Cox:Three how old are they? Seven-year-old, a five-year-old and a two-year-old.
Matt Williams:Oh, wow, okay, you're right in the thick of it. It's right in the thick of it, jordan, how about you? Do you have any kids?
Jordan Flint:No kids, no kids yet, no kids, no kids yet. I'm from Nashville, tennessee, okay, nashville, tennessee. Residing Houston, texas right now.
Matt Williams:Okay, yeah, that's awesome. All right, so some people don't know what you guys do. But Inspector Call Center ICC Inspector Call Center you run a call center that helps answer phones for inspection companies when people are calling in. Was that be a good, accurate assessment? Yes, but it's so much more, isn't it?
Sterling Cox:I guess we don't love the word call center, even though it's in our company name.
Matt Williams:Well, that's an unfortunate branding. I wouldn't call us a call center, but it's an ICC. It's in the name of the company.
Sterling Cox:Turns out people when they're looking for call centers they're googling call centers, but I guess there's a negative connotation around call centers typically.
Intro:Okay.
Sterling Cox:Which is cheap labor, offshoring people, high turnover, low value, ad, which is the other way around.
Matt Williams:They can barely speak English. Right If they're calling in. Right you know, because, yeah, you're right If I call in, like Verizon tech support, it's somebody in India or some other country that their English is broken. But they're trying to help me and I get frustrated and I hate it.
Sterling Cox:That's a majority of people's understanding of a call center which is not what we want to be doing for inspectors.
Matt Williams:That isn't what you're doing. I mean, I know firsthand my company uses you guys, so I know for a fact that you guys aren't that way. So if you had to rebrand it now, what would you call it now? If you had to lose the word call center, what would you? I mean, how would you possibly encapsulate what you do if you don't call it call center? Customer experience, specialist concierge master. I think the concierge one is one we've found Phone mastery.
Sterling Cox:We spend most of our time trying to find the best people we can, basically so if there's something around, you know inspection talent or something like that, which I like, that I'm trying to bring the best talent to the home inspection industry from a scheduling and, I guess, phone arms right Stand point.
Matt Williams:Yeah, well, that's that's really good. So, so how do you? Okay, that's that's really important. I think every business, I don't care what it is one of the biggest challenges is finding high talent people to be part of your organization and what your guys are doing. How do you guys find high talent people?
Sterling Cox:So we're, we're lucky relative to. I guess when you're building an inspection company, we can't have virtual home inspectors.
Matt Williams:This is very true, right, yeah?
Sterling Cox:You've actually got to go into the house. So the nature of our business we have inspection companies across the, across the country, and so we, I guess our service is virtual. We can do it from anywhere. So we we have a fully virtual workforce. So we have about 40 or so schedulers spread out across 19 different states in the US. Basically Wow. So we get the benefit of picking in a pool of 300 million Americans and we find people who want to work from home, which is a lot of people nowadays.
Matt Williams:Yeah.
Sterling Cox:And so we. We were very fortunate to have tens of thousands of applications every year, and we cherry pick the best people. Not necessarily helpful for finding inspectors, but if you're looking for schedulers, you can definitely find them online.
Matt Williams:Yeah, well, that's what you guys are doing. Is you're doing the scheduling and the like in the back, the operations, the customer interaction side of it, before the inspector gets out there?
Sterling Cox:Well and hopefully just providing continuity and stability, basically, because even if you have an in-house team, if one person quits or they call in sick for like a few days, you're stuck to answering the phones or you're dropping calls, basically, and so that's our problem to make sure that we always have enough people, that they're always trained and we we get the benefit of scale that it's hard to create a really dynamic culture if you have two people who are sort of there, that you're two people, whereas we have an entire company dedicated to this, which allows us to just make sure that people have a career path, for instance, where they can be from being on the phones and scheduling to handling accounts and helping them scroll, basically. So I think we've were able to attract and retain some really good people.
Matt Williams:And one of them sitting here, jordan is here and so, jordan, I know you've moved around a little bit in the organization. So, speaking of like count, finding talent and giving opportunity, like, what are your, what have been your roles in the company, what are you doing now?
Jordan Flint:So I started off with the company as an agent, booking home inspections, working for different home inspectors, and kind of transitioned over to the onboarding and acquisition sites or acquiring new companies. So reaching out and kind of listening to different home inspection companies around the nation and what, what are kind of their pet peeves, what are they looking for in a call center, even though we try to stay away from?
Matt Williams:that word yeah.
Jordan Flint:Concierge type of company and so having joy kind of learning about the business and then providing a lot of these problem solving, you know, kind of answers to different things that caught that call centers and are not called centers, that home inspection companies need answered and need to be completed in order to have a seamless process. So we want to provide kind of that ease of mind, kind of done some math and realize that roughly two and 10 calls are actually home inspections, that we're booking right, but those other eight calls are still very important and need to be handled with care. And so it's a, it's a relationship business and so I'm kind of building that relationship for the company with other home inspection companies and just growing our portfolio for the most part.
Matt Williams:That's incredible. So you guys are already in the. You're in the weeds on finding talent, training talent, getting building up an organization and and you do it with virtual staff. And I know that well. Y'all just speak to my own personal experience. I have an operations director that is a virtual employee in the sense that she does not live in in my state, she lives in a different state in in the country. In fact, I have never met her face to face. We work virtually, we do a little bit of video conferencing, but primarily it's text message and phone calls and and she actually oversees our operations department. And I tell you what, as a first time I've ever done that. I've probably made a ton of mistakes along the way. I I'm not going to lie, and if Michelle is listening, I'm sorry, you know.
Matt Williams:I hope that but but for so. So here I am trying to do this. You guys do that professionally and I know here with an IEB there's always a confirmation, a conversation going on about how do you properly work with virtual assistants or virtual staff and and that's what you guys do. So how do you find? So you got to find talent right and then you got to train talent and and and you got to be able to encourage and keep like culture going and man, that just seems overwhelming to me when you think about a virtual staff. How do you guys do that? What are some of the things that you guys do to help with that?
Sterling Cox:Well so. So when we first got into the business, we actually acquired an existing call center. Everyone was in person, so it wasn't actually until April of 2020 that we decided to move our whole business model to be 100% virtual. The biggest reason for it is our service is providing the best people we can. Basically, we were fishing, we have an office in Atlanta, and so we were trying to recruit in North Atlanta.
Sterling Cox:The caliber of people we were getting was not great. Basically we had to sift through hundreds of people to find one half competent person, the virtual model. Now we have 300 million people in America we can tap into basically. So that's just the biggest factor. Just it's a numbers game Couple of things. When we the first, I think people are scared of the virtual world. We were as well. We sort of got forced into it a little bit.
Matt Williams:Well, kind of like everybody did during COVID. I mean, covid hit in March of 2020, april of 2020. You're like well, let's just shift this thing over. I mean the whole world changed. I mean you know people I know that worked in offices all their life were forced to be in a virtual environment, and many of them I know are like wow, I wish I'd done this earlier. I really like it.
Sterling Cox:Well, it was interesting. I mean, we wouldn't have Jordan here otherwise if we weren't a virtual company and and and. But our first virtual hire was July 2020. We moved the team home, but then we started recruiting virtually. And the first, the hardest thing, is training, basically. And then the second one is how do you build team cohesion? But what I found interesting was you get to know someone virtually over screens and stuff like that, and when you actually meet them in person they're just like you picture them on the screen. There's no. I always thought, for some reason there's some gap that gets created of are you the same in person versus virtual?
Matt Williams:That's interesting.
Sterling Cox:And it's cool sort of meeting people who are virtual when they come into the office and we do things like that. It's like you're exactly the same as virtual. It's a strange. It's a different bond that you build when you're in person, but the people are the same. So I think there's no. I guess it's the same as hiring in general You've got to get the very best people Number one. You got to train them Number two and then you've got to incentivize them and provide a great work environment so that they don't leave, because if you're churning people, you spend half your time recruiting and training again, right.
Matt Williams:So so we actually inside of IAB, we have this model of recruiting. You know, selecting, meaning managing and motivating, and you guys are doing this on a virtual level. That is interesting. So I thought it'd be kind of cool to talk about how you guys do this, because I think it applies to not just what your specific business, but any business really that is working with any staff, local or virtual, doesn't matter. So you got to recruit people and then you've got to select them and there's, you guys have a strong like process for that. Like, how do you, how do you, when you say you all, we get 300, 500, 1000, 10,000 resumes or applications, like what's the process to filter that down? And is there are the key things that you're looking for when you're looking to hire people that like jump off the page at you when you're, when you're considering a hire?
Sterling Cox:I don't know if recruiting virtually is necessarily different than in person, in the sense of they're still the same person if they were in the office, or sitting at home.
Sterling Cox:So I don't think that's you've got to have a different recruiting process. But I had a company before this one where we had a couple of hundred employees and so it's been a lot of time on recruiting. For me, the biggest thing is just trying to understand who the person is and what they're trying to do. A lot of people spend time kind of running through joking about it. Last night I've never did know of someone interviewing you. You'd be like hey, give me an example of how you worked well with a team Like these kind of canned questions.
Sterling Cox:Yeah, people can practice the answers and you can nail the interviews, versus truly trying to figure out who the person is and sending for us. We want to make sure that we are stepping stone in someone's career and so our our interviews. I'm always I'll be trying to get down to where does someone fit after they leave us? So if, when they leave us, we've gotten them into a step up position which they wouldn't have gotten without us, that means that they develop skill sets with us.
Matt Williams:Oh, that's good.
Sterling Cox:They can translate somewhere else and get a high income from it. So if someone's looking to go and become a doctor, we can't help them. Do that.
Intro:If you want to go and build your own business one day or something we can.
Sterling Cox:We can kind of you know, hey, come on board here you can learn sales, you can learn account management, you can learn how to get your own clients, and so that's cool. We want to make sure, certainly internally, that we have career paths for people. But, measured from what someone does when they leave us, we're trying to not lose people, obviously, but if someone leaves and they got a big step up job. That means we've done our job, basically.
Matt Williams:That's really cool. I love how your heart is on that. And, jordan, do you do a lot of interviewing on your side, have you? Do? You do much of that in the company.
Jordan Flint:I don't do much interviewing on my side. I can't say I recently interviewed, so I've been with the company for months, now roughly four months Okay, and it was an intriguing process. I've interviewed for several companies. I'm four or five years out of undergrad now through grad school, so kind of going up the ladder and whatnot, and Sterling and I were joking over dinner kind of how that I don't want to say it was a rigorous process, but it was different, right, so you have so what was different about?
Jordan Flint:it Cause, yeah, yeah, there was three interviews and it starts off as sort of you do like a virtual video five to six minutes about yourself, your goals, how that aligns with the company you interview with, like your direct hiring manager, and that I met with Sterling and it was more of a conversation, which was interesting in the sense that, you know, he kind of asked what were my career goals and he wanted to ultimately learned that he wanted to see how that aligns with the company. Right, like he said, if I wanted to be a doctor, we just may not be on the same page right now, right, cause I have other aspirations, that kind of line with the company. I think that's important to potential employees that want to work with us. It's different from coming to work every day and knowing that you're also working towards your personal goals while helping the company, and it just it meshes together well. On the other hand, to kind of speak on just the virtual, the virtual culture, it's a. It has to be intentional, right?
Jordan Flint:So I've been with the company for four months and Sterling and I work together closely every day. We have different meetings every day, I guess like you would in an office space, but they're just because you're virtual. You have to have these set times, that kind of meeting level set. And so I met him for the first time yesterday, right, but it felt like we've known each other for for years because we, we intentionally have that culture in the company and it's it's authentic, right, it's not something that's fabricated, it's, it's real. And other one off meetings that we call coffee breaks, where we the only rule is we're not talking about work, right now it's just 30 minutes of how's your life, what's going on.
Jordan Flint:Oh, that's really cool and it's it feels you know, like, like the team cares about you, and it doesn't feel like work. In a sense, I think that makes it an easier place to come and actually be the best you can be.
Matt Williams:Um, so Cause that happens in a regular office, right Like you're hanging out getting the coffee or grabbing water. The water cooler talk is. You're not talking about work, you're talking about man. I went to this concert, you know, and yeah, I went and saw these guys play and look, oh man, I love that artist. And yeah, if you don't, and if you're intentional about that in a virtual setting, right Like.
Sterling Cox:It's a little hard. That's brilliant. There's certain things where I think of if everyone's in an office and it's someone's birthday party, right For $20, you buy a cake, you spend five minutes together singing happy birthday. Everyone's happy clappy, yeah.
Matt Williams:He can cake and like chat and about life. How do you do that? Virtually Right, no, that's it.
Sterling Cox:That's a big deal. Something simple is like celebrating someone's birthday. Cause 20 bucks, you buy a cake.
Matt Williams:What do you like? I love cakes to everybody's house. How do you do?
Jordan Flint:that I have it. Conturnance, like an email chain of everyone saying happy birthday and it's the thought that matters, but it's you can't.
Matt Williams:Do I want to take that?
Sterling Cox:Replicate that yeah we've had people send cakes to people's houses when it's their. But as using what was an example, because people also often like how do you build a virtual culture? Because I think culture drives everything you know within a, within a company, and it's only in terms of attracting a certain kind of person. I'm attracted to a culture and and the people that they meet. Basically, there it's. It's just something I talked to the team a lot about of the difficulties of the virtual world from you know, there's issues with training that we we've now we feel were better.
Sterling Cox:We are able to train people better on the virtual standpoint that we were in person, basically because we have people shadow different things and listen in.
Matt Williams:Yeah differently.
Sterling Cox:Our culture is not Yet as good as sort of what it would be if we were all in person equally. I think we're pretty six months to a year away from where our foot. We will be able to do more things from a virtual culture than we could in person, basically before yeah.
Sterling Cox:So don't we match your question recruiting? A couple of other things. I think important one is your core values, ultimately, and that's sort of just general business practices of what are your core values as a company? I'll hustle, drive, ownership, transparency and care, and so we recruit on those values, and so every one that you're Interviewing, you want to make sure do they fit those core values and be upfront with them. These are our core values. We're not going to change, and so if you're not gonna hustle, you're not gonna enjoy your time here.
Sterling Cox:You're gonna be stressed out about our commission structure, etc. Versus right, if you know that. And then the second thing is I Spend half my time in interviews trying to convince people not to join us, because if you can convince them not to join you, then that's a really good thing, because I'm hiring mistake is absurdly Expensive so expensive and people, especially not.
Sterling Cox:We get so many applicants and we've got now a Really good online brand and things like that. So people like this company's amazing We'll look what I can and all the people love working here. So they talk about how great we are.
Sterling Cox:So, yeah sure, it's like hey, I want to talk about negatives because there's lots of good things, but if you don't understand every decision you're making as positives, that means there's also negatives. I want to talk about the negative because if you haven't thought through it, especially when you're interviewing people, most people are stressed Right and so they're like the reason they're interviewing is like I'm not happy with my job, I need the income or whatever it is, and yeah they all say whatever it is to get the job, and they're not necessarily thinking about what is the job like it?
Sterling Cox:am I actually gonna enjoy it? Like, what are the downsides to it? And so I spend a lot of time in interviewing of really focusing on the negatives of. Hey, it's virtual, we don't all see each other in person. That's got some negatives to it, right All right, so we pay.
Matt Williams:You don't get any birthday cake. Yeah, that's a big negative.
Matt Williams:I don't know if I can work there, man, that's, that's the. That's a big deal to me. Yeah, that's funny. Well, we know, I do the same thing like an end the inspection side of it, right, like when you're interviewing inspectors and like you got to get in crawl spaces and addicts and in the summer those addicts are gross and hot and disgusting and and in the crawl spaces and under critters and snakes and and then sometimes it's like a sewer pipe spin, leaking or something. It's just it could be, it could be a real nasty job, you know. And so, yeah, I think it's really important to be like to highlight those negative things on the front side and be like, yeah, you're okay with this, like you got to understand, like otherwise they're gonna start and in six months are gonna quit.
Sterling Cox:Yeah, I invested all this time in yeah.
Matt Williams:Yeah, then they're gonna jump in the swampiest crawl space than anybody's ever seen and they're gonna be like, oh, this is gross, you know. And it's like, yeah, it is gross, you know, and unfortunately that is part of the job and it is not a. It is a dirty job, right, but yeah, but being able to highlight, yeah, it's neg it, yeah, we're virtual man. There's no birthday cake, no birthday cake, but I'm out of here, you know, and and it's like, yeah, I mean it's. I think it's really important to do that. I think that's that's healthy.
Matt Williams:Yeah, because, man, the wrong hire, man that costs so much money. It's, it's just, it's not only the payroll, you know, it's, it's all the other expenses that you had on top of it, the training expenses, and and then the morale issues too. Right, you had the wrong hire. They can bring morale down with the people they're interacting with, and then those people aren't producing like they used to produce, and then, oh, man, that the trickle down gets pretty, pretty, pretty massive. You'll be hundreds of thousands of dollars for a wrong hire, if not even a million dollars.
Jordan Flint:It's thrilling, always says, with each hire the culture changes, right, and yeah, that changes. It could be positive, could be negative, so it's Could be a financial burden and having the wrong hire, but like, the actual core values of the culture changing and morale and things like that are just as important, especially in a number of other virtual kind of role in a virtual company, more to say so yeah, and that's so true that the culture does change with every single, every single hire yeah, so you can connecting with virtual staff and training and hiring, and I think that's tricky, but I think it sounds like you guys got a good finger on the pulse of that one, which is cool.
Matt Williams:You're doing it for a few years now, so that's good, yeah, I mean we're still learning.
Sterling Cox:I Certainly, if you're planning on on Building anything online, your online brand presence, it needs to be, you know, compared to our home inspectors where you've got to be building in person relationships with the agents. And, of course, you still want a nice website and you know, make sure you got reviews, etc.
Sterling Cox:Our entire brand lives online, so we have to. We invest. We don't know much on a marketing standpoint towards inspectors, but we spend a huge amount of time. How do we build our online brand through, you know, instagram accounts and people, all our employees posting on my Instagram showing what they're doing there, wow, etc. So when people come on board, they've actually it's. It's been interesting. It's only over the last.
Sterling Cox:Six or 12 months. We've had a lot of people being like. Well, I was looking at your Instagram account. I saw this seems like people really enjoy working here, etc. So I think it's in the virtual environment. So you making sure you market yourself to the right talent is key.
Matt Williams:Well, that's interesting. Yeah, we're marketing to potential customers, but you're also marketing for talent. That's an interesting perspective. Equally important yeah, definitely for sure.
Sterling Cox:I mean, for us it's actually more important in a certain way, because our people drive the clients, and so we, we know that if we don't, if we, if we keep hiring good people, keep investing in training, invest in our culture, and the people grow and keep improving, ultimately, you know, our clients stick around, they will recommend other people, etc. So Not, not, they shouldn't be marketing to your clients. We're very bad at that, but it's either marketing to attract the best people as a call center or where our job is to find the very best people. That's where our resources go, wow.
Matt Williams:That's incredible. One thing that I find interesting about the position you guys are in is that you you work with inspectors all across the country and In many states I mean how many, how many? Do you know how many states off top here I didn't tell you this ahead of time and how many states you guys currently have inspection companies in?
Sterling Cox:Most them, or 45 or so.
Matt Williams:Okay, so you're up like almost all 50, so you get to see what the market conditions are like across the country because you have this perspective that there's no other, there's no inspection company has the perspective that you have, just because you're able to interact with such a wide diversity of that, what do you, what do you see like right now? Current market conditions in the inspection industry across the country right now? Shitty, it's true, though. Right yeah, the markets are down, right yeah.
Sterling Cox:Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's been a, I mean so. So last one, the clockbacks of since 2020. All the patterns have been off where used to be perfectly in sync between the real estate market and seasonality. So it was January, february, slow March, so many pick up spring time, people are moving, looking to move houses, and then you sort of peak in the summer and it drops off afterwards. And it was very much in sync with with real estate sales. And then since COVID from you know, when we were losing inspections because there's no availability and people had a three-day diligence period in 2021 and there's regime bins on one house, and so the real estate market was booming inspection industry when went through the floor and then now it's, it's a.
Sterling Cox:The rates are impacting it. There are certainly. Last year there were huge differences across the country and that sort of. There were pockets of Southeast and other parts of the country that were less impacted than others. But I'd say certainly 2023. We were hoping it'd be at least flat on last year, but across all of our clients, our core volume and booking volumes down about 25%, wow. And then certainly May is is you know about the same as February, march, which is very uncommon, typically may would be you know 72, 100% higher.
Matt Williams:Yeah, so you're seeing nationwide is down a little, it's down 20, 25% and Instead of the typical bump in May, you're not seeing that right now. Wow, that's interesting. We should have better news, I know, right. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, I would say that just on that.
Sterling Cox:I do think there's a consolidation around service, though, where the opposition and these are there, but if you don't hustle them, you won't get there and the companies are worth seeing and doing. Well it's, they're leaning into it and it's like hey, this is, my job is to gain market share, for instance, versus worrying about the volume. So we've got our overall volumes are down, but we've got certain inspection companies that are growing throughout it, and then my take is they're just taking a different approach of like all right, it's not working, but what can you do in this kind of environment? And hey, if you're growing your market share, that's, that's measurable, basically, and you can keep volumes up because of that, and then, when things turn around, you'll automatically get a huge boost.
Matt Williams:Yeah, that's true, because winning doesn't always look like winning right, like you can look at your inspection counts or revenue volumes. But if you're like, well, but the whole system is down, like the whole real estate market's depleted, then it's like, well, I'm not doing as many as inspections, but my market, maybe my market share, is going up. Yeah, jordan, what do you? What are you seeing out there from your side of it?
Jordan Flint:Yeah, so rates really are impacting things right now this year across the board, but it's kind of the way you emphasize or the way you phrase it as kind of you know, spot on right.
Jordan Flint:So your year to date inspections may be down right, but there's an opportunity to kind of lean in and figure out different ways to garner market share.
Jordan Flint:So whether I'd be hiring more inspectors to be able to take more inspections, lowering prices or whatever it may be, across the board everyone is kind of facing the same factors. But the inspectors that are thriving are doing certain things a certain way right. So if you're looking at leaning into, maybe, a call center, you have to look at what your customers want and what it is a call center can provide to help you scale your business. So we kind of spoke about this before the before we started the podcast. But some, a lot of inspectors are the ones that are successful or have buyer's agents calling in and booking in inspections and they're guaranteed that these inspectors are being booked as opposed to, on the other hand, you've got some of the smaller inspectors are the ones that are I don't wanna say struggling, but maybe not peaking. You know they have customers calling in and customers are price shopping. Naturally everybody wants to get the best price.
Jordan Flint:It may not be the best option at the time but they want the best price. But if you have, if you're doing good business and you have buyer's agents that believe in your company, that are calling for you and booking these inspections, you're able to kind of weather the storm, even go on a more shared right now, and survive until the tide turns.
Sterling Cox:The other thing I'd add on is looking at sort of what the realtor volumes are. So in a similar, almost more extreme version of the inspection space, there's a consolidation around the top agents. So if your business was relying all on brand new agents and you're doing fine, if those guys all out of business or they're leaving the industry.
Sterling Cox:Your top producers may not have a drop in volume at all or they may have lost 10%, whereas someone who's been in the industry for two years not doing much volume has lost 80%. Or they just don't have the brand presence. And so the focus on your top agents. It becomes more around.
Matt Williams:Yeah, so I would say so. Last summer, within IAB, we were talking about this hey, this market's gonna pull back, it's, you know, and they're talking through it and everybody's talking about like, what are the next steps? Like how do you continue to survive this? And a couple of things they said is you know, make sure you have some good cash reserves, because and I think that's good for any business, you know you know storms are coming. Don't deplete your cash reserves all the way down in good times and good times. Be preparing for tough times, because they're gonna come. It's inevitable.
Matt Williams:And so that was one thing that IAB really talked a lot about.
Matt Williams:But one thing that they talked about is like, hey, you know, back in 2008, there was a market crash and some of these more seasoned inspection companies were talking about how do you navigate these down times?
Matt Williams:And every one of them said focus on market share and go after the big producing agents, because what happens is the rest of these companies, naturally, are gonna be pulling back and being like, oh, I need to hold back on what I'm doing, I need to be more careful and to be more conservative, and here at IAB, they were talking about how, on your growth activities. You need to, like, look at which ones have the greatest return and double down on those ones. And, yeah, you need to cut expenses where you can cut them, but don't cut your growth activities, you know, because that's what's feeding your company, right? And so, yeah, so I actually just, you know, I'm dumb enough to just do whatever they tell me to do, and so I did that last year, and so, anyhow, we're in May. This is the biggest month in my company's history, you know, and we've been just booming through the middle of this thing and we've gained easily 10 to 12% market share over the last six to 12 months.
Sterling Cox:Like seeing most of them larger and larger realtors.
Matt Williams:Yeah. So I just doubled down, I just looked, and the same thing you're talking about. They said, hey, in 2020, 2021, 22,. A bunch of people got in the industry and you could easily sell a house. You can just like slow down and take an iPhone picture out the window as your listing photo. You don't even have to totally stop the car, you know, and take that photo and you put it up and you have multiple offers the next day. So just anybody, anybody out there could be an agent and a realtor and sell something you know.
Matt Williams:Well now the real realtors that know how to do this are actually the ones that are selling it, and all those drive-by realtors are gone, like they're not in the industry anymore. And you're right, I'm focused on, you know, all the new ones. It's like, hey, you should get some new ones, don't get me wrong, but really focus on the top producing realtors. And so, yeah, I actually made a hit list of the top producing realtors in my market and I was like I'm going for them and so I just like put all my effort into like I'm gonna show up the same places that they go. I'm gonna just happen to run into them anywhere and everywhere I can, and who did? They know that. I know how can I get somebody to introduce me to these people, and so I just that's all I did. I focused really, really heavy on marketing and growth and trying to get in with top realtors, and it really paid off for me. So now you know, I know we're in a medium-sized market, you know.
Sterling Cox:So it's not entirely fair but yeah, and people keep saying that there's. I mean that you obviously want to have agent loyalty, but we see agent switching. Agents aren't loyal, they're not loyal to people.
Matt Williams:Yeah, if they get a job, it's something like that you can actually, you know they also approach top agents.
Matt Williams:Yeah, realtors are loyal to the transaction. That's what they're loyal to, because that's what they're actually doing. You know, they're not loyal to a title company, a mortgage company, an inspection company they're not. And so, yeah, if you're an inspection company, you think, well, they're loyal to me. It's like, no, they're only loyal to their transaction, because that's what that actually pays their bills. And so the second that you don't serve that like if you're serving that, then you know they're going to keep using you. But if you don't serve that actual loyalty of what they have, they'll go find someone who will.
Sterling Cox:It'd go slightly different and more. Don't give them a reason to look elsewhere. Exactly so they don't even think about loyalty. They've got 12 other things going on.
Matt Williams:Yeah, don't screw it up.
Sterling Cox:Yeah, don't have someone bad mouth on one call, because you'll lose an agent that's been there for like 10 years, basically, and they have one bad experience. So I think it's more just make sure you keep the trains running, basically, and don't lose it?
Matt Williams:Yeah for sure, right, you've got to do that. Yeah, absolutely yeah. So what? So what to you? And how about I'll throw this to Jordan? Then Jordan, how about to you? What do you see like that separates top producing inspection companies versus maybe the ones that are not producing as much as they used to, ones that are maybe struggling now, ones that are up and ones that are down? Do you see anything that like is a clear separators?
Jordan Flint:Yeah, so with the top producing inspection companies. Naturally, at times they're gonna be larger, right, but they've got a certain amount of processes and automated systems that allow them to focus their efforts on whether it be marketing, whether it be going after top agents and creating those relationships. Smaller companies are ones that are barely treading water or trying to do it all right. So you may have a home inspector that's also wearing the hat of the, he's fielding phone calls, he's also in basements doing inspections and he's just doing a lot right. You have these larger companies that have two or three inspections, that are inspectors that are pretty consistent, and it's because they've got a really solid process right.
Jordan Flint:So all of these larger or more successful companies tend to have automated systems in place that allow them to not have to worry about. You know, whatever calls in the email you use. They know, hey, this company's gonna handle my calls for me. I get everything booked. All I have to do is look at my calendar, get out and really service the customer, really do a quality job of servicing the customer. They've got less on their plate, more to so because they've delegated the jobs to the proper people, and so Smaller ones may not have that chance to really scale up yet and they're kind of wearing the one hat or two or three hats and doing everything themselves. And it's tougher to kind of be consistent, especially in a market right now, the way the market is for for all companies across the board right now, several industries as well. Not even just has a home inspection in the sure.
Matt Williams:Yeah, I'd say it's several industries for sure. Man, absolutely yeah. And so you mentioned like delegating some stuff out and and I've heard this a lot recently and People talking about you know the importance or maybe the tools, the software tools available, and AI is obviously artificial intelligence starting to kind of creep in and helping out. You know, like, like, what's actually funny is I actually run, I use AI tools on this podcast. So here's my dirty little secret is I actually take this thing and AI Produces a transcript for me, and then I take that transcript and I drop it in, say produce show notes, and all the show notes that you see in this Is actually all generated by AI through the transfer. Ai that does a transcript, does the podcast, show notes, and I find ways to use AI tools to help out in different areas. I'm doing some of that in my inspection business too, but I also use a lot of software tools.
Matt Williams:How important is software? What do you guys see on that side? You know, because you're really embedded into the operational side of these businesses, you know what do you see in, in, in software that's? That's helpful or not helpful, or maybe hurting or helpful. You see any like patterns that are hurtful versus helpful. Well, like, like a CRM right, you got to have that. You know Stuff like that.
Sterling Cox:I guess, piggybacking on your question on what we see that more successful inspection companies do you have to have a CRM? You've got to keep your data super clean. If you don't put your agent information in there and if there's typos in the data of as bad data in your CRM, you can't use it, you can't do remarketing, you can't do anything with it. So that's obviously paramount. I think it's just kind of a cross-aboard. The more successful ones have a Attention to detail sort of professionalism across every single aspect of it and it's only with us. You know when, when, when we're trying to reach out to someone is because we've got something important to talk to them about. We're not trying to waste our clients time, basically, and and and you know just the engagement that we sort of get from them, or the larger ones and more professional ones. It helps us become better and we can provide a better job for them.
Sterling Cox:But we see it across the entire board of. They are, you know, paranoid about their online brand presence. They want to make sure their website, you know, doesn't have typos in there, has some relevant information All the way through. You know making sure the CRMs are that your CRM is. You've got a CRM that is properly configured. Are you using all the? All these CRMs now have automated Retard, remarketing emails and things like that that a lot of the smaller ones don't necessarily configure correctly. So I think you've got to do that, but, but equally.
Sterling Cox:I'd go in and this is something we try and train our people on is even a. You know some of the more Quote-unquote annoying calls you might get, which are people get paid commission and so on a call that's not a booking call. There's no real earning opportunity. At the same time, what we train our people on is, you know, the old lady calling in trying to give her credit card over the phone that's struggling to kind of get things out and we have spent you know five minutes of doing that. We try and train our people to be like hey, how do you turn this into having her have a great experience? Go on Yelp and Talk about how they had a great experience and if they can mention your name, I can promise you the inspection company's gonna be, happy that we, you know, got them a review online.
Sterling Cox:So yeah we see that the larger groups sort of be Paranoid, and whether it's on each call that happens or having the right systems and CRM's In place, I think is essential.
Matt Williams:Yeah, so you got to the CRM. You got to have, like you know, and that's like a customer relationship management software. Someone doesn't know what a CRM is. I should just clarify that. Yeah, whether you're using, you know, you know spectra has. Spectra software has kind of a CRM built into it. It's not a super heavy-duty one, but it's functional enough to get a lot of that customer communication done and some data tracking. Isn is another one other other ones out there. You guys see.
Sterling Cox:Those are the two that we see most most people using.
Sterling Cox:Again I think to question the software. Your CRM is Essential, just because that's where your data, your data is, how's and how. You know how you're doing and everything like that. Equally, I do think there's there's constant, you know kind of ongoing innovations out there, whether it's you know later, latest report writers or things of services you know we can then offer to to or use as a differentiator. You know, when we're selling or trying to close and close an inspection and, and I would say you know to your point on AI, it's, it's worth Looking into. If people haven't played around with chat GPT, I should get to a client of ours, you know last week of you know and we can. It will write up being like hey, how do you write me up a marketing email to go to realtors in my geography explaining why it's more important ever Now, with high mortgage rates, to get a home inspection, when chat GPT will write something up and you can yep, we kid, and you have a two-page marketing email that cost you nothing and took five minutes to make.
Matt Williams:Basically, so I think there's it's moving and it's probably better than than I would have written on my own every time.
Intro:Yeah, yeah, so.
Matt Williams:I use chat GPT to help write emails, write different, different things that you get written out.
Matt Williams:There's one called Jasper that I use for my social media posting and, and so it helps me Write better captions on my social media posts and and so it gives some good ideas and then, like it already throws to hashtag hashtags and emojis into your thing.
Matt Williams:So it's like, oh man, I'm now you know you're using current hashtags that are helpful and and so, yeah, I think there's some AI tools out there that you can use within your inspection business to kind of help with driving marketing. You know, cuz, because there's a side of it, right, you gotta get the phone to ring and then, once the phone the rings, you got to be able to close the deal, you know, and so it's like I'm out here doing events with realtors and you know, sponsoring things, and you got a tent and a booth and and and and then you know like, as an inspection company, I'm out whatever, I'm out making friends and then handing out cards and and then, sure enough, they make a phone call in. If the person on the side of the phone is like me, I don't know. Whatever. You know like they. You know the external sales is only part of it. The inside sales is the other piece of it, but there's AI tools you can use all the way through all of that.
Jordan Flint:That kind of help you in addition to that and this popped in my mind a lot of the, from our perspective, some of the home inspection companies we work with, they have a really direct and Quality line-of-sight of their business, and what I mean by that is when you, you start working with the call center, you kind of turn your business over to the call center. Right, you're only doing the back-end work, more to say. But they I've noticed a lot of, a lot of the productive ones tend to really they, they love the data. They're only you're, I think you're only as effective as your data. And even you know they reach out to us quite often and say, hey, for just.
Jordan Flint:For example, I've got Two inspectors on my calendar but I've got an hour open on Friday. Can you guys go ahead and get this booked with a one-hour, you know, reschedule, or one hour in C Lee, re-upsell. There they're, they're in contact with us, constantly trying to maximize revenue, and then they're hungry for the data. So we provide certain things on a weekly basis that show each call that we get, why we, why it Wasn't booked if it non-booked due to availability, non-booked due to price, and they want to see that right. They want to have a good line of sight to say, hey, if I'm getting several non-booked Availabilities, maybe I need another inspector home across the right. If it's non-booked due to pricing, maybe I'm not price optimally for my region. So if you're in tune with us and you're in tune with whoever's providing the data, or just your CRM, I think down the line it keeps you more effective and just Working at that. At that, you know as best as you can as a company. More so.
Matt Williams:I like that about ICC. So you know, in full disclosure, I switched to ICC just recently and so I'm using you guys right now, and so I was actually loving the data that I was getting back from you guys. So every week I get an email, and that email then is, you know, giving me lists and this breakdown of kind of how many calls where they inbound, outbound what was going on, and so whole feedback. And I can see like how many inspections that I miss because of availability. You know, if I only missed one for the week because I couldn't get it to it soon enough, I was like, well, you know my calendar's full too. I'm like, well, so you know, yeah, you know, I'm not going to hire another inspector just for one inspection, right, so you got to have enough.
Matt Williams:And same thing with pricing. It's like, well, if one time my price is a little bit too high. Again it's like, well, I don't know, you know, if that's really something I should be, you know, really too stressed about, right. But if you start seeing that pattern of that data, now all of a sudden you're like, okay, I miss in two, three, four a week, you know, because of availability and or pricing. Now you know, oh, maybe my pricing or availability needs some adjustments, and how do I make those changes? And yeah, I think you're right, you got to keep your finger on the pulse and you got to have data to keep your finger on the pulse to really know, because you're trying to steer it by, feel like, oh, this feels good. You know, like, man, I don't know.
Sterling Cox:It's pricing, availability and then out of area. That's the third one that we can disqualify from.
Matt Williams:Okay, which is what? We won't go that far.
Sterling Cox:Correct. It's worth just looking at for some reason, because maybe you're why you're marketing over there. Why are you getting some agents available? Hey, maybe we do hire an inspector over there If you're getting a whole bunch in a certain zip code, for instance, that you're not going to. But you need to know that you're missing those inspections. And again, for us, we record all of our calls and we need to be in sync with our clients. Basically, we want to be part of the team. We're not we're not perfectly make mistakes and if we do, we want to know about them and fix them. So all of our calls are recorded. But, most importantly, like we try and provide weekly insight reports of like, hey, here's everything that we're doing, what's going on. So if you see a call, it's okay. This is strange, can we get the recording? We can pull it and you can look at it and maybe it's something we messed up that we can go and fix. So it's okay, this is what's going on with business basically.
Matt Williams:Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, guys, thank you for taking the time to stop in and chat with me about this. I think your guys' experience with you know virtual teams and culture and dealing with like, and then the market conditions nationwide and the in-year exposure to all that is just really helpful insight and information for everybody listening, and so if people want to get a touch with the UICC, what's the best way for someone to get a hold of you guys?
Sterling Cox:Onlineinspectacallscentercom wwwinspectacallscentercom. Or just give us a call 470-375-2204.
Matt Williams:All right, that's great, Fantastic guys. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Jordan Flint:Thank you.
Intro:You've been listening to Empire State of Mind. For the home inspection industry and beyond, Our passion is to elevate the home inspection industry with mindset, strategy and tools. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review. For more, follow on Instagram at IEB Coaching and don't forget to hit the website at wwwiebcoachingcom. Learn about IEB at no cost and have all your questions answered On our open call once a month on the third week of the month. We hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on the Empire State of Mind.
