Real Estate Office Meeting Presentations for Home Inspectors

One of the best ways to market your home inspection company is to do real estate office presentations. Why is that? Most real estate offices have weekly meetings with their agents to update them, train them, and to just be on the same page overall. During those meetings, they often have guest speakers, such as home inspectors, mortgage companies, and more.

If you are able to get a 5-15 minute time slot with a real estate office, it is valuable face-to-face time with agents and brokers. It will also be your first impression on many agents who may never have met you before, so it is critical to do it right.

Over the years, my other inspectors and I have presented at a lot of real estate offices. We have done really well and gained entire offices of agents that refer us…. and we have done “not so well” at times too.

We want you to learn from our success and failures. Below, we have sample presentations/ideas that you can change and adapt to your preferences, background, and qualifications.

But before that though, let’s go over what NOT to do at office meetings (trust me, we have tried these and they don’t usually work out so well).

What Not To Do

1) Don’t talk about yourself too much. This sounds strange because you want to go into that meeting and sell yourself and get inspections. But one of the most fundamental rules of sales is 80/20. Make 80% of your presentation for the agents, and 20% about you (if even that much). The agents will like you more if you follow this rule.

As an example, commercials for just about any product do the same thing. They present something that we enjoy for 24 seconds of a 30-second commercial, and then they use the last 6 seconds to sell their product. It is very effective. People get bored if you talk about yourself too much.

Another good example of this is having a conversation with someone. When I want to keep a conversation going, I always get the person to talk about themselves, and then they can go on for hours talking about themselves without realizing it. Afterward, that person says “wow, it was really great talking with you”. Now that person has a good feeling associated with you and they like you. The same will happen with the agents at those meetings. They will like you if you focus on them. Then, it is much easier to mention the other 20 of the 80/20 rule (i.e. you).

2) Don’t be too casual. Sometimes if we are nervous we get too familiar with people or joke too much. Keep it light, but professional. Also, real estate offices are mixed groups with differing views on life. It is best to avoid any comments that would offend even the most sensitive person in the room.

Don’t be too formal either though. In other words, don’t wear a suit and tie, but wear your best inspection clothes. Also, don’t do a presentation after an inspection when you are covered in cobwebs on your back that you didn’t know about either.

3) Don’t be a salesman. Remember, you are presenting to a room of sales professionals, so likely your sales tricks won’t work on them. Leave sales pitches at home, and come to the presentation with the goal of being real and genuine – people always appreciate that.

4) Don’t ever, ever (ever) do a power point presentation. If you are asked to teach a subject, then that is a different story. But if you are asked to visit an office and you bring a power point presentation, books on hydrostatic pressure, or start talking about defect recognition – you will lose that office. It goes back to the 80/20 rule.

Just because agents need the information, does not mean they WANT that information. Especially not on a Monday morning at 8:00 am with a bagel. So now that we went over the “don’t” section, what should you do? Before our sample presentations, keep these points in mind:

What You Should Do

1) Bring food.  People always react better with food. It’s why we go out to eat on a date, why conferences have snacks, and why salesmen of all sorts bring food places – food makes us content.

A word of advice though – I always called the office ahead of time to see what they might like. Some offices love donuts, but some are very health conscious and would prefer kale smoothies. Calling ahead also keeps you from bringing food in when the broker may have bought food already. This happened to me one time and it was kind of awkward – so avoid doing that.

2) Bring lots of business cards. Seems logical, but one of my guys gave a great presentation one time, but then didn’t leave any cards. So the broker called looking for them. Business cards should be brought to each and every office. Leave a stack of them with brochures.

3) Bring something the agents can use. Do you have warranties or guarantees like the InterNACHI Buy Back Program? Leave presentation materials for those warranties. Do you use a service like Home Binder? Make sure they know how it markets for them. Leave lockbox covers with your logos on them, little flashlights with your company info, or other little things for the agents to use and remember you by. Always have your logo plastered on all your little gifts/promotional items.

4) Grab a card from every agent there (and even ones who are not). Afterward, friend them on Facebook and other venues and follow up with them later on. This way you stay in front of as many agents as possible. So now let’s get into our sample office presentations. Some of these may not apply to you specifically, so pick and choose what you want to use and adapt it for yourself and your company.

Real Estate Office Presentations

RE Office Presentation #1 – Coloring Books

This was by far our most successful office presentation. We would use InterNACHI’s coloring book. We would put our logo on the front cover, buy some crayons from the dollar store (put my logo on that as well), and I would be ready to go. This is how we would start it:

“Hi, my name is ———–. I know you all love it when the home inspector comes into the office and talks about how awesome he is and how thorough and how he is the best (I would say this sarcastically, of course, then after everyone chuckles, I would continue). Well, I am awesome, and we do a fantastic job, but I actually brought YOU something that YOU can use.

You have all likely had those times on a showing, open house, or even on an inspection where there are kids all over the place. Well, I brought you these coloring books and crayons to help keep them occupied”

We would talk about the coloring book for a little while, some of the agents would tell a funny story about kids on the inspection, and that was it. The key is how I ended it. I would say:

“I only have so many of these, but I can make as many as you’d like. Here is my card, and please contact me and I can bring you some at an open house or here at the office”

I was always surprised that the agents would contact me for more. It was great because my logo and contact information were being handed out by agents to their buyers, sellers, and people at open houses. Even in a digital age, something very simple can be extremely effective.

RE Office Presentation #2 – For ISN Users

If you use ISN, be sure you are using it to the full. We talked about the 80/20 rule already, but this one is a slight exception to this rule. ISN has what is called “RED” – Real Estate Dashboard.

This dashboard is made for agents to quickly access inspection reports and schedule inspections. This is a great presentation tool to use in offices where you know the agents well.

I want to emphasize that point though – this is not something you want to present in offices where the majority of agents don’t know you. This is for use in an office where you have worked with the agents and you are making your yearly rounds visiting them.

The key to this one is to get an agent in the office that really likes you to use RED for a few months. Once they do, they usually like it.

Now when you get to the presentation, you can say right off the bat:

“I am here today to show you something that John/Jane Agent has been using for the past few months – it’s called RED. It is made specifically to make your life easier as an agent. With RED, you don’t have to email around and look for inspection reports. Jane/John here has all of the reports from the last three months right there accessible on her phone. Also, he/she has scheduled 7 home inspections without ever making a call right from the app”

Obviously, you will need the agent to be willing to be singled out like that during your presentation, but finding an agent to do that isn’t too hard if you know that office well.

After that part, it is usually Q&A and explaining the app.

RE Office Presentation #3 – Beer!

Beer can make money for you. If there were a more awesome way to make money, I would love to know about it. But how does beer make you money? By getting agents to drink it with you!

I have to say, this works a lot better than doing office meetings alone. This can be used in conjunction with any of the other presentations. Here is how it works:

At the end of your office meeting presentation, mention that you would love to meet everyone in the office out for happy hour on Friday. Hand them vouchers that you print out with your logo and then end your presentation.

Since you grabbed business cards of everyone there and friended them on Facebook, be sure to send out reminders about Friday evening. Usually, Thursday evening is best for reminding them, and then again a few hours before it starts.

Having it between 5-7 is usually a good time Obviously for happy hour discounts). Then as people come in, have them give YOU the voucher (this is important so that they don’t just grab a drink and leave). At this point, there is no real presentation once everyone gets there, just social drinks. You would be surprised who shows up. They sit with you and talk with you, and you build a relationship with them.

It may seem expensive, but it’s really not. If you have 10 agents show up, and there is $5 happy hour, you spent $50 to have a captive audience. If those 10 agents each sell 10 houses that year, then that $50 bought you a great opportunity at 100 inspections a year.

In addition to that, the next time you come to their office, they will be really looking forward to it. More agents will be there because they will get free drink vouchers if they are. Now people will look forward to you coming. Since brokers like to keep their agents happy, they will invite you back more often.

We have home inspectors all over the US who do this. It works because it builds relationships with agents. We have a client in CT who takes it one step farther and does a golf outing with drinks – which is great too.

This is not really a “presentation”, but more of a suggestion. You can add this to the end of any real estate office presentation, and it is very effective.

RE Office Presentation #4 – Home Binder

Home Binder has always been an effective tool to use in office presentations. Home Binder is a service that keeps track of people’s homes, repairs, contractors, etc. It is a “Digital 3-Ring Binder”. It also sends the clients reminders when tasks are due. So how can you use this in a presentation?

Home Binder allows the inspector to use the agent’s name and contact info in the reminders. So it looks to the client like the real estate agent is emailing them every three months to remind them to change their filters.

This makes a great presentation, and I always loved using it. Here is what I would say”

“One of the most important parts of marketing any business is staying in front of clients. Well, today I am going to show you how we do that for you after every one of our inspections.

This is Home Binder. After every home inspection that we do for one of your clients, they are set up with a free account. This program keeps track of all their home needs and sends them reminders when it is time for maintenance – such as changing a filter, getting their HVAC unit maintained, or their gutters cleaned.

Every time they get the reminder though, it has your name, number, and other information right there. So for as long as they own that home, you are there in front of them. So when they sell their home in 5 years, who are they going to call? Someone they don’t know, or someone who has helped them own their home those 5 years”

Then again it would be a Q&A. Also, it usually ensured that the agent would refer you for a longer period of time too, as they like the marketing benefit.

It always worked well. The agents usually loved it, our clients got maintenance reminders, and we would have entire offices that would use us for that.

Conclusion

Office meeting presentations are a staple of a lot of home inspection companies. Do it well, and you will love them and always get more inspections from them. Do it wrong, and then it just becomes an uncomfortable lesson for the next time you do one.

We would love to hear what you do for real estate office presentations. Leave your comments and ideas below.

Also read: Phone Script for Home Inspectors and How to Market to Previous Home Inspection Clients