It’s tough breaking into a new field. No one wants to give us a hand and we feel like we’ve got to do something different to make any headway. But we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The first thing we should do is figure out who our customer is, where they hang out, and how to reach them. Look …

There are three major steps in the sales process, often called the three C’s: connect, converse, and convert. We’ve got to locate a potential customer (connect), develop a relationship with them (converse), and then get them to buy our product (convert). All too often, we’re guilty of jumping the gun, wanting to go directly from meeting someone to pitching our …

How we put ourselves out there has a lot to do with how successful we become. Some people are timid, barely making a ripple, while others are way over the top, coming out firing, with both barrels blazing.Obviously, we’ve got to play to our audience, molding our pitch as the situation dictates. Just remember, we don’t need to bombard them, …

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. Bill Gates We all want to be a smashing success, yesterday. None of us wants to have to go through all those classes to finish school and get a degree. We should be able to get a great paying job without …

We all start off the same way: literally begging for business. We go into real estate offices and ask the agents to recommend our inspection company to their homebuying clients. It can’t hurt to ask, we reason. Actually, it can hurt. Especially if we ask the wrong way. Asking without proper preparation. Asking with getting permission first. Asking without setting …

We all have big ideas. We all have goals. We’ve all got something amazing in our sights. We all want to initiate that change in our lives. But we’re all, in one way or another, scared. It may not work. We might fall flat on our face. We might lose everything we’ve built. We might fail. Of course we might …

Doing home inspections is not safe. Something bad might happen. In fact, sooner or later, it probably will. Driving to an inspection is not safe. We could get in a wreck, or worse. One of my coworkers died driving to work one morning. We all know dozens or hundreds or thousands of ways that an angry person can wreak havoc. …

The internet is both a great and terrible place, especially for small business owners. It allows us to easily reach potential customers and flog our wares, while at the same time making it easy for those same potential customers to pit us against each other in a pricing race to the bottom. It’s a destructive environment, and causes us to …

There is a big difference between repeat business and loyalty. Repeat business is when people do business with you multiple times. Loyalty is when people are willing to turn down a better product or a better price to continue doing business with you. Loyal customers often don’t even bother to research the competition or entertain other options. Loyalty is not …

Haters gonna hate. Taylor Swift It’s bound to happen. If you’re good at what you do, someone’s going to get their panties in a bunch. They’re going to talk bad about you. They’re going to put you down. They’re going to try to drag you down to their level. They’re going to resent your success. It’s inevitable, and it’s all …