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 good qualities in each other. Casey spent many years in the construction business and I have a pretty solid business background. We just clicked.”

“After a few years of working together, we started daydreaming about starting our own business. After talking about it for a few months, we both started studying for our home inspection certification exams after hours and on weekends,” 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 marketing their services to home sellers.

“By selling our service as one that can help sellers command higher prices and promote faster home 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 took off.”

The partners also attribute their growth to another marketing decision they made. “Our print ads used our two cell phone numbers. Mike had one 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 interjected. “If you are constantly answering your cell phone, you aren’t serving your customer very well. It was actually a pretty bad idea.”  Mike and Casey decided to rent a phone number from their telephone answering service and have all their incoming calls filtered through the answering service. “That changed everything,” Mike added.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how good it was to let someone else juggle the who, what, when, and where’s,” said Casey. “The best part was, they could coordinate Mike’s schedule with mine, so we made the best use of our time.”

“This also really improved the customers’ perception of our professionalism. That really sets us apart from the other guys, especially in this market,” said Mike.

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