Getting the customer to focus on the importance of a thorough diagnosis makes selling the treatment a cinch.

This basement ceiling insulation treatment, which is secured in place with a tear-proof, permeable house wrap, improves a home's comfort and durability--features that homeowners want but don't necessarily get from traditional contractors.

The Building Science Soft Sell in Action Customer: This is Joe Hardball on South Street. I'm shopping around for prices on replacement windows. I've called every company in the yellow pages. How much do you charge for a 2 by 3 window in white? Home Performance Contractor (HPC): We have a range of prices, depending on the efficiency ratings. Let me ask a stupid question. Why would you want to replace your windows? Customer: Are you kidding me? This house is incredibly drafty! HPC: That reminds me of a home we looked at recently in your neighborhood. The customer had just had some new replacement windows installed, but she felt the house was still drafty. She had me stop over with a blower door to find out what was causing the drafts. Customer: A blower what? HPC: A blower door. It's a great tool for measuring and finding drafts in a house. At the house that was similar to yours, I used a blower door and I found lots of leaks around the kneewall area and places where heated air was escaping into the attic. The homeowner wasn't even aware that the air escaping into the attic was causing drafts on her first-floor windows. She was especially surprised to find out that the solution to stopping the drafts cost less than paying for two replacement windows. Customer: How much did you say you charge for this blower test?

Monitoring the electricity usages of large appliances helps homeowners make replacement decisions.

Before initiating any comfort or efficiency improvement, such as sealing attic bypasses, the homeowner should be well educated in the benefits of air sealing--a discussion most contractors skimp on.

Many aspects of building performance contracting require proper safety equipment, including worker protection from insulation fibers, vermin, and potential irritants.

Many homeowners have accepted the limitations of their home's performance and are willing to live with them. Others have had bad experiences with contractors or less than effective results from previous energy efficiency programs. Still other homeowners are overwhelmed by the large number of businesses competing for their health and safety dollars. They see ads offering duct-cleaning services from companies positioning themselves as clean-air experts (see "What Does Duct Cleaning Do?" p. 13). Or a large retailer might be pushing air purifiers "used in the American Lung Association Health House." It is easy to understand why homeowners get confused.

Combine this confusion with a public perception that ranks home contractors somewhere near used-car salesmen, and it is even easier to understand why being a home performance contractor does not automatically bring guaranteed success. So does entering the unsubsidized market represent a unique opportunity to fill a niche, or is it a precarious gamble?

The good news/bad news is that it's both. Many homeowners are in search of home improvements that are truly effective, guaranteed, and durable. They are especially motivated by health and comfort issues, and are willing to pay more for real benefits. Unfortunately, most homeowners at one time or another have been on the receiving end of fast-talking home improvement contractors pitching the latest in-vogue "energy-saving" fad and offering health benefits that turned out to be dubious. Having had that experience, customers often start out on the defensive when dealing with all contractors--and that includes building performance contractors. Educating the homeowner in the benefits of a house as a system distinguishes the building performance contractor from the fast-talking salesperson--but it does take time and money. I call this approach the building science soft sell.

Most contractors get caught in this cycle of bidding against each other. How effective such an installation would be becomes irrelevant. One of the strategies we at Building Diagnostics have had success with is moving the customer-contractor relationship beyond this paradigm. Instead of trying to sell services that a homeowner does not need or understand, we first try to get the customer to focus on the benefits of a diagnostic site inspection.

Offering the diagnostic site inspection as a first step not only sets us apart from all the other conventional contractors, but it also puts the customer in a more comfortable, solution-oriented frame of mind. We position ourselves as the expert guaranteeing a healthy home, but only after all the important diagnostics have been conducted. Would a doctor prescribe a treatment without an examination?

Utilizing diagnostic equipment like an infrared imager, a blower door fan, and test smoke can be quite convincing to a homeowner who has never heard any other contractors mention concepts like building science and guaranteed performance. If you can get customers involved hands-on with diagnostic tests, this process will help them to better understand their homes and the benefits that you can provide. Smoke movement can make the invisible much more understandable. A digital camera can help bring otherwise out-of-sight attic bypasses and crawlspace insulation problems to the customer's kitchen table. A photo album of successful projects, along with testimonial letters from satisfied customers, can help explain treatments by showing solutions that were installed on previous jobs.

Since our experience has shown that diagnostic site visits typically turn into signed contracts for service work, we perform the diagnostics for a reasonably low cost, which is recouped with additional work. The word "reasonable" is important, because the diagnostics should be distinguished as a valuable service, not as something that is done for free. The unrecouped costs of the diagnostic services are included and prorated in every contract, just like any other overhead expense. And our diagnostics work is never limited to just the initial visit. Instead, we integrate diagnostics into the work process. For example, in a job requiring blown-in insulation, the work would be inspected in-process with an infrared imager. Air sealing would be checked with a blower door. The equipment and diagnostic time for these services are included in the contract rates, just as an auto shop's hourly rate includes diagnostic equipment costs and wages for the certified mechanics.

For some skeptical homeowners, our diagnostics fees are perhaps too costly, but that cost hurdle can be an advantage. Our fees serve as a great way to screen customers. Frankly, there are some customers we don't want to do business with. If they don't value our expertise, and are only interested in getting a bargain, then they probably aren't a good prospect for future business.

Having sold a customer with our solution-oriented approach, we are often rewarded with additional work. The newly educated customer who wanted a price for added insulation now wants the attic bypasses sealed and a new ventilation system installed. The replacement window job becomes a much more effective realignment of the thermal and air barrier on the second floor. The mysterious roof that leaks when it's not raining turns into a basement waterproofing contract.

The strategy of your marketing position, your initial approach with the customer, the diagnostic inspection of the home, and the assurances of follow-up testing all serve as steps in a long process. The goal of this process is to hear the now "educated" homeowner ask that magic question: "How soon can you get started?"

Bruce Torrey is a certified infrared thermographer and licensed builder. His company, Building Diagnostics, based in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, offers a wide range of building performance services.

Training and Certification I started as a builder specializing in what was referred to in the early days as "super insulated" construction. I then got involved with various energy service companies that were retrofitting existing homes for energy efficiency. I was fortunate to get some early training from a variety of sources, including courses on building science and blower door applications from the Energy Conservatory, duct diagnostics and repair from the Florida Solar Energy Center, and infrared theory and applications from the Infraspection Institute. I also took combustion safety classes from the Bacharach Training Institute. My initial venture into the consulting business was an effort to fill the void between what homeowners wanted and what services conventional contractors--and even energy efficiency contractors--offered. Troubleshooting and consulting on health and comfort concerns in homes soon opened up a new issue: Who was available to treat these problems after the initial diagnostics? Falling back on my earlier contracting experience, I began offering services that seemed to naturally compliment each other: building diagnostics and performance improvement services. I want to emphasize that my "training" is still an ongoing process with a strong hands-on emphasis. It's amazing how much you can learn by inspecting buildings with an infrared imager and blower door, treating the house, then checking the completed work for effectiveness using the same tools. Surprisingly, many of the buildings I'm called upon to troubleshoot have been worked on by previous contractors. Using the diagnostic equipment reveals how their treatments have failed and gives me the benefit of learning from their mistakes.

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