Homebuyers are an interesting study. Watching people make their home buying decisions has brought me to the conclusion that every decision that every one of us makes is based in emotion. You heard me, it's all about the emotion. Before you deny what I am describing to you, let me begin with me.

Painful as the revelation is for me, even I as a Naval Academy graduate, retired Navy pilot, and home inspector extraordinaire, make decisions based on emotion. It took some bridging for me to get there, but I am there.

Have you ever had a feeling in your gut about a decision? A hunch? That's emotion. We make decisions that reflect how we feel about the event or expect to feel when the outcome is completed. People, especially those that are highly educated and technically trained, rarely realize and usually never concede that their decisions are based in emotion.

Before discussing the particulars of the emotional responses, I will admit that logic does play a role. What ends up happening is, after the near immediate emotional response and decision, the backfilling of logic begins. Logic is used to make the emotion seem reasonable.

Emotional responses as I see them fall into two broad categories. The first is the desire for pleasure and the second is the avoidance of pain. When we are contemplating a decision, we weigh the balance of the desire for and probability of a pleasurable outcome with the fear of and distain for pain.

What real estate agents are faced with is responding to issues presented as logic that are truly emotions. It takes a tremendous talent to listen to the logic, but hear the emotion. What are people really saying? That is the challenge.

Find and understand the emotional issue and you can keep any deal together. This thought applies no matter if your role is buyer, seller, agent, or inspector. Ultimately, you must seek to understand why people feel as they feel in order to fully comprehend what they really mean in what they are saying.

Not long ago, I inspected a home for an electrical engineer, a very bright and successful individual. The home had a beautiful swimming pool in the backyard. Our intrepid engineer had out his digital tape measure and was measuring the distance between each electrical receptacle along the rear exterior of the home. He would measure, then ponder, measure more, and then ponder more.

Finally, he approached the real estate agent and me announcing that there was an unsafe condition relating to the unequal distance between the electrical outlets. He then spouted large quantities of electrical engineer babble and finished with, "I'd be shocked if this were not a code violation". I wanted to respond with "No sir, the code is intended to prevent you from being shocked", but decided that "hmmmm" was a better response.

After much debate and some real listening, the man's issue had nothing to do with electrical engineering or the National Electric Code. In his mind, he had the perfect place for his lounge chair, but there was not a receptacle adjacent to that location for him to plug his radio into! He was laying logic, however flawed, on us in order to justify his demand that a new receptacle be added.

Listen to the logic, hear the emotion!

Wallace Conway

Wally Conway is President of Florida HomePro Inc., the home inspection company he founded in 1994. Beginning as a sole practitioner, he evolved rapidly to become one of the largest firms in Florida. Wally’s rapid growth caught the attention of entrepreneurs in a broad range of business seeking solutions to their expansion questions. Everyone wanted to know, how do you grow from “me to we”?

Wally’s business beginnings were anything but traditional. Twenty-eight days after graduating from high school, he was off to the U.S. Naval Academy. Graduating from Annapolis was the beginning of a career as a Navy Pilot flying from the decks of aircraft carriers, and included service during Desert Storm. Shortly before retirement, Wally realized that he had never had a “real job” or even been on a job interview. He reasoned he was probably the only person who would really hire him; starting a business seemed like the best and only choice. This “need one-start one-build one” attitude has taken Wally on a grand journey of business development.

Wally is a multi-media darling who has grown his business by turning marketing into a profit center. He is a regularly featured expert on the HGTV hit series “House Detectives”, co-host of the series “House Calls”, and host of “The Happy Home Inspector” radio show each week. Wally even turned his enthusiasm for educating into a book, “The Secrets of the Happy Home Inspector”. When the problem of finding cost-effective marketing materials for his inspection company became too frustrating, Wally founded Missile Marketing, a company that targeted the needs of home inspection businesses. Not only did this move bring the lands greatest marketing tools to his company, it actually made a profit selling marketing solutions to businesses across the U.S. and Canada!

The underlying theme to Wally’s approach to business growth and development is that beneath every business expense lies a potential profit center. Wally’s wit, wisdom, and wealth of real world experience are certain to inform, enlighten, and entertain!