Is Your Collections Team Closing The Deal?

ABC. Always Be Closing. We’ve all heard the term, and if you’ve ever worked in sales (or seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross), you know it’s importance. In short, it means striking while the iron is hot, and taking advantage of an opportunity at hand. While this is generally a concept reserved for the sales world, the same mentality can (and should) be applied by your collections team.

If you’re reading this, it’s likely not news to you that some borrowers your collections team is in contact with might not be the most reliable type. For this reason, when a collector has a borrower on the line, it’s time for them to close. Making a connection with that borrower and understanding the reasons for delinquency can help, but it’s the result of that call which really matters. A promise to pay is nice, but back to the original point on reliability, might not end with the desired result.

The only surefire way to collect a payment, is to empower your collections agents to accept payments directly from the borrower before they are given a chance to hang up. While most institutions have the ability to easily transfer funds from an internal account directly to a loan, what happens if your borrower has little to no deposits with your institution? That phone call is going to end with that payment still being past due. That is, unless your institution has partnered with a payment solution which allows your collections and call center agents to accept payments from external accounts with ease.

We all know a rise in past due payments is inevitable, allow your collections team to stem the tide by closing deals, and taking payments, before it’s too late!

– Richard Fernandes