Webinar Transcript

(00:02)
A lot of what I’m gonna talk about today is just collections one on one. To me, it’s collections in general, some of the things we talk about, uh, on a daily basis with our folks here are the three A’s of collections. Uh, it’s something that a friend of mine and I coined about 35 years ago, uh, talking about, you know, you had to have these things each and every day. And if you had them, you were ready to go out and do battle every day. And, and you may hear this yourselves from, uh, on a daily basis, but it is important. And these are the basics to be successful, not just in what we do, but in any walk of life, sports, music, academia collections, you know, the first thing we always start with in the three A’s is attitude. Any successful person in any walk of life will always tell you their attitude is where it all starts.

(00:49)
You’ll find people that exhibit a positive mental attitude, no matter what’s going on, they may stop and they may turn and look, but they turn back around and they’ve got a plan going on in their head. So to me, the attitude is basically a belief in yourself. Years ago, I had a conversation and someone said, you know, the only thing I need in life is a belief in myself because no matter how tough it gets, as long as I believe in my myself, I’ve got all, I need to be successful to turn the tide of what’s coming at me. And that starts with believing in yourself down deep, the core of what you are, knowing who you are, understanding, adversity and understanding what you need to do to get through that. The self image to me, it, it even goes back to when I was in, in high school, back in the seventies.

(01:38)
Uh, a lot of my close friends knew when I had a big test and I was trying to get that mental outlook and that positive and getting weird up for this test. Cause it was importance. Cause I used to always wear my Philadelphia flyers, hockey Jersey in a pair of painters pants, because that’s how I felt great walking around school all day. And it just kept my attitude up. Kinda like, uh, Saturday night fever, you know, I feel like I got a strut and, and so my physicality is what generates my positive mental attitude. If I dress well feel well, I’m definitely gonna have a positive attitude out there. And when we get on the phones every morning, it’s the first thing someone’s going to hear is your attitude. If you’re down in the dumps, if you’re in a bad mood or if you’re just excited to be calling somebody and having a conversation with them, because you are gonna help them get out of a problem, they created, they’re gonna see and hear that right away.

(02:28)
And this world, especially this world today, positivity will get you through a lot and it, and it keeps bringing you back around to how to be successful and that it starts right then and there. So when we talk about attitude here at bar services, we try to do an attitude check every morning, we have a call with every one of our reps and every one of our collectors and we get together and we’ll talk about anything. We’ll talk about sports. We’ll talk about, well, we don’t talk about some things. Well, we keep it lighthearted and fun and we check with each other out there. And if we hear someone it’s a little bit off, we’ll make sure to reach out to an individual, we’ll see what’s going on. Because something, someone told me a long, long time ago, before I got into collections was, you know, whatever you decide to do in life.

(03:12)
And if you’re gonna have a positive attitude, you have to be able to take that brain out of your head, put it in a drawer for eight hours and then focus on the task at hand, the brain will keep all that negativity around because it’s, it’s what we do as humans. You know, Dale Carnegie wrote a book, had to stop worrying to start living years ago, uh, almost seven years ago. I think it was great book to explain how our brain takes a simple little problem and can make the size of an avalanche in three to four days. And we don’t know what to do. And we’re paralyzed when you’re getting your day started. Do that, check in with yourself, check in with somebody else out there. If you’re not having team meetings to talk about things from the day before today or tomorrow, or just to have some, um, sidebars and especially now working remote, how tough is that used to be?

(04:01)
You could go to the, the lunch room, the water cooler, you could walk outside to the visiting smoking area. Uh, and I remember in Cincinnati when I was there from oh seven to 12, they had little squares on the blocked sidewalks where you would only be able to smoke in that area, the downtown block. And I used to walk right in knew like 30 people in a space that was probably big enough for 10. You know, there was a lot of exchange of ideas going down around that smoking area and people just talking and getting themselves re reinvigorated. And it, sometimes it takes going to somebody else out there to make sure your attitude is clear. So if you’ve got something personal going on, if you have financial worries, if you are not feeling well, health wise, if some of your family’s not feeling well, health wise, you’re not meeting deadlines, these things, you have to be able to lock away, you know, and if you need to put ’em away for two hours, pull that brain back out, take 15 minutes clear.

(04:55)
One of those, those issues put the brain back away for another couple hours, come back with the brain for lunch, take care of some things, do that throughout the day, but you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta check that attitude as we say, and if you finding yourself down, then you have to find the tools and you have to realize how to monitor and adjust that attitude throughout the course of the day and, and working remotely. I, I didn’t think I we’ve been working remotely here since April 1st. And it is a huge change. I’m a very social individual. I, I love to walk around the office. Uh, we were on the eighth floor of the what third tallest building in Tucson. I believe we looked over everything you could see for miles. Literally. Sometimes you could see, well, you couldn’t see Phoenix, but you could see the road to it often at distance, but it was such a great view. So for me, working from home, I reach out to people all day long. Well, as part of my work with, with bar credit services, the COO I’m touching base with a lot of people on a daily basis. And it allows me, it allows me to spend time with individuals

(05:57)
Not only about the job, but to hear them and, and pick up on things. And we’ll talk about what that little nod is that they’re having a tough time with and how their attitude, uh, is down. And typically by the end of that phone call, we’re both laughing, we’re chuckling, uh, and they have a better afternoon or a better rest of the day from them. So, you know, positive mental attitude, PMA equals other people’s money. And that is so true in what we do in the collection industry. I did sales for a year or two after I got outta the air force, uh, in the early eighties. And that’s where I picked that up. I would constantly bombarded, uh, by other sales reps. Gotta keep your attitude up, gotta be out there all day. Don’t let the weather get you down, be positive, put a smile on your face.

(06:39)
Uh, and that’s where I learned that, you know, when you walk into a, a business and you you’re ranking a sales pitch and you’re not focused and your attitude’s off, and you’re worried about that bull tire on your car and how you’re gonna get fixed, or, you know, you’ve got a sick friend in the hospital comes across, but you walk back in a month later to that same business and they see you smiling. You got some pep in your step. Well, you know, all of a sudden you drop sales, uh, because of your attitude out there. Part of our attitude also for me comes from the value of the work we do. Like I said, I got into this in 1984, uh, actually August of 1984. And it, it, the industry, there was still about 30 years old. Uh, my recollection is credit cards started in the fifties.

(07:25)
Um, and that became the first, um, debt collections, uh, was back then. And so 30 years later, we were still doing the same thing on phones, credit cards for JC Penney’s oil cards, et cetera. Uh, when it comes to the value of what we do, it took me about two or three years to realize every debt I collected for a client, put money back in that client’s pocket, that money that client then could take to use to make payroll, to stay open, to reinvest, to build their sales organization, to bring on more talent, to grow bigger and better. But then the other part of that was when they paid their people with the money that I had collected for them, those people were then able to provide a life for themselves and their families. They paid rent or mortgage car payments. They bought food, they bought gifts and in your community is where they spent that money.

(08:17)
And so for me, it was kind of like the child, the, the children’s book called, if you give a mouse of cookie, you know, if you give a debt collector, a bill and they collect it, the client’s gonna be happy. Then the client spends that money with their employees who then be happy with their paychecks, who then go out in a happy attitude on Friday payday and go to a restaurant who then buy a meal, a restaurant and tip their server, who their server’s now happy. Cuz they got a tip that server then goes home. He gets upset morning and goes out and buys a pair of shoes that makes them even happier. And they spend that money in their community and so on and so forth. So you can’t just look at what we do as I’m a bill collector. I mean, I remember when I told my, my dad I’d gotten the new job and he was like, what are you doing?

(09:00)
I’m bill collected. And the phone went dead. He actually hung up on me and I was like, what? And I called my dad back and this is a day and age. We didn’t have cell phones. So we had landlines or he put a quarter into a, uh, a box that was on a pole that was on a street corner, somewhere, pull the phone booths. And I called him back and I was like, dad did, did you just hang up? And he goes, son, don’t tell people you’re a bill collector. Okay. It’s not what I want you to be known for. And here I am, 35, 36 years later. Still I tell people when they ask me, they meet me, what do I do? I tell ’em I’m bill collector. And I love the look in their face. The stare I get in their eyes, the glass, they look how they’re like, ah, I’m gonna get a refill on.

(09:38)
I drink here. Here you go. When I take pride, I love what we do in this industry. I didn’t go to college for this industry. I don’t think they have a degree in debt collections that I know of anywhere in the country, but we learn a lot about the finances and economies of what we work in both locally and nationally. And when I realized the value, we bring to the economies of where we live and for our clients, man, my chest swells, because I know literally I’m helping companies stay in business and I’m, I’m helping families stay together. And so when I gotta get down and I can’t get out of it, I think about that. And man, I tell you, my attitude will soar. And so when my organization, we put money in, in our clients re checks every week and we’re sending them out.

(10:28)
Those checks. I just like to look at ’em and say, this is great. I hope this, this makes somebody’s day out there and down the lines. I hope you all value what you do. And just don’t come into this and say, well, it’s a job. The only job I could find, but what you are doing to make people’s lives better is just amazing. And it’s such great value out there. And if you can bring that value to your work and lock that in every day, your attitude, I, I don’t know how your attitude can be down, cause you’re doing great work out there and people say, you’re not here in cancer. It’s not rocket science, but it’s such a great thrill to know that what we do has consequences positively down the line, 10, 15 letters past us. So you gotta start that attitude folks, the next thing’s attendance and the next kind of sounds very generic.

(11:18)
Well, yeah, I gotta show ’em the job to get paid. I get that, but it’s not just attendance. Okay. It’s how you attend. I have, I’ve always had a pet peeve about people being on time. I would rather you be 20 minutes late to work than three minutes late to work, walking in with McDonald’s and a coffee from McDonald’s or Starbucks. Cause then that tells me you didn’t plan your day. You’re not ready for today because you’re late because you had to stop to get food, which I want you to do. I want you to be nervous to do the job, but your plan didn’t work. And now everything else is on off, you get into work. You’re three or four minutes late. You gotta sit down, get organized at the desk before you know it it’s 10 minutes till the hour, we report at six 30 in the morning here at Tucson.

(12:01)
So at 10 to seven, my priest, my person who showed up three or four minutes late, hasn’t done anything yet productive. And he lost 20 minutes. So being on time to me is huge. And everybody understands that about when I talk to them about how just a couple minutes off, at least if you’re 20 minutes off, you’re coming in. Cause you had to see your child. You had a flat tire, you know, maybe you always flat, but you’re coming in with an urgency and you’re getting on that phone right then and there. So work that being on time, show everybody, you’ve got a plan and your plan is working. And when I talk about that statement a little bit later on the tenants also comes about being present in your communications, whether it’s with a customer that you’re calling, who may be 60 days delinquent on their last invoice, that deal, it’s a, it’s a coworker, it’s a boss.

(12:47)
It’s a report. Someone that reports up to you, you’ve gotta be present. You cannot sit there on a keyboard typing when people are talking to you and give the impression that yeah, I care and, and I I’m attending. I I’m seeing to what I’m listening to you because we’re not. And that was something I had to learn years ago because I started this industry. We were on five by seven cards with red pens and blue pens and pencils. And we wrote all our notes out and we wrote all our communications and we paperclipped them or rubber abandoned together for every debtor we dealt with. Now we are on a computer. We have a keyboard we’re constantly banging away and typing cuz when just wanna be focused on it, but be present when you’re on a phone call with a debtor, make sure you’re listening and using your listening skills.

(13:32)
That’s the important thing about when I say attendance that you’re present here are the words that are being spoken, digest those words. And then you can be a, a better communicator and you’ll reach a more successful end on that. Being organized is always a key thing for me with attendance. You’ve gotta be able to sit down and know exactly what’s going on in your day. You shouldn’t be well. I’m just gonna throw the deck of cards up and go from there. You should know that at a certain time of your day, you’ve gotta have this amount of things done. You should know that at a certain point of your week, you’ve got meetings coming up. You need to organize your day out there because when you know what you’ve got going on and you’re organized, you’re gonna see success. Now there I learned, uh, you know, and I’ll tell you all.

(14:18)
I learned a lot in this industry. And one of the things I also learned was a lot of people would say that guy or that gal is lazy. It was never, they were lazy. They were just unorganized. You could never tell what they were doing because they had no idea what they were doing. So they would sit and they’d just shuffle papers or eventually just go screen the screen because their organizational skills lacked. So attendance at bar credit services with the collection and sales team that that I work with daily is about one being on time, two being present in every facet of the job out there, don’t be daydreaming and then become a more organized individual out there so that you can, you can get to reach your goals out there. Now activity is the other, the third, a out of this. And I, I used to love seeing this all the time.

(15:08)
Cause I get moans. And growns from the folks that worked in collections and sales, because you probably can assume that, you know, as a leader of organization, we never get enough calls. You know, if you’re supposed to make a hundred, we want one 20, you’re supposed to make 200. We want two 50. It’s just the way we’re wired. My people understand about me that yes. And the reason I want that is cause I want you success. I want you to become bigger, better, stronger, faster. And that, and this industry happens by being on the phone. It’s not just being on the phone that I talk about what activity anymore. It’s expanded to the behaviors while you’re on the phone behaviors, such as being a passive collector, an aggressive collector or, or, or having an assertive, uh, mindset or behavior on the phone. And they are all different in their own rights.

(16:04)
When you’re, when you’re talking about behaviors that are aggressive, uh, you’re talking about someone that can be misinterpreted, cuz you gotta come across. Well, you’re gonna come across cross. You’re gonna come across rude. You’re you’re gonna, you’re gonna display a tone. That’s not conducive to someone wanting to talk with you because they’re gonna feel bullied. It’s kind of hostile. You know, this person’s yelling at me and you may not be yelling. I, I get accused of it all the time. George, you’re yelling again. And some of you may be sitting there saying the same thing right now, and this is my whole tone level. Some of you may be two rooms over listening to me, uh, because my voice would come through so strongly, but I had to learn how to use that tone of my voice because it came across aggressive and I got hung up on a lot.

(16:56)
And so I had to learn and I kind of shifted the pendulum from aggressive to what I considered, you know, Yoda, very passive. Very um, yes sir. No sir. Few bags full, sir, whatever you want, sir. And now what I learned from being passive, you know, is that I felt my energy started lacking. Um, I was doing things without a purpose or a will. There wasn’t much resistance to what I was talking to. And I, and I, my, my level of collections dropped. And so I had to have a good conversation with, uh, with my boss at the time. And, and he brought to me that I’d gone from one side to the other hundred 80 degree when he suggested was, think of the word assertive. How can you be assertive on the phone? Because assertive is the, is the professional age. It’s the knowledgeable age.

(17:49)
Um, it’s when you ask for what you want and you can also say what you don’t want, but you say in such a way that people respect you, you know, you can say your, you know, tell a friend of yours, your mommy wears army boots, or you can tell a friend, he goes, you know, mama wears army boots, but the way he hears that and that conversation goes on from there is in your tone. So when you’re on the phone, keep in mind, listen to yourself. Are you getting overly aggressive? Are you becoming super passive? Can you maintain that assertive tone with your customers out there? There’s nothing wrong with saying no to anybody. No is a darn good answer. It’s as good as yes. And it’s a heck of a lot better than let me get back to you or, well, I have to think about it or maybe it’s definitive.

(18:42)
And when you deliver a no or a yes, with an assertive tone of behavior, you are gonna start having more conversations because people are gonna understand you’re a business person. Now this isn’t personal, this isn’t about laying down a credit card for a meal or having to pay for a medical bill that popped up out of a blue. This is about talking to a business person regarding the services or the materials that they ordered and used from your company. And now they’re 60 or 90 days delinquent. And, and our job is to remedy that delinquency. Our job is to help them stay in good standing. Our job is to have a conversation professionally that allows them to understand we are here to help them, you know, help me, help you, help me understand what your problem is. Ask those questions out there. Part of what we teach here about using tools.

(19:42)
Um, and I’m gonna jump on this thing because there are many tools that we use as bill collectors. There’s our, the Internet’s a tool letters are a tool. Emails are a tool. The tone of our voice is a tool. Our attitude is a tool. Our attendance is a tool. These are all tools that are in every collector’s toolbox. And if you’re using every tool and you’re confident in that tool, there’s no way you cannot be successful at the job that we all do. It’s when you rely on just one thing, like a hammer or a screwdriver or a so, and you don’t use the other tools and you’re not proficient with them that when you have to do that, that’s when you get lost. And that’s when you start seeing more failure and success. Now we have specific tools we use in our, in our organization here to help negotiate debt with the debtor. We do a lot of research, um, and we learned how to deliver that result from our research, which is a tool in itself. So if we call it a skill as well, but you have to use your tools on a regular basis and you can’t get hooked into liking just one tool because you seem successful with it all the time setting and achieving goals.

(21:05)
I don’t know. Uh, I guess if I was standing in front of you in the same room right now, and that’s why I show of hands, how many of you know, what a vision board is or have ever used a vision board? How many of you have taken the time to sit down and put your goals out to another person that you are friends with or work with? See, I, I, I have done vision boards. Um, I do them quite frequently, um, which is why I get like 17 magazine subscriptions every month. Cuz I like to cut the pictures out. I wanna see where I want to go in the world. I wanna look at the next activity I want to try. And for me, I, I preach to my people, put your goals out there in the world, let people know, put it out into the universe and the universe will talk back to you.

(21:52)
And if you work hard enough and you’ll have a great attitude, you constantly are, are on top of your attendance and your activity, your goals start falling off that vision board. And so every six months or 12 months, you can pull that off that picture. Uh, you can, you know, remove the boat that was on there. You can get rid of the vacation and now put something bigger and grander on there for you. You can take down the Rosetta stone trying to learn Italian, uh, because you succeeded at it in our industry. Our goals, we mainly talk about are number of phone calls, um, recovery rate, delinquency rates, total dollars collected, uh, in our office. We’ll talk about total dollars place. We’ll talk about accounts placed. Um, we’ll talk about, uh, agency of money paid to the agency, paid to our clients. These are all goals that our collector set for themselves.

(22:44)
Now. Some just set the standard that we have. Um, but my most successful collectors, the top, the cream of the cream, when they set their goals, they’re setting their goals 15, 20, 30% higher than our norms. And it’s enjoyable to watch someone to stretch and work hard for a goal. What I don’t like seeing is when somebody comes so myopic on a goal that nothing else in life matters like breathing, eating, taking a shower, they just get so myopic that it takes over. And that’s not what I’m I’m talking about here. I’m talking about having a focus and building the activity to achieve those goals.

(23:25)
So when you hear somebody talk about activity, I hope if anybody takes it away from this little segment here, it’s not about the number of calls you make alone. It it’s about your behavior. It’s about your, your tone. It’s about using the tools that you’re taught and trained to use and using ’em over and over and over each and every one of them, you don’t let your tools get dusty and rusty and you set goals and you set goals, set some simple goals. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate cuz when you hit that goal. And I remember, like I said earlier, I remember that first bill I ever collected for $19 and 99 cents. And the, and the, the man I was talking to, you know, was trying to tell me he didn’t know anybody, any money until I described the phone, he was talking on, he went, oh, okay.

(24:18)
You know, and he happened to be a couple miles away from the office. And he walked in the front. We recept said, you know, George Guy came in and paid me a check, man. It was so great. And my goal was to get a, uh, to get a, a debt collected on my very first day. And I did it with about two hours left of my day. And that was my focus when I got on the phone for first time. And I learned from there and reinforced with me, setting goals are the way to be successful in any form of life, especially in this industry because it’s one of the positives we have when we set goals. Even if you don’t hit your goal, you’re gonna feel a level of success somewhere along the line, you’re gonna have done something for the first time you’re gonna achieved something numerous times. And you’re gonna sit back and say, you know what, maybe I didn’t get to that, that goal, but I got 94% of the way and that’s better than I did last time. And now I’m gonna take the goal up to 1 0 5 and see what I get from there.

(25:15)
So the three A’s that we talk about here at bar credit services are, um, you know, activity, attendance and attitude. People walk around, they know it. It’s, George’s three A’s. Um, I would say to all of you think about it, hopefully some of this resonates with you as far as, you know, how can you change your current cost that you’re on out there? Um, whether, and if you’re successful, then why, why not be more successful? And if you’re not at your level of success yet, try a couple of these things. I mean, what do you got to lose? Give it a shot. Um, I’m gonna kind of go off into some boring stuff. Now, all the acronyms, FD, CPA, CF P B UCC, U FTA, FTC. Um, if I lost you there, good because I do too. Uh, it’s alphabet sync to me, I’m gonna touch on a couple things here.

(26:09)
The UCC, which is the uniform commercial code is the law of the land that governs commercial transactions. The UCC actually took 10 years to write little tidbit there for you all started in 1942. It was finally passed and released in 1952, as a means to govern, um, commercial transactions all across the United States in a, um, a consistent manner. And the transactions were broke down into nine different articles, uh, of the UCC. Um, most of you will probably know the UCC one article, that’s the most common one we use. And that’s one of the, one of the nine articles. Actually the articles have been expanded. I think they’re up to 11. Two of ’em have subsections that are added in there. And I also understand that there’s talk about the uniform commercial code being changed, um, and, and dropping the, uh, sixth article, which I’ll go through with everybody here, uh, just in a brief moment.

(27:09)
So the UCC is what people are gonna refer to in commercial collections because the FD CPA, which I’ll talk about in a couple minutes is a consumer act. So any UCC, if you ever get really bored and you’ve got about six weeks on your time on downtime, go to the library and get the copy of the UCC, the uniform commercial code. I actually did that once many, many years ago, just as a joke to see if it was really true. And it was written written on tissue paper and it had about 17,000 pages in and it covered any and all from what I could tell after the first four or five pages transaction, that was a business transaction, whether it was for sale of goods, services, property, uh, securities lease agreements, it covered it all in there covered, um, how it should work. Um, it co covered the, um, consequences if they didn’t take care of it, et cetera, et cetera.

(28:04)
Uh, the UCC is enforced by the uniform law commission. They’re the ones that look at the, the articles every year. Uh, they take the census across the board to see if anything needs to be changed, or if they’re being functioning, present articles are functioning properly. And this organization is, uh, just a little tid, but it’s a nonprofit organization that writes over this and they make adjustments out there to the UCC. So the first articles definitions in general provisions, uh, of the UCC, it’s also in the article, how you file a UCC. One, which I’ll talk about in a little bit, article two is sales and leases. Three is negotiable instruments, which is drafts checks. And I believe that’s the one that has one of the expanded AR I’m sorry. No it’s bank deposits and collections, uh, article four, which now also covers fund transfers, but not, um, ACHs or electronic fund transfers, but a fi article five is letters of con of credit.

(29:03)
Article six is a bulk sales act. Some you may have heard that may not. It’s just a matter of, uh, this is a law that was put out there because businesses would transfer all their inventory to another person singular. And it’s not typically the way they do business in order to, to not have to pay taxes. The federal side of it was because they wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be included in any kind of bankruptcy filing. So they would transfer inventory in bulk and that would come underneath illegal transfers. And so article six is used by the states to get their taxes paid. Article six is used by the federal government, uh, to make sure bankruptcies aren’t being scammed for lack of a better term, to the benefit of the person filing bankruptcy. The UCC is a federal law, but it is not mandated by the federal government.

(29:55)
Each state has their own UCC. Article seven is the documents of title that are commonly used in bills of lading. Other documents used in commercial transactions, uh, article ladies, investment securities. That’s just, you know, someone understanding, uh, that that article deals with, uh, using securities being held by intermediaries, which we’re probably not gonna come across. I haven’t come across that much in my years here. Uh, article nine is secured transactions, which is the article that covers how to, um, how personal properties used to secure a loan or, um, another type of transaction to make it a secured one back in the day, you had companies that would give somebody a signature loan. If you’re going off the street, I need $500, I guess. Now it’s the payday loans that you call ’em, but you go into like a beneficial $500. They, you wanna know what you had for security television, wait, set, pair of shoes, uh, a pass down ring that would, that made it secured for beneficial.

(30:58)
So if you default on it, if they had something to come after underneath the UCC out there, so UCC one statement is used. Now we talk about this a lot in what we do as third party, we look for UCC filings, cuz this is something that it creates a lean against the piece of property so that the borrower can’t disperse the property. So in other words, if someone comes to me, wants to borrow or wants $50,000 in merchandise and I’ve never done business with them before, I will ask them to complete a UCC, one filing, securing that debt that says, if you default on this debt, I have the right to, and that UCC one filing will list all the secured items that I can go in and take. It could be the, it could be the lights off the wall. It could be desks, computers, file cabinets.

(31:44)
It could be a bank account. It could be a truck that reverts to me if you default on that loan, if I call the UCC one due as the lender, um, for you out there, and it’s a basic statement you address on, uh, a name of the debtor organization, whether secured property is gonna be held. And this is typically filed away, uh, in your secretary of state’s office and every state, last little tidbit on ECC for you all Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania was the first state in the, uh, country to adopt the UCC and they adopt the, the federal version of it. And they adopted it as their state UCC as well. And all 50 states, uh, do have a form of the UCC out there one way or the other, they them, um, hybrided to make it theirs or they have just adopted the, the, the federal UCC filing out there.

(32:39)
Okay. So let’s talk quickly about the Ft CPA, so I can get into some, some more collection stuff here. Um, most, you probably know if you’ve been in collections, if you’ve done some consumer work, the Ft CPA was signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977, um, was put in effect to protect the rights of debtors out there. Now it’s, it’s enforced by the CFPB. What is known as the consumer financial protection bureau, um, that started back in the, uh, previous administration as a means of, of keeping the, um, I guess the banking industry. And it’s kind of morph into anything that has to do with financials, including, or, um, financials, including collection agencies. So we use the Ft C as a means of reference. So we don’t call debtors. Uh, even if the, even though we’re dealing with commercial, we don’t call it debt of business before 8:00 AM or after 9:00 PM.

(33:30)
By frankly, I don’t think we call ’em after, um, 3:30 PM my time, because that’s the end of our day. We don’t get started with them until at least eight 30 on the east coast. As we work back across from, at the time we start as well. Um, we don’t do third party disclosure. We monitor our post eight collections as well, uh, based on the Ft CPA. So it’s, it’s something that we use just to build up a platform as to what we need to do to be ethical and law abiding. We’ve all seen the documentaries about the Buffalo collection agencies run outta motels and, and heard about the ones up in Minnesota that were doing everything wrong. Majority of this industry is, is built with people that are ethical and, and abide by the laws out there, which is something that we all should be proud of.

(34:16)
That the majority of it is, is always gonna be there. And you’re always gonna have the rotten apple in a bunch. Doesn’t take that away. So if the Ft CPA, it’s a simple, uh, process. Um, what’s, what’s gonna change here in November of 2021 is that the CFB put out a 563 page amendment to the current FD CPA. There are some changes coming down that are more towards consumer, but we have to start looking at as well because we are collectors. And, uh, if you have to deal with any kind of regulatory bureau as we do on a, on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, as far as keeping all licensing and everything, the way you read the law may not be the way they read the law. So we often talk to the states and under try to understand how they’re gonna view. So we stay within the confines of the law, couple changes coming down, uh, in November because it came out, uh, October 30th, uh, of this year, they finally made their final decision, took ’em a year and a half to par it down to 563 pages.

(35:17)
So some of the things that we’re gonna be under this scrutiny of is that we can only call a consumer on maximum seven times a week. And that’s something we, we monitor now no more than three calls in a 24 hour period to any debt or business when we contact. So seven times in a week is, is a lot less phone calls. So we’re gonna start having to, to, to work within those confines out there to make our calls count. Um, so the text messaging and email communications, uh, in as of November, 2021 are gonna need to include instructions to every data that we send them to on how to app to opt out of getting those kind of messages from us. We’re gonna be restricted as far as what kind of media is used for communications and that the debtor business or the debtor consumer will be able to choose if they want to get emails, text, or phone calls on, uh, according to the new new rules coming out there.

(36:09)
So that’s pretty much all on the F D CPA. You know, part of attendance I said is being present in all your communications. One way to do that and get your yourself ready for the next call, or even next email is to start preparing for it. By looking at your, your data, you know, here, it would be, what’s the name of the company? Who’s the contact name that I’m dealing with? Um, how much is the balance that’s still owed? How long is it owed? Have they made a payment? When was the last payment they made, uh, any other communications in my notes, and then I can sit down and in about a minute to a minute and a half, I can prepare myself for this phone call. I can get my head straight. I make sure my attitude’s on. I can look at my notes, I’ll see that maybe this individual is a bit excited, I’ll say, uh, on the last call or they were very amenable with me on the last call.

(37:04)
And I’ll just, I still in with the attitude of this is the first time I’m talking to this person and I’m gonna, and I’m not gonna overreact from the last call, but I’m gonna wait and see how they react on this call. So my collectors will not just pick up a phone, look at the screen, dial the number, and then try to read while the phone’s ring. They’re all going to look at what they’re doing next. What was the last two or three attempts they made on that call? They’re gonna look for payments and they’re just gonna review it, get ready in their head for the phone call out there. So it’s, it really is a simple thing to do. And if you take the time, sometimes collectors can do it in 30 seconds. So my collection staff, they get to hold a file for 90 days.

(37:43)
And in that 90 days time, you get to know your, your debtor for lack of a better term, very well. And you can probably remember the last 10 calls you had with this person, because you’ve had it for so long. You’ve worked it so intensely. So here we do the same thing and they get prepared for that call. So it could be 30 seconds could be a minute, but it’s so worth the time to be prepared for that. You know, it’d be kind of like plane based, like playing baseball and going up to at bat when it’s your turn and forgetting to bring your bat with you, not a good chance, you’re gonna hit the ball without your bat. Okay? And then you gotta stop the game. You gotta go back to the dugout and everybody’s been hooting and hollering at you because you forgot your bat because you weren’t prepared for what you had to do.

(38:28)
So take the time, prepare for the collection, call breaking down the collection call. We have eight different parts to our call. We listen to calls, we grade calls, and it is a very important part for me and my, uh, director of collections and my collection manager, as well as my director of sales and my, um, sales manager out there that we review calls. And we listen to our folks on the phone because that’s ideally where we’re gonna be able to make the biggest change, certainly how they approach the job. So we break the call down into these eight different areas. The first thing is identify a responsible party, no sense, calling up a business and say, hi, this is George K incorporated. This is Susie. How can I help you, Susie? I need to check for $5,000 right now. Well, Susie’s not the responsible party.

(39:15)
Susie’s not gonna take you anywhere except to say, let me put you on hold and put you to a voicemail. So when you first work your account, you should be identifying the person that is the decision maker or the check writer, and then every time going forward, make sure you ask for that person out there. Make. And so you put that into the notes of your file, where you can see who you’re asking for next step is to identify yourself when you get your decision maker on the phone. When George comes to the phone and identifies, this is George. Hi George. This is no coward. I’m calling from bar credit services. I’ve identified myself. I remind him why I’m calling on behalf of my client and the outstanding debt that has not been paid at this time. I’d like to give you the option to take care of the balance in full that is owed $1,427 at 19 cents.

(40:05)
If you’ll notice, I didn’t say the balance that’s owed of about four $1,400. If you talk in generalities, you’re gonna get generalities back. Mistakes are gonna be made, be exact, be precise. Once I’m done giving them what we call the done. We had the, the, the psychological pause sometimes also known as the pregnant pause where you stop talking. Okay. This, when I grow in the industry, I was told by my first boss, John G Lin little Texan, uh, that would walk around with cigar in his hand all the time when you could smoke in buildings back then in the seventies and eighties. Uh, and he would sit there and just tell you, don’t you talk, turn, they’ll talk first. And typically they will. I say 98% of the calls I’ve ever had. I just sit quietly on the phone and that puts you in a position of strength.

(40:58)
So it does get uncomfortable. I’m not gonna lie, but the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with that uncom, if that makes sense and you draw, wow, I’m in 42 seconds. He’s still on the phone. He hasn’t hung up and sooner or later, even if they just say, I’m sorry, are you still there? They spoke for, they broke the, the pause. Now you can go back into it. You’re gonna do two things here. I listed him to ask open ended questions, because what you need to find out is why they haven’t paid the bill, but you wanna stay away from yes and nos. Okay. I got really good at, at ended questions, raising my children because I realized when I asked my child at any age, any other four, a yes or no question I got. Yes or no, I didn’t get the elaborate.

(41:44)
You know? Did you have your day at school? Yes. Oh, well I wanna know more. Well, then ask what you want to know, dad. Oh, so what happened today in science class? Open ended question. They couldn’t say yes or no to that question. And as you start asking open ended questions, the one thing you’re gonna start doing is seeing what the picture is and what’s going on. And every debtor will always tell you how they can pay their debt. If you ask the questions and don’t talk a lot, take notes and listen, you will hit the nugget. That’s gonna get that, that paid for you. And that’s where you develop your resolution by asking these questions and, and, and asking what we used to call the F and C full and complete, and getting that information and taking notes on what’s going on in that, in that business, you’ll find an answer to it cause they’ll give it to you.

(42:34)
And then it’s a matter of you just presenting that answer to George ke and say, you know, Mr. Ke, I, I understand where you’re at show a little empathy. Here’s what I believe we can do. If you’re willing to do this boom, that will be when they put their objections up. And then you just have to be, be ready with the, with the rebuttals. Once you nail that down, you go into securing the promise. And that’s real simple. You’re gonna give a time, you’re gonna give an amount. You’re gonna give a date. You’re gonna give the means how it’s getting there. You ask them to repeat that back to you on every promise you get without fail. And then you repeat back to them. We have an agreement, should you not do this? Whatever the consequences is of them not doing it. You list that out there you say, thank you for your time today. And you terminate the call. You notate your file. You reschedule for the proper date and time that you’ve got it set up for based on your secure promise and you move through your next file.

(43:38)
So I hope what you take away in understanding is that we’re all in this together. Every collector out there that goes to work every day is doing the same job for the same reason. And hopefully for the same purpose that we want to be a contributing factor to our economy out there in our communities, and that we enjoy doing what we’re doing out there, and that it is exciting. And I know that may sound weird. That’s exciting to collect the debt, but it is exciting to change people’s lives by helping them out. And we do that, like I said, we’re not curing cancer, but we sure are curing. People’s ills out there in their businesses and allowing them to function and stay open. Nothing more disheartening for me ever is to talk to a business, been in bile 40 50 years, and it’s hit tough times, but when you can find a way to get them to take care of their responsibilities and their debts, it’s a wonderful feeling to know that you may have extended that business life. Well, I thank you all for your patience. And as they said, hanging in there.