The American Repossessor

Today’s Repossession Field Agent confronts challenges unlike any imagined by our predecessors.  As Debtor’s grow younger and more violent, and gangs and organized crime elements increase their presence within geographical locations, today’s Field Agent deal daily with violent situations.  To make matters worse – more often than not – debtors involved in situations have nothing to lose.

You can attribute much of the negative behavior to the moronic repossession TV shows, that portray our industry in a very harmful manner, hence the fact  many debtors that plan  and conduct violent incidents are prepared and ready.  I’ve found – unfortunately – that the same can’t be said for the people responsible for supervising them.

As a manager, I need and know how to best prepare our Field Agents for crisis situations, and one way to achieve this is with training.

Today’s Field Agents have to wear a multitude of hats.  They should:

• have great people skills
• be able to calm people and handle irate Individuals
• be a problem solver
• possess good investigative skills
• "read people well (people lie, and you need to know when they do)
• have great organizational skills Have Great Organizational Skills
• be persistent
• be able to follow-up with people (such as attorneys, etc.)
• be able to work a flexible hours, including weekends
• be confident and assertive as they may have to repossess from someone larger than themselves (they may be intimidating)

Last year alone, lenders took back more than 1.6 million autos, a jump of 12 percent over 2007. And increasingly, technology is helping in the hunt.  This is why there has been a change in the field agent over the years – from the way they dress i.e. professional, clean cut,  to technology savvy, organizational skills, management of time, communication skills, and ethics.

Your Field Agents are only as good as the training, and time you put into them, along with the equipment you supply them.  This also equates to the Account Executives you have in you office that manage and review and verify your client’s assignment account information.
Field agents will receive an active repossession order and begin tracking the client’s collateral.  An Account Executive will review the findings and analyze the report supplied by the Field Agent. Throughout the entire investigation process we will keep client’s informed of the findings with accurate, detailed status reports.

With all that said, today we still have too many Field Agents hitting our streets that have had the minimal amount of training, with expectations from company owners that they will be productive and repossess many vehicles.

Company owners need to wake up!  This is not the case and the "proof in the pudding, lies in the eating" – in other words, Field Agents that do not receive good training for a set amount of time, therefore will not perform to their fullest potential.  Why would they, when they don’t have the tools to do their jobs!

Training and managing Field Agents is an area of work that I do, for and  on behalf of repossession companies, and I  know firsthand (having had my own repossession company) what investment in Field Agents is vital to the success and profitability of any repossession company.

These people are the ones that make you money, so imagine how much more they would make you if you trained them properly!