The American Repossessor

George Washington (1731-1799) said….” Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation.  It is better to be alone than in bad company….”

Having quality management systems in place, enables us to transfer not only our services to our clients, but they expand into our industry, helping their companies too, to become more professional.

Expansion is one way that a company can grow and to support that growth there needs to be policies, procedures and processes to enable the growth to survive, which in turn will help companies become more profitable.  Expansion is not a word you hear of much when we are in recessional times, however, many of our clients are doing just that, growing from strength to strength and being profitable in doing so.

Expansion…during these recessional times?

Oh yes you can, as any professional, qualitative and profitable service can do it – if you plan to make it work. Knowing your market, carrying out market research and planning will help your ‘expansion’ flourish.

Key planning has to take place, both with infrastructure and people to make expansion work.  Part of that planning you should review your overall business strategy and make the changes that are necessary to support the additional growth you are wanting.

Many studies have shown that companies who maintain or expand their marketing and customer service during an economic downturn gain market share and emerge stronger when a recession ends.  Of course, that does not mean that you spend without thought.

However, there are four key areas of your business in which you should invest now to thrust you to the next stage during the recession recovery:

1. Marketing:  In lean times, many small businesses make the mistake of cutting their marketing budget to the bone or even eliminating it entirely.  But lean times  are exactly the times your company needs to market most. However, it is the dollars you spend now that will drive your success in a few months.  As your competitors cut or stop their marketing, you should ensure that your marketing is continuous.  You need to help clients to find your services and choose them rather than others by getting your name out there.  Don’t stop marketing, in fact, if you can, step up your marketing efforts. You should be marketing all year round.
2. Customer Service:  Step up your customer service.  Follow-up and ensure that the service you provide continues to meet your contractual demands.  Customer service is one element that can help you to differentiate your company from that of your competitors.  Providing better customer service is as one of the easiest ways to overtake  the competition.  Another area to focus on during a downturn are your sales and service systems.  Giving clients a consistent, polished, professional experience when they contact your business inspires confidence.  The more confident clients feel about your services (especially during hard times) the more likely they are to spend more dollars with you.  Appearing confident when not many others do, lends credibility  to your company. Discounting is a sure-way to fail in business plus if clients see prices dropping, they lose confidence in the business and the service you offer.  Remember, once a client gets a deal, they will come to expect it all the time. Use what you’ve got!: Who knows you best?  Your existing clients of course.  They can be a great referral basis and be a great recommendation to potential new clients.  Many companies are so focused on getting new clients that they forget about their existing ones.  If you have good clients that believe in your company as a supplier to them, the likelihood of them providing a reference to a potential new client would be pretty high.
3. Develop and implement strategies to get your competition’s clients:  If your business is to prosper in tough times, you need to continue to expand  your client base and that means drawing in clients from the competition.  How can you do this? By offering something more or something different than the competition does.  Research your competition and see what you can offer to entice their clients into becoming your clients.
4. Safeguard your cashflow: Cashflow is the lifeblood of your company; to keep your business healthy, cash needs to continue to flow.  No matter how  tough times get, having cash flow out of your business will never be a problem.  As long as your company exists, you will have expenses. But the harder times get, the harder it can be to keep cash flowing in.  Preparing financial projections for the future will help you to manage and control your finances, including your cashflow.  Do not use your cashflow to purchase items that will eat up your monies.  Use a credit line for that.  Your cashflow is to support your daily business activities and not for large capital expenditures such as new trucks, new computer systems etc.  When you get a new client, you will need your cashflow to bridge the gap between you invoicing the client and the client paying you.  If you don’t have the liquidity to do that, you won’t keep that client nor will you continue to be in business.

Remember this principle: 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your revenue.  In a downturn, clients are likely to go with a trusted source. If you constantly build relationships with your existing clients, more power to you.  If not, it’s time to rejuvenate those clients.  Stay in touch and let them know that you are interested in working with them.  I advise clients to consider themselves an extension of their client companies and market themselves that way as this will not only improve their relationship with them, but gaining their trust will ensure their continuous working relationship with them.

Many of the aforementioned elements/functions of business have been put into practice during the development and growth of a client repossession company.  It already covers an entire State and during the last 6 months plans have been developed to expand into a neighboring State.

Why did we decide to do this?  Not only was market research carried out  of the new territory to see who the competition were etc.,  but we talked to the company’s clients too and once they knew that the company was expanding into another State, they jumped right on board with us!

Why was this? Our clients had experienced a professional and qualitative service in our ‘home territory’ as we had gained their trust over the years and were enthusiastic for us to provide repossession services in our expansion area.  Of course, this would not have happened if repossession companies in the ‘new State’ were actually providing their clients with the service that they wanted.

In this instance, when our client companies found out about our plans, they supported us every step of the way and even asked us if we were preparing to move into other States too.  That in itself says a great deal about the service they were NOT getting from many repossession companies.  In fact, one client asked if we were going to go nationwide, and stated that if we were, they would give us all their business!  Imagine that.

It is because of the competition’s lack of provision that it opened up the opportunity for us to move into their geographic coverage area.  And we did get that feedback from our clients and this encouraged us to move forward with our expansion plans.

There are many things that my client repossession company does that most other repossession companies do not.  The FAST program which is provided by ConnecTGo, Inc is a program that provides a full management, training and supervisory service specifically designed to increase and maintain the Field Agent’s performance in, not only repossessing, but repossessing successfully.  Added to that is the UP service, that provides centralized updating service that increases the delivery time to the client.  These are two of several key elements that this repossession company have as a ‘competitive advantage’ and is an ‘added value’ service that has enabled their repossession rate increased by over 400% in the two years ConnecTGo, Inc. have been working with them. Needless to say, their income level too has more than doubled, and their profitability continues to grow too.

These services not only meet client requirements, they goes above and beyond their expectations, to the point of increasing existing accounts threefold.

Because of the quality and professional work we have been doing, and the introduction of many new processes/procedures/policies, recently one of our Fortune 500 companies implemented one of our policies Statewide that all repossession companies had to follow.

QUALITY in all that we do is what our clients need to see from us and we can achieve this through professional and qualitative means.  There are many company owners out there that have worked hard to elevate their companies over and above their competitors and through quality, professional and pro-active hard work, they strive to continually achieve this.

This should be a never-ending action that we take on an on-going basis as these are the companies that will lead our industry into being recognized as a         QUALITY, PROFESSIONAL, EDUCATED AND KNOWLEDGEABLE industry – a recognition that many of us cannot wait to see happen!

Henry Ford (1863-1947) said….”Quality is doing it right when no-one is watching….”