The Art of the Talk Off Can be Taught

Collectors are the building blocks of our business, their skill set should be the priority for collection managers and executives. Collectors should also know that their ability to understand what it takes to be successful makes all the difference in their paycheck.

Every collection agency is dependent on the skill of their staff at all levels. While competent managers are more important to the overall long term planning and success of the organization, collectors interact with your debtors all day, everyday and in that way, are the most important part of your business. What does it take to make a great collector?

The collector’s tool kit is varied and wide-ranging, depending on where he/she works and the debt type being collected. But there are transferable skills that are essential in a successful collector’s tool kit:

1. Talk off
2. Probing 
3. File maintenance  
4. Follow up 
5. Closing

There are certain character traits that make great collectors, such as persistence, determination and organization. You can’t teach character at work, people walk in the door with these things. In fact, managers make a note of this when collectors interview. But some things in the tool kit can be taught and practiced.

Collections is all about talking; the ultimate task is to talk a debtor into giving you the money that is owed. Skiptracing, file maintenance, probing, and follow up are essential elements to a successful career, but none of these things is more important than being able to talk a debtor into paying. Your talk off is your money maker.

A talk off is one part talking and two parts listening. Like your teacher told you in 4th grade, you have two ears and one mouth. An effective talk off always follows this pattern:

1. clear identification of the collector, the debtor and the debt,
2. demand for payment, 
3. gathering information from the debtor, 
4. closing or escalating call.

I have been exposed to a lot of sales training, and I have attended sales seminars and interacted with salespeople. From these interactions I have come to the following conclusions: 1) collectors should be trained according to the sales training model, a model that predicates preparation and scripted basic pitches, and 2) great collectors are great communicators.

A great talk off puts the collector in a position to close the deal. The collector that can effectively lead the debtor to decide to pay their bill and then goes about the business of getting them to do it will be successful.

What makes a great talk off? A talk off is made or broken based on delivery. The collector that can effectively deliver the message that payment needs to be made with a clear sense of urgency gets the money. Delivery is actually more important than the content of the talk off. You can hear collectors that get through the script but they don’t quite communicate the message clearly. It’s an old adage in collections: “How you say it is more important than what you say.”

I believe that collectors should pick a script and stick with it until they have the requisite phone experience to adapt during the course of a phone call. A collector that consistently gives the same basic pitch will have an advantage over collectors that don’t. Having a ‘canned’ pitch makes it easier for a collector to learn two things: 1) getting timing and tone exactly right, and 2) anticipating and rebutting objections effectively.

Timing is important because it helps collectors keep the conversation going; collectors will have a lot more success once they know when they should interject and when they should allow the debtor to speak. A debtor will always say they have no money as soon as they realize a debt collector is on the other end of the line. It happens so often that inexperienced collectors are baited into talking money too early. Having a canned pitch allows a collector to see the excuse coming and deal with it the way management wants, without getting into an argument.

Always remember: a talk off is a negotiation at every stage. The difference between a successful negotiation and a failed one is knowing how to steer the conversation. After thousands of talk offs, I have discovered that getting a debtor to pay is simply a matter of making an effective argument for payment — it all boils down to getting the debtor to decide that they want to pay. It’s not about coercing them; it’s not about breaking them, or even reducing the amount of the bill. The key is getting them to say that they want to do something about it.

I teach my collectors that they have to give every debtor the opportunity to pay, and a good reason to do so.

Gabriel Tavarez is the General Manager, House/Legal at J. A. Cambece Law Office, P.C., an attorneys office that specializes in debt collection. Based in Peabody, Mass. and founded in 1996, Cambece Law Office employs more than 220 representatives.