Be a Hero: Teach Your Clients to Build Better Credit Habits

When you’re serving as a financial expert to help people rebuild their credit, it’s important to remember that you also need to work on building relationships with your clients. You need to serve as both an advisor and a coach to make sure your clients are adopting responsible credit habits that will stick for the long-term.

Positioning yourself as an expert and somebody they can turn to when they run into challenges will help you build a positive, long-term relationship and increase the chance of referrals to friends, family, and people they know. 

Ways to Build a Relationship with Your Clients

Teaching people about managing money or trying to encourage people to clean up their spending habits can be challenging. If somebody has come to you because they have damaged credit in need of repair, there’s a good chance they’ve adopted several bad money habits along the way. A low credit score doesn’t happen overnight and those seeking repair may be turning to you as a last resort.

You want to help these clients fix their credit and get back on a healthy financial track. You can do so by using an automated credit repair business software program that makes it easy to generate and analyze credit reports, use financial calculators and tools, and map out a plan of your client.

While you provide these services, you can also make it a priority to communicate with these clients regularly and serve as a coach or advisor. You can:

• Provide them with basic tips
• Point them to articles of interest
• Simply set up regular phone calls for them to check in with you
• Share relevant posts on social media
• Encourage clients to follow you or become a fan
• Set up automated email reminders with credit repair tips, spending or budgeting tips, and other advice  

All of this communication will help to build the relationship with the client which in turn helps build trust and credibility. It can also make you more personable and approachable to your clients — essential when building any type of client base or seeking referrals in the future.

Getting Clients Back on a Healthy Financial Track

Whether you decide to send email newsletters each month, weekly automated emails packed with tips, or simply post tips on social media, there are several ways to communicate good financial habits to your clients. Some of the habits you want to instill — and messaging you want to share — to educate your clients might include:

•   Check your own credit report at least once a year for errors
•   Don’t max out credit cards
•   Put credit card and bill due dates on the calendar to avoid missed payments
•   Talk to creditors about adjusting due dates if needed
•   Negotiate lower rates with creditors to reduce monthly payment obligations
•   Make paying off high interest credit cards and credit cards or loans with high balances a priority
•   Avoid opening too many credit accounts within a short period of time
•   Don’t close unused credit cards
•   Stop applying for new credit
•   Pay all balances down to below 25% of the available credit line
•   Never spend more than 25% of the credit line (even if you pay your card off in full every month)
•   Pay off any outstanding collection balances immediately
•   Rebuild credit slowly with a secured credit card
•   Write down everything you spend for 1 month, to see where every penny goes

There are several ways to be a hero to your clients while helping them fix their credit. Since you want your clients to be satisfied with your service, it’s important that they understand the importance of not only repairing their credit now, but also making some changes to their spending habits — and even lifestyle — so they don’t end up dealing with credit problems again in the future.

While it’s your job to fix bad credit issues as a credit repair professional, you also want to serve as an advisor and guide to those who are inexperienced with managing money and credit so they can avoid similar financial situations and setbacks down the road.

Taking the time to get to know your clients, making sure that you follow up with phone calls and emails regularly, and making a point to educate as you lead will help you stay on “top of mind.” This can make it easier for clients to trust you and maintain a relationship, turning to you for a wide range of services you offer and also referring you to friends and family members.