Military experts spend years or decades training themselves, practicing scenarios, and getting experience in the field before becoming a military advisor. All of their training and tactical exercises pay off when they can successfully mitigate tense situations with ease.
The training to become a credit repair agent shares many of these characteristics.
As a credit repair agent, you are your clients’ top advisor for their financial battle against bad credit.
Luckily for you, becoming credit repair agent is easy when you have the right tools in your proverbial toolbox and a supportive community to guide you on your way. Read on to learn how to become a credit repair agent and build a lucrative and rewarding business along the way.
Basic Training: Prepare Yourself to Battle Bad Credit
Step 1: Believe in your potential
You are going to be incredibly successful at helping people repair their credit - as long as you believe it. Building a credit repair business is simple: your mindset is the only thing standing between you and the business you’ve dreamed of.
To get started, check out The Recipe for a Scalable Credit Repair Business for a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know to become a credit repair agent.
Step 2: Know your credit repair allies and resources
Getting started in any business can feel overwhelming and isolating. Credit Repair Cloud has an unbelievable wealth of (free!) information available in our webinar as well as training resources to kickstart your business and a vibrant community of fellow credit repair agents who share success tips and celebrate credit repair victories.
While there is nothing wrong with being a lone-wolf from time to time, Entrepreneur’s online magazine points out four qualities successful people surround themselves with:
- Relentless workers
- Positive attitudes
- People who ask questions
- Dreamers
We don’t mean to toot our own horn here, but our community of Credit Repair Cloud users are some of the hardest-working, most positive, curious, and optimistic folks we’ve run into. (Toot-toot!) Surrounding yourself with folks like these and arming yourself with unparalleled expert resources is almost a foolproof plan for success as a credit repair agent.
Step 3: Plan ahead
If you know where you are headed, you will get there much faster than aimlessly working toward success. A perfect place to start in the credit repair business is a credit repair business checklist to give you a heaping helping of strategic advice from credit repair agents.
Tactical Exercises: Becoming a credit repair agent
Becoming a trusted credit repair agent takes time and investment. Here are three easy steps to get the ball rolling:
1. Gain experience with family and friends
The most successful credit repair business owners start out by fixing credit for family and friends. This takes off the pressure off proving character and credibility while learning the product - and if you help them they will totally (and enthusiastically!) refer you to their network.
- Start out on the right foot - Your friends and family already like and trust you, so you can begin your credit repair business with ease and focus on the value you provide by improving their credit
- Streamline processes - Discerning out what sales processes work best for you and getting all your ducks in a row is easier done with people you already know
- Testimonials and referrals - If you do an awesome job showing your friends and family what you do to improve credit, they are going to be excited to refer your service to their network of family and friends
- Don’t be shy about directly asking for referrals--most folks are delighted to share their positive experiences with family and friends!
2. Be a community resource
When you move to a new town and need to get your car repaired, how do you find a mechanic? Most folks either get referrals from neighbors or local friends, or find a reputable spot with the digital equivalent of a personal referral. You can become this type of community resource as long as the financial professionals in your community know who you are.
Try these tips to be known as the credit repair agent in your community:
- Meet with every mortgage broker, loan officer, realtor, tax preparer, auto dealer, divorce or bankruptcy attorney in your area
Get to know the affiliates in your community who can refer credit repair clients to you. For starters, they will be relieved to find someone who can help them close their sales by providing future clients with better credit scores. Sweeten the deal by offering your community affiliates a commission in return for every "paid" client that they refer to you. You can easily track this referral system in your Credit Repair Cloud software.
- Be involved in the community
We all know the realtor or loan officer who runs every community 5K, stops in at all the PTA events, and sponsors at least 15 little league baseball teams.
You need to be that person.
Of course, all of this is filtered by a reasonable and sustainable time commitment and your genuine interests (because folks can sense that and you want to spend energy where it matters to you). Being involved in your community both as an individual citizen and as a business will only serve to reinforce your character and your credibility as a trusted person that your community can look to as a credit repair expert. Some practical ways to start doing this are:
- Join your local Chamber of Commerce - you will meet local business people who have (an often financial) incentive to refer you to their network and--BONUS--usually only one person from each type of business can join so you are known as the credit repair agent
- Support a local charity through your business name (and accept any free advertising this leads to)
- Find a non-finance, non-networking interest group that you consistently attend - This is great because you will practice getting to know people in your community in an organic way and develop a network of folks who know you on a personal level
Find natural connections in your community and business network to grow your business and watch the leads and sales start rolling in!
3. Be consistently awesome and communicate well
Once you are up and running to keep up with your sales, make sure to be consistently awesome to your clients and communicate well. These two simple goals will make a world of difference and set you apart from competitors.
- Be consistently great
If you are amazing one time, you may impress yourself, but to turn clients into fans, you need to keep this up month after month. Automate processes with software so you can rest assured that your clients receive the same level of service no matter what else is going on in your business or life
- Communicate well
A recent Forbes article on communication says that communication breaks down like this
- 55% is based on facial expressions and body language
- 37% is based on tone of voice
- 8% is based on the words said
Over the phone, it may be a little different, but it seems that it is critically important to pay attention not only to what is said, but how it is said. If you want to grow in this area, consider investing in a leadership development program communication club like Toastmasters International.
Like everything other aspect of a credit repair business, great communication is a skill that can be learned and honed.
Top Advisor to the Clients: You’re the Credit Hero
Once you’ve gotten yourself in the business owner mindset, gained valuable credit repair experience and training, and built a strong referral network that keeps your sales funnel full of leads, you have become a credit repair agent.
To maintain your status as the go-to credit repair professional in your community and network you need to provide value from the very start and continue to educate clients on important credit and financial habits:
- Teach clients how to stop bad credit habits and replace them with better credit habits like lowering credit card balances and making rent payments on time
- Learn how to read your clients’ credit reports and how to send effective Round 1 and Round 2 dispute letters:
- Helpful hint: we suggest Round 1 letters contain no more than three to five items
- Understand how to scale your business while it grows
- Learn how to make your ongoing client work about five minutes per month per client
- Know how to automate clients’ monthly payments through a recurring monthly platform like Chargebee
- Stay ready for action: With Credit Repair Cloud community and software training at your fingertips you’ll be creating a profitable business in no time to keep battling bad credit for your clients
If you train yourself to know what to do and learn from credit heroes who've gone before you, there is nothing stopping you from success in your own rewarding credit repair business.
Learn how to get your first clients and results without any experience whatsoever when you join our 14-day Credit Hero Challenge.
