Learn from the Madness: Tips for Improving your Collections Team

Dave Rudd

Here we are again! That special time of year when we wear our lucky socks, roll our lucky dice and possibly consult a fortune teller in order to complete our NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness brackets. Hopefully thus far all your bracket picks have been correct.

March Madness is fantastic! Next to Wimbledon, this is my favorite sporting event of the year. I’m inspired by the players’ sheer love of the game. They play with heart. They play with passion. I enjoy watching them listen to their coaches and carry out his direction as a cohesive unit.

My extended family has a yearly NCAA Family Fun Bracket Competition. This is something our whole family—grandparents, siblings, grandchildren, cousins—looks forward to. Last year 107 Rudd family members submitted brackets. We don’t play for money—just bragging rights and a traveling trophy. Still, our family bracket competition gets just as competitive as the basketball games.

Just like a basketball team must work together to compete and win, your collection staff and office technologies must work together to compete and succeed in today’s collecting environment.

Guide your team to success! As the coach—the business owner, manager or supervisor—you must help those around you understand the company’s goals and direction. At times you need to call your team together and take corrective action to keep your staff heading down a winning path. Let team members know what they can do to improve and guide them toward success. Basketball coaches do this all the time during time outs. They huddle their team together, explain the strategy, set-up the next couple of plays and cheer their team on.

Unify your technologies. As the coach you also need to make sure your technologies are working as a team. Technology can be a great asset to your success, but if your deployed technologies aren’t functioning together well, your progress can stall. With a little coaching your office productivity tools can greatly contribute to your success.

Keep your contacting game plans fresh. Review your dialer campaigns. Are you running the same campaign (plays) over and over again? If you do this in basketball the other team quickly catches on and will stop you. Change how you dial, and not just once. One day start from the beginning of the list. The next day start dialing from the end of the list. Score your accounts and dial a certain type of account first. Contact accounts at different times of the day. Your dialer partner knows the possible contacting strategies using their technology. Find out what your contacting options are and try them all!

While it is often true that your office NCAA Basketball bracket competition winner simply guesses the tournament champion, you can’t guess your way to success in business. Be an active coach. Be the coach who constantly watches his team, observes their behaviors, listens to other experts and then makes adjustments necessary for victory.

Good luck with your NCAA basketball brackets! Go Miami!