There are some crucial steps that any consumer must take to maximize the results they receive while having their credit improved.
It’s essential to tell your clients about these steps to insure they are accountable for their results, and to insure they take necessary steps to complete the credit repair process with the best results.
I created a nice acronym about these steps to make them easy to remember called S.N.A.P.
SNAP stands for Stay with us for 8 months, add New credit, add Available credit, and Pay off problematic collections.
Many consumers think credit repair is a quick fix. For this reason, some people will sign up for credit repair, then quit the program shortly after, because they didn’t see mouth-dropping results in their first couple of months.
It’s essential to inform your clients that fixing credit is a process that takes time. Let them know that it might take 6-8 months, or longer, before they see the great results they are expecting to see.
When you set this expectation, many clients will give you the time you need to produce the best results.
For any client to gain good credit scores they must first have good credit. But many credit repair customers you might see don’t have any positive credit, or very little positive credit on their reports.
And in most cases you may be dealing with consumers who have little to no revolving credit open on their report. Without having positive credit reporting with good limits, it’s impossible for that consumer to ever really see a great credit score, no matter what you do for them.
This is why the “N” and “A” are so important in the SNAP steps. Because when a customer adds positive new credit and new available credit, they will likely see a good increase to their credit scores.
When you educate clients on this, you then make them accountable for their scores. You are letting them know that if they want good scores they have to add good credit and revolving accounts with good limits to get good scores.
You will find this takes A LOT of heat off of you. They know now that they must add positive credit to get a positive score, so you will find much fewer people asking you why their scores aren’t going up if they received this education.
The last step in SNAP is to Pay off problematic collections. Most collections don’t need to be paid off to improve credit. But there are some pesky accounts that keep getting sold to different collection companies.
If you keep seeing the same account re-reported time and time again, through different collection companies, it’s in the clients’ best interest to let them know, that the account is going to keep getting re-reported until they pay it.
Let them know it’s their choice to decide to pay it or not. But remind them that if the account is deleted, and it is re-reported through another collection company, it might cause a chase on the individual account.
If the client does choose to pay-off the collection, insure they try to get the creditor to commit to a “pay-for-deletion”, where the creditor will agree to delete the negative item in return for the payment to pay-off the account.
It’s important to tell your clients what you need them to do, in order to help improve their credit and scores. Several things, like adding new credit, are things only clients can do themselves, and are crucial to them having a good profile and score.
You don’t need to use the acronym SNAP, but these types of acronyms do help customers better remember what they need to do.
Choose your own acronym or use SNAP, but regardless of what you choose do, insure you are educating your clients on what they should be doing during the dispute process.
