Helpful skip tracing techniques you can use right away.
At C2C, it’s our aim to help businesses more effectively manage in-house collections. When it comes to skiptracing techniques, we have strategies that you may find helpful when launching your own investigation.
When collecting on a debt commercially, the term skip tracing is really a bit of a misnomer. Skip tracing is actually the pursuit of an individual. Commercial Collection Agencies aren’t usually looking for individuals. They are typically in pursuit of companies, instead. Therefore, a more appropriate term would be investigating.
When we launch an investigation for a client, we start with a simple Internet search for the most basic of information: names, addresses and phone numbers for the company in question. Once that information is gathered, we contact the Secretary of State. This is how we learn if the company is a sole proprietorship, a partnership or a corporation. That’s important to know because, with a sole proprietorship, the individual is liable. If it’s a corporation, only the corporation is liable unless you have a personal guarantee.
Don’t forget to comb through the Credit App from the client. It offers useful information like banks, vendors, landlords and phone numbers.
In the course of our investigation, we set out to learn the following 5 things about the company:
1. Names of officers and directors.
Cut to the chase and find the decision maker. That’s usually the director.
2. Name of the registered agent.
Every company has one. He or she is responsible for the legal documents.
3. All known addresses.
The branch headquarter location is the main address we want.
4. Present status.
Are they active or dissolved? If active, they have the corporate veil of protection. If the debt was incurred after dissolution, it becomes a sole proprietorship and therefore, collectible from the individual.
5. Date of incorporation.
If the debt was incurred before the date of incorporation, it becomes a sole proprietorship and therefore collectable from the individual.
There are many databases that collectors use to gather information. Free online sources are a great place to start, like Blackbook, Manta, Corporation Wiki, NetOnline and of course, yellow and white pages.
Paid services like Accurint, Hoovers, CBC Innovis, Master Files and First Data’s FastData offer more detail. When we pull a report from a database, we collect every phone number ever used, names of relatives and neighbors, associates and social networks.
Armed with the above information, we can save time by locating the person/s responsible, right from the very beginning bringing a more timely resolution.
What other skip tracing techniques do you use when you investigate? Post them here.