Wilson Cole's Podcast From The Road

We are fortunate in this day and age to have so many ways to connect with each other through social media, but sometimes it can be overwhelming. Each website has a different audience, shares a different message, and reaches people in different ways. There are countless arguments about which one is better; should you use Facebook or YouTube? Or Linked In? Or Twitter? If you ask us, we say all of the above. We believe in a wide range approach to marketing on social media. Our clients often come to us and ask, “What should I start doing tomorrow to help my SEO?” Our answer: publish content on every platform because they all appeal to different audiences. Videos are a great way to share content because they have a high rate for conversion and are a great way to engage a wide audience. We create videos to discuss popular problems and ideas in the industry and explain them in further detail. The best part? Once we have generated a video, we can convert it into more pieces of content. We take our videos and create l

If you know anything about our company, then you know that we have preached for the last 27 years about always getting a contract signed. This applies to fee agreements, credit checks, and any other contract you can think of. You also want to make sure that when you create these contracts to bury safeguards in them to protect you. We previously held a webinar on how to turn a credit application into a contract, and we mentioned some of the things you should always put in them: attorney fees, collection fees, secured creditor, jurisdictional clause, and a process for any late fees or interest. That being said, it is important to put safeguards into your contract as long as you know exactly what you are saying. Lately, we have had clients come to us who put random legal words into a contract and end up with a time bomb that screwed them over on their own contract. There seems to be a new phenomenon to put legal sounding words, usually found on the internet, in a contract and it backfires! We know that the inten

SEO has become one of our hot topics lately because it is so important to the success of your company. We have previously discussed the “why”, but today we want to share the “how”. Our auto SEO optimizer is one of our best tools for improving our internet presence and now we want to share it with you! Usually, we manually evaluate our websites for improvement through our marketing team, but we also use a software that does the same appraisal on a more simplistic level. Since we feel it is our duty to make sure the industry is protected and thriving, we have made that software available to anyone who wants to use it. The program goes through a website, analyzes it, gives an overview, and shows what the website looks like when accessed on a desktop and on a mobile device; all of this information is free to use in order to improve your company’s website. We wanted to test our program and provide you a sample of how it works, so we found a random website and ran it through the software. The report came back with

We often talk about overly serious topics when it comes to our legal podcasts, so today we wanted to take a break and look at some of the best excuses that debtors have used on why they did not pay our clients. There is a certain procedure of events that must happen before we get involved. Before the claim becomes a legal issue it runs through collections and before collections it goes through the clients’ BS meter. Now that you know the steps, let’s look at the top five excuses! 5. “We are not paying because it was turned over to collections.” We found this one particularly funny because the debtor was not paying before the client turned over the account. Maybe, they could see the future and knew they would be sent to collections? 4. “I’m not paying because you client will not meet with us so we can give him his check.” You may be doing a double take but let us explain. The debtor wanted to meet the client at an obscure time of day in a strange location. As a rule of thumb: if you are asked to meet at 11 pm

We have recently seen a trend with some of our clients who ended up in litigation after receiving a check from their clients saying “paid in full” and here is our first piece of advice: you have the right to shut up and you should exercise it. Do not assume you know what is going on and call us. Unfortunately, we have a history of clients coming to us after accepting checks that said, “paid in full”. In the old days, if they wrote some special wording on a check, you still reserved your rights for protection. Recent rulings have weakened that understood protection and made it so if a client writes extra wording on a check, it should no longer be trusted. When we hear an excuse about advice taken from a 1980s law class, it never comes from an attorney. An actual lawyer will be constantly updated on changes in the laws, so do not trust that one class you took back in business school and listen to the advice of a practicing lawyer. So, what happens when a client goes to dispute a check that says, “paid in full”?

As we are moving into the third quarter for this fiscal year, we all are taking a look at summaries and reports about how marketing and SEO strategies have been used and the impact they have had over the last year. By creating SEO reports, we have been able to identify where our traffic is coming from and how we are going to treat it differently based on resources. Often, people make the mistake of grouping internet traffic into a singular category, but this ultimately hurts your ability to improve your marketing strategies and to understand who your current audience is. But, what does it mean when traffic is increasing? There are a few different avenues of traffic that need to be identified. The first type of traffic is known as direct, and this refers to people who type in your company name into a Google search because they know exactly what you do, and they want to work with you. Next is organic traffic which comes from people who type in a general search, like staffing collections, and they are sent to yo

When people come to us to help collect from a client of theirs that broke an agreement, we always advise that you refer all communication back to us. There are many problems that can arise if you try to personally deal with a debtor after turning the account over to us. We have often seen situations where a debtor contacts our client, after bringing us into the picture, and they try to make a deal; 90% of the time the debtor will not come through and our client is opened up for a lawsuit. We have also seen debtors who have called an attorney and said that the client accepted a settlement, but this was never discussed with the attorney and now there is a case of he said, she said. As a general rule, going behind attorneys creates a web of backroom deals that rarely come together, and it gives the debtor a defense. The most important piece of advice that we give to our clients is that they have the right to shut up. Once a case comes to us, the client should make no contact with the debtor except through us. We

Time and time again we have discussed the importance of creating content to improve your company image and SEO. You also are probably aware that all marketing experts preach that content is king. But this is where the narrative seems to stop. What kind of content should you be creating? Well we are here to pick up the baton and take you to the finish line! First and foremost, the content you create should always be on brand. People seem to focus more on posting content rather than what it is actually about. For example: if you run a collection agency, then you need stick with topics relating to collections and the kind of problems your clients may face. It would be ridiculous to click onto a collections website and read an article about Great Danes and it would confuse users. The key is to post content that creates the best user experience possible, be consistent, and make your content easy to find. Let’s look at another example that we learned from a marketing expert: a great way to think about your SEO stra

Pay attention closely because we are about to share our secret sauce of marketing. We are going to take you behind the scenes to show you the layout in the funnel of our main marketing plans and how you can replicate it. Basically, we are going to show you our website traffic and how we are getting things into our funnel. If you are able, click on our coordinating YouTube video to watch everything that will be described below. The first thing to look at in our funnel is the different places that we catch our target audience. This includes advertising on social media, buying ads, videos on YouTube, emails directing people to a landing page for our webinars, and (not pictured in the video) calls from our telemarketers. All of these are methods for bringing in traffic and they follow the same path. Underneath each of these icons there is an option to insert three pixels: what is happening? Pixels are, essentially, cookies that let us know who has visited our page so we can know to retarget them. Fun fact: these

There is one piece of advice that we wish every client knew: always know who you are doing business with and get your contracts signed! If you think we sound like a broken record, you are not wrong, but it is shocking how many problems are the direct result of not following this advice. When it comes to contracts, you need a process for getting everything signed and filed correctly. There are two major issues that we want to address and the first is not knowing who you are doing business with. You may think you are working with ABC enterprises but then you search through the Secretary of State, and you discover that they are registered as ABC services and enterprises; these are two separate companies and this can cause major issues if you end up suing or any kind of legal problem. The best resource for researching clients is through the Secretary of State, most of them are free, and you can enter in the business to search to see what the registered name of the company is and who is it registered to. This shou

We have spoken in the past about the value of SEO, search engine optimization, and how to promote your website to the top of Google searches. Another great way to increase your website traffic is through backlinks; this essentially means that you have a link on someone else’s website that goes back to yours. This can be a great way to not only promote your Google presence but also to connect with other people in your industry and draw on their audience. One of the best ways to set up backlinks is to place articles and similar things on other websites. This directly tells Google that you are credible, and that they think you are credible too! As much as you want to create backlinks, do not fall into the trap of letting your articles be posted for the sake of it. Just as your audience can tell if you insert keywords in an article to improve your SEO, the same can be said for creating backlinks. Not only are you sacrificing the user experience by blatantly placing keywords or backlinks to promote your website, b

We are big proponents of getting work done without having to physically do the work yourself, and we try to implement this system in every possible aspect of our business. If you are a small business, or remember way back when, then you are familiar with the struggle when you go to market and drum up so much work that you stop being able to market. Then your business declines because you have run out of work, and the cycle continues. This is where automated remarketing comes in! Our marketing team broke out of this cycle by creating a consistent automated flow of business by consistently marketing. Our two biggest marketing campaigns that are running right now are promoting our webinars: “Behind the Numbers” and “The Seven Biggest Mistakes made by Staffing and Recruiting Firms”. Side note: if you are interested in learning more about these campaigns, email Ally Cole at ally@elocglobal.com. Our marketing campaigns are important because we need people to consistently attend these webinars since we have position

If you know our company, then you are aware that for the past 27 years we have been advising companies on what we call “the Seven Deadly Mistakes in collections”. These are the most common and serious mistakes that we have seen in credit collections. Recently, we held a webinar on these mistakes and plan on holding another one very soon. For those of you who missed it, here are the two mistakes that have proven to be the most destructive for our clients and how you can avoid them. The first deadliest mistake is not getting something signed. This has become such a serious issue that some states have passed legislation that requires every business relationship to have a signed contract. Why is this so important? The best way to demonstrate the gravity of this mistake is through an example: We had a client that provided high end consultants to a client of theirs. They were owed $24,000 in past due credit and their client tried to get out of paying by cancelling their services. Our client had originally presented

Are you ready? Get excited because we are going to take you behind the scenes in how to create a marketing campaign! We have proven over the past 27 years to be the best collection source for the staffing and recruiting industry and that is because of our dedicated focus on marketing. So, sit back and get comfortable as we walk you through the steps we took on our marketing campaign “Backdoor Hire Solutions”. People are often intimidated by the idea of marketing on a digital platform, but this is an important contributor in how companies make money. The first step is to identify your client base. We have learned that the majority of our clients are on LinkedIn, so our ads are geared towards the LinkedIn platform. Honestly, if you are a staffing and recruiting firm, you are already working with HR departments and they are on LinkedIn. You also need to identify who is your target audience. Our campaign is geared towards targeting the United States, but you can focus on any region or country that your company wa

Everyone is busy, we understand that better than anyone, so if you missed our webinar on the 7 deadly mistakes people make in the staffing and recruiting collections industry, here is a quick recap on what you missed! The first mistake that we often see is that companies do not get a personal guarantee when they extend a line of credit to a client. This is a deadly mistake that can cost you money because 80% of businesses will go out in the first two years and an additional 80% will go out in the third year. So, make sure to get a personal guarantee from the head of the company because if they are not willing to take the risk, why should you? Next, when a company is in the process of signing a new client they do not have a separate form for credit application. This can be dangerous because if a company goes under then their attorneys will look for any escape clause. If you do not become secured creditors, at least add wording to your contract that allows you to file UCC1. Each state has slightly different rul

One of the most prevalent debates in the business world is whether companies should continue with old practices or implement new ones. This is especially important in marketing divisions and the techniques they need to use to appeal to the modern customer. We are here to tell you that you do not and should not pick one side over the other. There is room in your marketing campaign for old school marketing techniques, like print and trade shows, along with new school techniques, like Facebook and Linked In. People tend to be one-dimensional with their marketing techniques, but we have found that both schools can be used to enhance each other. Trade shows are one of the oldest methods of marketing our company to potential clients and some people have begun to question their usefulness. Digital cannot replace the value of building relationships and seeing people face to face at these shows, but it can be used to make your presence more effective. We recently went to a trade show and tested our layered marketing t

A recent trend in the staffing industry has appeared as the result of the low unemployment rate and the increased use of recruiters on a broader scale. This trend is to hide binding confidentiality agreements in contracts to try and trap companies into paying extra money to high end debtors. In fact, this has become a shockingly common practice by insanely predatory high-end debtors, and we are thankful that most of our clients have had the insight to not sign these contracts. We are seeing a few different manifestations of these predatory documents. One example is a client received an email from someone who had not been paying their bills and they tried to have our client sign a new form before they would send the money. These forms are often confidentiality agreements that are so binding and strict that the client could not even hire an attorney because they cannot disclose to them. These new schemes involve a higher thought process than we typically see which means that our clients are even more vulnerable

Our company is one of the top staffing agencies that comes up in Google searches and that is because we implement strategic methods on our websites to ensure they are one of the first ones any internet searcher sees. We refer to these branding strategies and tactical plans as our secret sauce, and today is your lucky day because we are going to share them with you! One of the most shocking things we have found when talking to clients about their SEO, search engine optimization, is that many do not want to grow or be at the top of Google searches. There seems to be this idea going around that by growing your voice then you become a bigger target for negative reviews. We like to work on the assumption that if you are not trying to make people angry, then adverse comments should not be a problem. If you do have negative reviews, our best solution is to add quality content to your company website to drown out unfavorable talk. To say this in the simplest of terms: haters gonna hate; you cannot allow worry about n

This may not be the most fun or interesting topic, but it is vital to your company. Every business uses email and has some kind of internet presence. Email is the primary form of communication between employees and clients, so it is important to have complete control of your company’s email and any services that are associated with it. Always create your own email domain, account, and password, and NEVER delegate this job to an employee or manager; this applies to all social media accounts too. Do not let someone use a personal email to set up these accounts, including you, because you want these to be property of the company rather than an individual. This will ensure that if anything goes wrong, you always can easily access the account and be in complete control of it. Also, if for some reason you have to fire an employee and they are vindictive, you, as a manager, can take away their control of the account instantly. It is time consuming and frustrating if you have to jump through all the hoops in order to

One of the first steps you should take when signing on a new client to do contract or staffing work is to have them fill out a credit application. This may seem like an old school idea, but it is imperative if you want to keep your business safe. Just think about this: if someone approached a bank to get a loan for $50,000 to $100,000 for staffing, the bank would run all sorts of credit checks before giving them a contract. Another important thing to note from this example is that a credit check/application is done as one of the first steps in a business relationship. Legally, it is very important to have company sign a credit application in the beginning of your business together because you can bury safeguards in it to protect your company. Credit applications are vital for assessing the risk of working with another company and you cannot set credit lines without it. You need to know their three main trades and how much is in their bank; this information will be critical when deciding how much you can provi