“We were building affordable housing. The challenge was being able to allow the people that were trying to buy affordable housing … My partner Jason’s an attorney and we collaboratively began working together – because we were partners in the development as well – in trying to improve consumers’ credit scores. So that they may be able to buy what amounted to be our products that we were building and selling.” — Damon DeCrescenzo, CEO and Co-Founder of The Credit Pros
Damon DeCrescenzo (LinkedIn: @damondecrescenzo, Website: TheCreditPros.com, Partners: CreditRepairCash.com) is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Credit Pros, a national leader in technology enabled credit repair. The Credit Pros is dedicated to educating clients on how to avoid and alleviate mistakes related to their credit in the future. Equally committed to improving the lives of their employees, The Credit Pros is ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s 5,000 fastest growing companies for 5 years running and has been honored by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 50 Best Places To Work.
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Be Prepared to Get Your Hands Dirty
“I think that people that are too proud to get dirt under their fingernails, especially as it relates to their own business, it’s a sign for trouble. You need to be able to put in the long hours, put in the long thought time. But also be able to get your hands– I know personally, I’m not speaking for anybody else.”
Don’t just talk the talk; be sure you’ve also walked the walk. Being a business owner doesn’t give you a free pass on getting your hands dirty. If you want to succeed in business, you’ve got to have been in the shoes of those who work below you at some point. Leadership does not mean endlessly barking orders at your employees. Anything you ask them to do, you should have at least done yourself, or have a firm and complete understanding of.
70 Million Americans Have Credit Problems
“Every American has a credit score and 70 million Americans have problems with their credit. So it obviously casts a wide net.”
Damon goes on to explain that many Americans aren’t even aware of problems with their credit score. With credit scores having such a significant impact in our lives, Damon understands how important it is on the part of consumers to increase awareness, understanding, and action-ability.
90% of The Credit Pros Business is Driven by Performance Marketing
“90% of the business of The Credit Pros is driven by way of performance marketing, strategic partnerships. We do a little bit of B2C brand protection, on paid search, etc. But my background was the establishment and then scale of performance marketing relationships in businesses as well. And so that’s been critical to our company’s growth.”
The Credit Pros dedicates a lot of resources towards making sure that solid relationships are in place with their partners. When choosing new partners they look for qualities such as consistency, pliability, making sure they they are okay with having frequent conversations, and the ability to iterate quickly in order to identify what is and isn’t working.
Quality Assurance is Essential to Identifying Internal and External Issues
“The amount of phone calls that are coming in every day. We’d very much love to be able to QA every phone call, to be able to sniff out problems. But as an example, we have a quality assurance department that uses some call tracking technology that we’ve built, to allow them to listen to phone calls, listen for issues, throw up a flag.”
When we sit down with industry experts this comes up all the time, and we tend to agree. You’ve got to have a strong quality assurance process in place in order to really spread your wings in the Pay Per Call space. You can use call tracking software like Ringba or even your own custom solution. Whatever it may be, you must conduct quality assurance, and have the ability to record and review calls.
Negative Credit Events Precede Inbound Customer Calls
“Whether they were told no in trying to get an apartment, or told no when trying to get a car. Or were quoted on creditcards.com for 19.9% interest rate with no– with $400 annual fee or whatever it may be. Because of their poor credit. And they’ve become frustrated. Ultimately, those are our best clients.”
The Credit Pros best inbound calls come from clients with a real sense of urgency. Typically set off by a negative credit event, these customers can be in full crisis mode when reaching out, while TCP works their best to put out any fires.
Final Thoughts: Credit Repair is Challenging, But a Massive Opportunity for Affiliates
“Credit repair though is a challenging business. This is why there are only a few credit repair companies that are in the performance marketing space or have scaled as a whole. I don’t expect that to change because the process is a challenging one and barrier to entry continues to be a little high. But the regulatory environment is ripe. The time is now ”
Damon also describes how intense competition and fragmentation on the part of Titanic-sized organizations in this space leaves an opening for affiliates to get in on the action. Because all of the behemoths are neck-deep investing in new technology, this ultimately decreases the possibility of any disruptive technologies taking hold in this space any time soon. While the giants are squabbling over reinventing the wheel, smaller firms can afford some room to grow and develop within the existing ecosystem.
