When you run a credit repair business, processing credit bureau disputes can be an exciting and rewarding part of working with clients. Learn how to dispute negative items on a credit report and the tools needed to ensure ROI for the time you invest in your credit repair business.
1. Run a Credit Audit
The first thing clients want to hear from you is that your credit repair business can help them remove negative items on their credit report. No matter how hard-working you are or how established your credit repair business is, the service you provide is to help clients improve (and maintain) their credit score. It comes as no surprise that one of the top Google search terms for credit repair is “Does credit repair work?”
During your initial conversation with a client, you must demonstrate how credit repair will work for them. With the right credit repair business tools, this step will be a walk in the park.
See how Simple Audit works now!
How to run a credit audit:
- Have your client send you their most recent credit report. They can get this by signing up for a credit monitoring service--something they will need to maintain throughout their credit restoration process.
- Upload your client’s credit report into Credit Repair Cloud and run the Simple Audit tool.
- Review the audit: In less than a minute, you’ll have an itemized credit audit to share with your client.
You don’t need credit repair business software to run a credit audit, but you should have a very intimate knowledge of the credit bureaus and the credit repair process through credit repair training if you are going to run a manual audit on your clients’ credit reports.
2. Prioritize Disputed Items
Go through the credit audit with credit repair clients and set priorities for what you will dispute. Although the Simple Audit tool in Credit Repair Cloud’s software automatically populates a list of red-flag items to monitor and dispute, your client may want to target other items first.
It is critical that your clients are invested in the credit dispute process because they will need to fulfill their end of the credit repair deal: no new credit accounts, keep their credit usage below 30% of the credit line, and forward all credit bureau correspondence to you. Partner with clients to create a credit dispute plan that gets them one step closer to their financial goals.
3. Write & Send Dispute Letters
The next step is to write a credit dispute letter on behalf of your clients. Here are a few tips to write an effective credit dispute letter:
- The document is coming from your client, so you must include documentation of their identity
- Round 1 letters are sent to the credit bureaus and can address multiple items (we suggest no more than 3 to 5 dispute items)
- There are templates that many other successful credit repair businesses use available your credit repair business software
It can feel intimidating to send a dispute letter on behalf of your client for the first time. Remember that the letters you send are the same templates that credit repair companies with annual revenue in the millions use, and trust the process.
4. Follow Up on Disputed Items
Credit repair companies are successful because they do something that most clients are not willing to do: follow up consistently and fight the creditors on erroneous items.
Following up on disputed items for credit repair clients takes about five minutes per credit repair client per month if you are organized and use an intuitive credit repair business software to automate your busy work.
Monthly client follow-up includes:
- Call each client and make sure they are forwarding all bureau correspondence to you (even if they just take a picture of the letter and send it to you from their phone)
- Check on client progress toward a better credit score, a lower debt to income ratio, and toward their financial goals
- Send the next round of dispute letters to the bureaus and creditors
- Round 2 letters are for bureaus that did not remove the item when you sent the round 1 letter
- Send the next batch of Round 1 letters
The most important part of successful credit dispute is a consistent effort for your credit repair clients. Do not dial it in during your monthly follow-up. After all, clients are paying you a monthly fee to dispute items on their credit report for them, and you will earn your referrals to new clients by doing a great job for your current clients.
Learn how to write dispute letters and run your own profitable credit repair business today!
