Until a few years ago, the personal qualities of collectionsprofessional could have been shared with those of bad supervisorsor hard coaches, according to executives currently in thefield.

For many years the dominant overall industry model, theseexecutives explained, tended to see people delinquent on loans aspotential deadbeats and often favored impatience, intimidation,meanness and even threats in an attempt to make debtors pay whatthey owed.

Times have changed since then and the traits of a goodcollections professional now owe more to the fields of psychology,sales and financial education than they do to boxing, bookmaking orloansharking.

But old stereotypes often die hard, so here's a look at fivequalities some established professionals in the field say areneeded to succeed in the challenging field of moderncollections.

First: Salesmanship

“I think a collections professional needs to be good at salesbecause essentially that's what they are doing,” explained KarinBrown, vice president for collections at Lending Solutions Inc. in Elgin, Ill.

“They are selling the member on the need to pay the credit unionfirst. A member who is late on a credit union loan usuallydoesn't just have that one loan or that one call on their limitedresources,” Brown said. “We need them to buy into the idea thatit's in their best interest to maintain their payments on theircredit union loan.” Second: Confidence/Trustworthiness

The ability to sell thenotion that members need to pay their credit union first dovetailswith two leading qualities for good collections professionalsoffered by Dona Svehla, senior vice president for retail lendingand loss prevention at the 156,000-member, $1.8 billion Grow Financial Federal Credit Union in Tampa, Fla.

Svehla said good collectors will project a sense of confidenceand enthusiasm about what they are doing and will, in turn, seek tobuild trust with a debtor.

“It is essential that the debtor trusts that the collectionagent both knows how to help them and will follow through on whatthey say they will do,” Svehla said. “The last thing you want is acollection agent who is having to say 'I don't know' or, “let mefind out' to a member who is trying to work out a plan for how theyare going to pay us. Those answers make the member feel likethey need to talk to whomever the collection agent is talking to.”

Third: Strong Interviewing/Listening Skills

Many people might suppose thathaving strong interviewing and listening skills would be the samething, but Brown and Svehla agreed that they are both different andessential to finding success as a collections professional.

Interviewing skills involves having a sense of what questions toask and the best way to ask them, Brown explained, while havinggood listening skills will enable the collections professional tohave a sense of when to follow up on a line of questions and whenit would be better to stop.

“Remember, as I tell collection seminars, we might have to datethese members but we don't want to marry them,” meaning the goal isto help the member in one or two or three calls and not have tokeep contacting the member month after month.

“Our goal is to get to the big picture so we can put togethersomething that will really help this member address the bigpicture,” Brown said. “Knowing when to ask the right questions andwhich questions to ask can be a big part of getting to thatpicture.”

Svehla also said that a strong sense of curiosity is essentialto being a good interviewer and part of being a good collectionsprofessional.

“I want a collector who has a curiosity about things,” Svehlasaid. “I want a collector who, you know, asks why someone didsomething a certain way or why they paid that bill and not thisone” in an effort to get to this big picture even if, sometimes,that means being a tad manipulative.

“I know being manipulative person is not a good human quality,”Svehla said, 'but sometimes there are bad human qualities that canbe deployed in collections to help members make objectively betterdecisions.” Fourth: Having GoodInstincts

One of Jeff Wieczorek's topqualities for collections professionals, having good instincts,also dovetails with good interviewing and listening skills.Wieczorek is chief information officer for the 68,000-member, $586million member Member One Credit Union in Roanoke, Va., where he manages ninecollections professionals.

For Wieczorek, having good instincts, or what he calls“collector street smarts,” is having a sense of which members withdelinquent loans are sincerely interested in working with thecredit union to resolve the debt and which are not.

“Probably eight out of 10 members are people who are reallytrying to do the right thing,” Wieczorek said. “But a collector hasto be able to recognize when he or she runs across one of those twopeople who might be interested in just blaming it on the economyand letting the credit union take the loss.”

For those members, he said, it may be appropriate to move to thenext steps in collection or loss recovery. Fifth: Optimism

All the collection professionalsagreed that a collections professional who is good at the taskswill have a strong sense of optimism.

Collections professionals are most often calling people aftersomething bad has happened to knock them off their payment scheduleon a loan, the professional said.

The member with the delinquent loan may feel like theircircumstances are overwhelming them. A good collectionsprofessional can help them see past that.

“We don't call our collections department 'collections' we callit the 'member solutions' department,” Wieczorek said, in partbecause the credit union is trying to help people see past theirproblems with a delinquent loan to a path forward out oftheir fears about the delinquency and to a solution.

“Optimism is how collection professionals demonstrate a pathforward and away from the problem,” Brown added.