Businesses thrive on paying customers. But in reality, not everyone will pay their dues on time, and some would even forget to pay at all. It used to be difficult because people can simply go off the grid or relocate to a different state if they want. Fortunately, technology has caught on and features like skip tracing can help you locate the people you need to find. This article will help you further understand what skip tracing is and how you can use it for your business.
What Is Skip Tracing?
Skip tracing involves a series of activities such as searching public and private databases, looking at vehicle registration, driver’s license, and court records, and getting information from peers and associates of the person you’re looking for. It’s a process that various businesses and organizations use to locate people.
The skip tracing process is as follows:
- Verify Client Information – One of the reasons why you can’t contact a certain client is that you don’t have updated contact information. Skip tracing will help you find and verify the correct contact information so you can easily reach out to them.
- Collecting Publicly Available Information On Client – If you’ve verified that you don’t have the correct client information at hand, a skip tracer will look for the person through publicly available information like:
- Address history
- Travel records
- Court records
- Credit card applications and records
- Criminal records if any
- Job applications history
- Loan applications
- Social media accounts
- Search engines
- Tax records
- Utility bills
- Contacting Relatives And Friends – Talking to a person’s family and friends is one of the things that can help a skip tracer locate a certain individual. They can also talk to co-workers, landlords, or neighbors.
The skip tracing process has proved to be useful to collect important information, whether for a non-paying client, potential clients, or business partners you might want to look into.
How Can You Use Skip Tracing For Your Business?
While the abovementioned activities may sound like detective work, skip tracing solutions are also useful in business. Below are some examples of how skip tracing solutions can help your business:
Perform Background Checks Using Websites
Dynamic skip tracing tools include websites that will scour the internet for information about the person you’re looking for. These tools are usually available for free, but if you want to get a complete report and information, you may be required to upgrade to a paid subscription.
Many companies and lenders use these websites to find out more about a potential employee or client. It can also be used to learn more about potential business partners. It’s basically used as a tool for an exhaustive background check. Especially mortgage and lending companies, these entities need all the information they can find to gauge a potential client’s ability to pay.
Avoids Waste Of Time And Resources
A business that revolves around lending money tends to use a lot of operating time tracking down debts that are difficult to recover. In many instances, a debtor in default would flee the city or country—making them hard to locate or contact. And in some cases when a debtor dies, the heirs don’t usually inform the lender—leaving the debt unpaid for months or years.
In this case, lenders will have to painstakingly go after the estate or the debtor’s remaining assets to satisfy the pending debt. Doing all of these are a waste of time and resources. Skip tracing, on the other hand, uses various techniques to help save time and provide information faster than manual labor may take.
Lead Generation – Potentially Expand Your Number Of Clients
One of the ways to measure business success is to know how many customers you serve every day. As a business, it’s always important to find different ways to expand your client base through lead generation. Using skip tracing solutions, you can search and verify your potential client’s demographics, then gather and validate data on them.
Once you’ve gathered information regarding your leads, you can start creating a marketing plan to reach them. You’ll have their contact details and you can try calling them or sending them promotional mails or emails. It’s important to use this information wisely and ensure that you store them in a secured location so cyber criminals won’t take advantage of the information you’ve gathered.
Help With Legal Issues
When a non-paying client or business is refusing to pay your business, the next step is to consult a lawyer regarding any cases you could file against them. If the individual or business has relocated, it might be hard for the lawyers or investigators to send court documents to them. That’s why it’s important to use skip tracing solutions so they can locate these individuals or businesses easily.
Skip tracing helps attorneys, private investigators, and bounty hunters track down these people. They can find current contact details and the whereabouts of the person they need to see.
For example, your business is offering installment payments and one client has stopped paying their dues for months. After sending them numerous warnings, it’s best to talk to a lawyer so you can present your case in court. If the said non-paying client has relocated or changed contact information, skip tracing solutions can help you find them so you can send court documents or subpoenas.
In Conclusion
Skip tracing solutions are essential for people in various industries when locating specific people. This method helps save time and resources. Skip tracing solutions can also be used to support your marketing plan. With the information you gather from potential clients, you can create customized marketing plans that will appeal to their tastes and make them pay customers in the future.
Lastly, skip tracing solutions are helpful if you have a legal battle with a non-paying client or business. This is an important aspect especially if your business offers credit or installment payments. Skip tracing solutions can help your lawyer or investigator track these individuals so they can present themselves in court and eventually pay their debt.
Jason is the Marketing Manager at a local advertising company in Australia. He moved to Australia 10 years back for his passion for advertising. Jason recently joined BFA as a volunteer writer and contributes by sharing his valuable experience and knowledge.
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