The podcast revolution has landed in the accounts receivable management industry. Are you listening?
12/11/2018 9:00
Recently, John Rossman, attorney at law at ACA International member company Moss & Barnett, was standing around chatting with friends at an ACA event when someone he didn’t know tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, you’re John Rossman,” the stranger said. “I recognize your voice.”
Rossman doesn’t have a hit single out, nor is he a movie star. He is, however, the co-host of probably the first and definitely the longest running accounts receivable management podcast, The Debt Collection Drill.
Launched in 2011 and hosted by Rossman and fellow Moss & Barnett shareholder Michael Poncin, the Debt Collection Drill bills itself as the podcast that provides “sage tips for improving collections and compliance.”
Rossman said when they started the show he initially thought their audience would consist mainly of attorneys and some collection agency owners.
Poncin was a little less optimistic: “I thought maybe our wives would be the only people who listened.”
It turns out they were both wrong.
Episodes of The Debt Collection Drill have been downloaded more than 100,000 times by people in cities around the world. Many of their listeners are attorneys and accounts receivable management professionals, as expected, but their audience is bigger than that, Collector magazine editor Anne Rosso May reports in the December issue of Collector magazine.
In 2013, Rossman met with members of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection in Washington, D.C., who told him, “We listen to your podcast and we love it!”
That revelation stunned him.
“I never imagined that regulators would be avid listeners of the podcast and that it could shape the way they think about issues affecting our industry,” he said.
And regulators aren’t the only unexpected group tuning in—the podcast audience has also included lawmakers, college professors, national journalists and consumer attorneys.
The Debt Collection Drill’s broad audience has made both Rossman and Poncin aware of their unique position.
“This is a place where we can have a real and positive influence about changes in the laws that affect the debt collection industry,” Rossman said.
Rossman and Poncin are riding a communication wave that has yet to crest.
By all accounts, each year more and more people tune in to podcasts. An estimated 73 million people in the U.S. listen to podcasts each month, according to recent Edison Research data. That’s 26 percent of Americans in 2018, compared to just 12 percent when The Debt Collection Drill debuted in 2011.
For John Cook, chief client officer at Professional Recovery Consultants, the two keys to running a good podcast are content and charm. He relied on both to develop the podcast he launched earlier this year.
“I think people connect with podcasts because they are convenient—you can listen to them while you’re doing other things,” said Mary Shores, president of Midstate Collection Solutions. Shores should know. She’s been a guest on more than 250 podcasts to discuss her personal development book, which was published last year, as well as her agency’s approach to positive debt collection communications.
Podcasts can help connect members of the accounts receivable management industry while building understanding of critical issues, bringing to mind the phrase made popular by former Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone: “We all do better when we all do better,” Rosso May reports.
Nicole Strickler, president of Messer Strickler, and Kelly Knepper-Stephens, vice president of legal at TrueAccord Corp., started their podcast after receiving feedback on their rapport together during a presentation at an industry event.
Strickler and Knepper-Stephens started their podcast, Two DEBTicated Attorneys, at the end of September. The two friends had been kicking around the idea of a show for about a year before pulling the trigger.
“I thought we should do a podcast because there are not many women doing podcasts in the industry right now. I knew it would be a good opportunity for us to get our perspective out there and do it in a way that’s different,” Knepper-Stephens said.
Read the December issue of Collector magazine for tips on connecting with your audience, finding your voice among industry podcasts and more. And check out the website for ACA International’s new podcast, ACA Cast, providing valuable industry updates on federal advocacy, legislation and more.
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