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Credit card companies will voluntarily reduce your debt balances – if you present the right offer at the right time. Before you make that first offer, however, you need to understand the factors that motivate delinquent debt supervisors at the credit card companies.

In my law office, we often counsel potential bankruptcy clients to hold off on filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy or Chapter 13 bill consolidation, and to try to negotiate lower balances and to avoid bankruptcy. Here are some of the techniques and strategies we have learned over the years.

First, you need to realize that to the credit card company, you are a number – an entry on a spreadsheet. Although you may be stressed out because of your credit card balance, no one at the credit card company’s collection office knows who you are or cares about your financial hardship.

The bill collectors employed by the credit card company are trained to use psychology to scare you and intimidate you into paying. Interestingly, the most powerful consumer protection law – the Fair Debt Collection Procedures Act – applies primarily to outside collection agencies, not to in-house bill collectors. This means that in-house bill collectors can use much more aggressive techniques to squeeze you for payment.

Therefore, the first rule for negotiation is to recognize the intimidation psychology and to ignore it. Remember, you have something they want – money – and if they want your money voluntarily, they will have to work with you.

Second, recognize that credit card company collection practices are driven by business models. Mathematical analysis shows that slightly overdue debt is likely to be paid, whereas the older your unpaid account becomes, the less likely that the credit card company will see payment.

As a practical matter, this means that the credit card company will not negotiate with you at all until your unpaid balance is at least three months old. Once a debt falls into the 90 day past due column, the collection percentages go way down. This is generally the ideal time to start your negotiations.

If you let your account go much longer than 90 days unpaid, you run the risk that the credit card lender will turn it over to an outside collection company or send it to a lawyer for lawsuit. These options may or may not impact your negotiation strategies, but they add complications and unknown elements. You can always start new negotiations with one of these new account owners later – at the outset it is best to negotiate with the actual credit card company.

A collateral technique that we have used with some success is to send small payments every 6 weeks or so. The purpose of making these payments is to permit your account to age even more, while keeping it in house. Not every credit card company will hold off on transferring the account but some will.

When you approach the credit card company to negotiate a settlement, your best chance for success will be to have a lump sum equal to about half the balance available. Very few credit card companies will accept payment terms in negotiated settlement. At our law firm, we generally advise against raiding a retirement plan to come up with the lump sum since retirement money is usually considered an “exempt” asset in a bankruptcy and not reachable by any creditors.

If you don’t have the full lump sum, you may be able to work a deal where you break up your payment into two smaller lump sum payments – one paid now and the second in three months.

So, as you start the negotiation process, you will most likely have success when:

1) you step back from any emotional issues you may have with the outstanding balance

2) you treat the negotiation as a straight financial transaction – blame or guilt is not part of the equation

3) the best timing for your negotiation is when your account is at least three months past due, but not yet turned over to a lawyer or outside collection agency

4) you have access to a lump sum equal to about half of the outstanding balance

Follow my instructions for one moment: I command you to: Sit down! I command you to Standup! If you want to standup you must do it in the present. Your physical power is only in the now. You cannot stand up in the past. You cannot stand up in the future. You can wish you could stand up a month ago. You can wish you could stand up yesterday. You can think about standing up tomorrow. But you can only physically stand up right now. This illustrates the point that you have no power to change anything in the past and you need not worry about the future. What you can do is change your thoughts about what has happened in the past. No one has the power to change your thoughts except for you. You can feel guilty, sad, and angry about past events, but none of those feelings will change your present. If you let those feeling overwhelm you, then they can paralyze your actions. But just as your thoughts can paralyze your actions, your thoughts have the ability to move you forward in the present.

You must decide that you are here now. The successful accomplishment of your dreams and goals requires acknowledging that you are now where you are. Accept that where you are now is ok, at least for now. Obviously you wouldn’t be reading if you didn’t want to change things about your life, but for now accept that you are here now and nothing can change what has gotten you here.

You hate your job
You are overweight
You are in a bad relationship or abusive relationship
You have a handicap.
You have no confidence.
You feel unattractive or unloved.
You are financially broke or are in debt.
You have problems with your children
You have problems with members of your family.
You have no true friends.
You have no job

All of the above can be make you feel overwhelmed, but it is where you are now. If you are a mountain climber, it is important to know that you must firmly place yourself in one place before you can begin to raise yourself to the next step. If you tried to climb while, looking down you will be overtaken with fear, If you try to climb by looking up, you will get overwhelmed with all that is ahead of you. You must only focus on where you currently are in order to move ahead. You don’t want to get stuck on the mountain of life. You will starve, get weak, and fall off. Learn to reach for the next ledge and pull yourself up on inch at a time.

It is OK to be upset or angry with your current situation, but only as a way to create you to make positive changes and change your current situation. You cannot feel sorry for yourself because the rest of the world does not care. The rest of the world has its own problems. Whenever you feel yourself caught up in the emotions of guilt, anger, and self-doubt, say to yourself. “I am here now, now what? “This does not determine where I will go or what I can be” Then pick a course of action to move your forward to the future that you want.

As a keynote speaker it is very crucial that you must smooth out the bumps of your presentation. One of the best way to tell if your presentation was successful is to pass out evaluation forms for your audience to rate you on how you did. Another thing you can do is to ask some of your audience members if they truly understood or absorbed the techniques and ideas that you taught them. The success of your presentation greatly depends on the feedback of the audience. A positive feedback from the audience would be that they will greatly anticipate the next part of your presentation while a negative feedback will cause some audience members to get easily bored or to walk out of the room. Here are a few ways that you can perfect your presentation.

Doing Heaps Of Research- If you wish to have a flawless presentation then do research about your clients company or about the topic they have provided beforehand. This is very important if you wish to relay to your audience several techniques and ideas about how to change their life and work strategies. To ensure that you cite the proper examples and present the right techniques to your audience then do some research and look into how to motivate these individuals into moving forward and implementing these new ideas and techniques into their daily rituals.

Preparing Your Presentation Beforehand- As the keynote speaker must always prepare your presentation a week or more before the actual date of the event. This is to ensure that you can fully review everything that you’ve prepared and thus you can make the necessary corrections before delivering it. You can also practice delivering your message so that you can memorize it by heart and present it with ease. Always remember to always be prepared and expect to make a couple of changes while presenting to flex your piece so that it will fit with your audience.

Getting To Know Your Audience- Observe your audience and see how they react to certain examples or topics that you present. You can immediately know if a person is interested or if a person is stubborn enough to listen to you by looking at their facial expressions. If their reaction to some topics or perhaps example shows concern and interest then you’re on the right track. You’ve hooked the crowd into understanding what you want them to understand. But if you can see their expressions has mixed feelings, boredom, or yawns then there is something wrong with your presentation. The audience is getting bored and is getting confused as to what to believe and what you are talking about.

Inserting Humor And Seat Exercises- Remember that when delivering your presentation, always insert a joke or two to let your audience know that your also know how to have fun. Just little jokes about how their bosses or about an employee that should get fired. Keep in mind to avoid racial and ethnic slurs that may offend some members of your audience.