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Improve Your Cash flow: Debt collection

by Robert McCallion and Alan Warner

Debt collection is not the most attractive task for those running a business to carry out. It can be embarrassing, frustrating and often fruitless, but it is often the task that makes the difference between survival and bankruptcy. It is also a task that is often ignored or given to someone who has neither the skills nor the motivation to succeed.
There is usually little you can do to collect cash from the individual or company that is reluctant or unable to pay; the answer is to have a credit approval system that checks them out beforehand and ensures that they do not have credit in the first place. However, most outstanding debts are not with people or companies like that; debtors are often delaying payment because they have a temporary cash flow problem or an inefficient system of payment.
In these cases the answer is TO CHASE, politely and persistently. For this you need someone who has the time and the personality to do this effectively, while still keeping a good relationship with the customer. In most cases you do not need to threaten; just find out who is the person responsible for payment and keep communicating by telephone until they pay. They may pay just to stop your calls but that doesn’t matter; next time they will probably make sure you are the first in the queue!


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Improve Your Cash Flow: Teach Yourself

Improve Your Cash Flow: Teach Yourself
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Get to Grips With Book Keeping: Cash flow Cash flow is often described as the blood of business, due to its importance in ensuring commercial survival.
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Get to Grips With Book Keeping: Ask for a referral with every customer you meet After every sales visit, regardless of the outcome, if you can acquire the habit of asking a simple question just before you leave, you will be able to maintain a constant flow of high quality sales leads.
Close More Sales: Confirm every sales appointment with a PS letter or email Have you ever gone to an appointment that you had originally made by telephone, only to find that when you get there, the prospect is unavailable because they had forgotten about it? If so, then you’ll already know how frustrating it is - not to mention a complete waste of your valuable time! That’s why it’s always a good idea to make a point of confirming every sales appointment by letter or email, straight away.
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Close More Sales: Use the ‘try before you buy’ close In a face-to-face selling situation, it usually proves to be an irresistible offer to let your prospects ‘try before they buy’ and enjoy the benefits of your product during a free trial period. Providing your product lends itself to his idea, it’s a great way to reduce sales resistance, and give your product the chance to sell itself.
Close More Sales: Exercise your expertise power As an experienced professional salesperson, the chances are you know more about your industry, your market, your competitors and your products and services than just about any other person alive – and don’t forget, that includes your buyers! The fact is, you are an expert, and let’s make no mistake about it, during the course of a sale that expertise is a powerful persuasive force.
Close More Sales: Harness print power The fact that something is printed tends to enhance its believability. It has a kind of built-in authority that the spoken word or handwritten materials just cannot match.
Close More Sales: Pay unexpected attentions Giving ‘unexpected attentions’ is the simple idea of delighting your customers by sending them a little something from time to time – something that’s totally unexpected.
Close More Sales: Use pre-printed telephone inquiry pads There are a number of benefits to using telephone inquiry pads. Quite apart from ensuring that you always come across as highly professional whenever answering the telephone to a new prospective customer, over time it provides a source of information that is crucial to your ability to evaluate the effectiveness of your promotional activities.
Close More Sales: Explore the buyer’s personal interests Always go beyond just finding out what buyers need and want and try to uncover any underlying personal motivations too. In effect, the personal interests of the buyer often represent a ‘hidden agenda’ which is potentially the most powerful of all information for the salesperson.
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