Without a friendly reminder, clients can quickly forget the value of the service you’ve provided and subsequently ‘forget’ to pay your invoice on time. That’s bad news. Unpaid invoices can badly reduce your cash flow.
The challenge is that you don’t want to upset your customers by demanding payment, so a friendly reminder is a better idea.
In my recruitment company, our job was to source the perfect new employee for our client’s team.
There was a lot of skill and expertise involved in the process, so as a friendly reminder, we detailed EXACTLY what we’d done on our invoice.
Instead of an Invoice with a description like this …
‘Permanent placement of Jane Doe, Credit Controller $12,000.’
Our friendly reminder spelled out our value…
We listed the steps we’d taken to make sure we introduced the right person. For example:
1. Taking full job brief of required skills and attributes, noting your ‘top 5’criteria
2. Database search through 1500 credit controllers
3. Telephone interview of 15 potential candidates
4. Personal interview of 5 best-matched candidates
5. Shortlist 3 candidates to correlate with your ‘top 5’ criteria. Introduce by ‘phone.
6. Prepare comprehensive resumes with achievements
7. Provide in-depth feedback, advice, and guidance
8. Complete negotiations on salary, benefits, and start date
Preparing our invoices in that way didn’t really look like a friendly reminder at all. But it did act as one.
When clients read our invoice, it jogged their memory, and they remembered all the work we’d done. They remembered the value we’d provided, so they paid our invoices promptly.
We never had to demand payment because invoices remained unpaid and overdue.
Use this winning tip, so your clients pay your invoice promptly too. Simply ‘tweak’ your invoices so that they act as friendly reminders and get paid faster.
To your business success!
