Sometimes, when I chased up late invoice payments, I struggled to get to the person I needed to talk to.
They were seemingly ‘NOT IN THE OFFICE’…
Sometimes they were ‘IN A MEETING’…
Other times, they ‘CAN’T BE DISTURBED’.
Like most SMEs, getting paid is an important issue for me…
…but I struggled to convey the importance of late invoice payment to the ‘gatekeeper’.
The ‘gatekeeper’ could have been the receptionist…
…it could have also been a PA or VA…
… In fact, anyone who acted as the ‘go-between’ my company and the person in the client’s business who could authorise and pay my invoice.
Does that sound all-too-familiar?
One of the strategies I developed was to tell the ‘gatekeeper’ that I was ‘REALLY WORRIED’…
…that simple sentence opened all doors for me.
One of my clients was recently struggling; she had a very overdue invoice payment.
A senior manager had promised to pay the invoice a few times, but the money never arrived.
‘Whatever can I say next’ she asked me?
I shared my ‘I’M REALLY WORRIED’ strategy with her and suggested she use it.
‘IT WORKED!’ she said last week. Thank you SO much…
“…I told him in my best ‘worried’ voice, that I was ‘REALLY WORRIED’ because he’d promised the invoice payment twice before…
… it still hadn’t arrived, I was ‘WORRIED’, was there SOMETHING WRONG?
And then I didn’t say anything…
I could hear him spluttering. “No, no, of course, there’s nothing wrong” he assured me…”
My client got her invoice payment 2 days later.
Could you use the ‘I’M REALLY WORRIED’ strategy on a client today and get your overdue invoice payments confirmed the way my client did?
To your business success!
