Small business failures due to late payments have led to the appointment of small business commissioners in several countries.
It’s a welcome idea…
…but the truth is that most help offered is for ‘after the horse has bolted’.
It’s for recovery of the debt long after it should have been paid by which time people are stressed, relationships have broken down, and the profit eroded.
In my recruitment business, over 95% of our clients were multinationals and corporates.
I wanted to grow my business without borrowing funds, I couldn’t afford to have late payments.
I had 2 types of business and terms of payment and needed clients to pay in 7 and 30 days.
…I got to understand that each large organisation has its own step-by-step process for paying invoices – and it’s often automatic.
If your invoices don’t fit that automatic process, it will ‘get stuck’. They won’t get paid on time.
They will end up as late payments.
So we set to work to annihilate late payments forever…
Using our ‘world-class customer service‘ approach (we wanted to keep our positive client relationships of course), we found out the payment process for each of our clients…
…once we understood our client’s payment process, we knew how, when, and where they wanted us to present our invoices.
As soon as we presented our invoices how our clients wanted them, they flowed smoothly through each system and got paid.
So simple, and it worked.
Will you find out how your large clients pay their bills, or will you leave it to chance and continue to have late payments?
