|
Debt ReliefCommercial Collections: Business Finance Booster Shot
by:
Joel Walsh
If commercial collections is not part of your B2B business plan, you’re losing money. Get your cash flowing once again with these commercial collection secrets.
Commercial collections: fixture of the new B2B culture
If you’re in the business-to-business field, or even as if you’re a user
products business that works through third-party distribution channels, you probably cognize what it’s like to check your mail uneasily each day, winnow through all the bills for that payment that was supposed to have been in months ago.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If you were a good, honest bourgeois who dealt with another good, honest businesspeople, “commercial collections” wasn’t supposed to be part of your vocabulary.
Back in the nice old days, an invoice or purchase order that had an established institution listed in the “bill to” field was about as nice as a cashier’s check. Nowadays, if you’re in the business of serving another businesses you may find that your cash flow is less reliable than a small-time bookie’s.
Commercial Collections: A Personal Story
This past Apr I finally got the $2,000 a client owed me for activity done in December, after disbursement about as more money’s worth of my time reminding them to pay.
No, this wasn’t one of those hand-shake deals—we had a 5-page contract specifying net-30 payment terms. Nor was this several guy with a fruit drink stand. It was the media division of one of the largest retailers in the United States.
The worst part was, I sure this client based on my experience working with them a few years before. I really spent the money on Christmas presents, fully expecting the payment to move in before my credit card statement.
Avoiding Outstanding Invoices
Of course, you can nip this problem in the bud by cultivating strong relationships with clients who pay on time. But those clients are acquiring few and far between—and, as I found, the nice can go pretty bad pretty fast.
Worse, it seems that the larger the business, the less likely they are to pay on time. “Net 10 days” mightiness as well be a foreign language in Fortune 500 land. The long-standing proposal
given to B2B businesses and self-employed folk is that the money is in big corporations. But nice luck acquiring it from them before your rent is due.
What I Should Have Done
Looking back on my experience with the defaulter corporate client, my biggest mistake was doing it all myself, with writing the letters and devising the phone calls. With an hourly rate of simply about $75, I complete up disbursement the time equivalent of a large chunk of my $2000 fee.
I should have gone to a collection agency. I simply didn’t cognize then that were collection agencies that would-be take on small business financial obligation and run the whole process for you for as little as $20 per debt.
Of course, I besides didn’t cognize that going to a collection agency didn’t necessarily mean “putting an account in collections.” Galore collection agencies are in fact refashioning themselves as “accounts due management” specialists; they’ll even as manage your invoicing from end-to-end if you want. The client may not even as realizing that the person on the phone is from an outside agency and not your own personal assistant.
When I think of all the value of the time I spent collection that last $2,000, I could kick myself for not handing it over to a collection agency. But, I can always look forward to putt this cognition into practice the next time I have a client who’s slow in paying.
Just simply about the author:
Joel Walsh, a freelance writer and regular contributor to Collection Agency Information (http://www.let-no-debt-remain-outstanding.com), invites you to http://www.collection-agency-information.com/collection-agency/nationwide-collection-agency.htmldiscoverthese commercial collections secrets: http://www.collection-agency-information.com/collection-agency/nationwide-collection-agency.html
Circulated by Article Emporium
| |
