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Are you tolerating slow or no pay customers? Hi, this is Judi Otton with GrowthCast, and in this series, we’re talking about – and solving – some of the most frustrating things that business owners tolerate in their businesses. Today. I’m going to talk about slow and no pay customers. And even if it doesn’t happen often, when it does happen, it is a really significant negative impact on your cash flow. So here’s how to solve that. First of all, when you send the first invoice to a new customer, reach out, call them, make sure they got it. If you work with larger clients, it’s frequent that the person that gets the invoice is not your main contact. Also, there is at least one accounting system that I know of, where their invoices often wind up in spam. So just reach out and make sure that they’re getting the invoices, because if they don’t get them, they can’t pay them. Second, as soon as an invoice is late, reach out. This gives you the opportunity, if there are any issues or complaints that the customer has, to address them before time goes by, and it starts the next piece the process. So third, when invoices are late and they’re still late, I want you to reach out regularly, alternate between emails and phone because different people respond to different things, and be nice, nice kind and firm. I think a lot of business owners hesitate to reach out on late invoices because they think it needs to be confrontational. Well, frankly that doesn’t work very well. You’re much more effective with a kind, professional, polite, ‘Excuse me, Mr Customer. I was just wondering when we can expect to see payment.’ These tips are tips that I implement in all of my customers. In fact, one of my customers was able to collect over $1 million 45 days using this process. If you would like more tips on solving all of those annoying things that you’re tolerating in your business, please check out my Fiscal Fitness Boot Camp and I’ll see you next week with the solution for another annoying thing you might be tolerating.
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