(Time to read this article: Less than 1 min)
- Check your Aged Debtors Report weekly (as opposed to “weakly”) in the current climate.
- Ring anyone who is overdue on the day they become overdue.
- Set a goal to keep the customer but to get your money. Use rapport, understanding and dogged persistence. It is your money and they are breaking an agreement.
- Reclassify all of your customers. Rather than basing their ranking on sales volume, base it on their adherence to your trading terms. You might fine tune this by adding a factor for “ease of dealings”. Tell the top category of customer of their new status with you. Consider rewarding them in some way – more with recognition than money. Tell the ones who are not in the top ranking why they are not – and invite them to move up.
- Failure by a customer to keep to their account terms with you is an early warning sign. Ignore it at your peril. Get rid of the “30-day, 60-day, 90-day” boxes on your statements and replace them with “Due” and “Overdue”. You’re not a bank, and it’s not alright to be overdue.
