It’s not a sale…Wire me…

It’s not a sale…until you’re paid

For most things there’s a time to call it quits. Take that prospect you’ve called on at least a dozen times. You can continue banging your head against that wall, but in all likelihood, you’d be better off shelving them for a while and directing your prospecting energies elsewhere.

And of course there’s that troublesome late payer who you’ve long struggled to live with – and whose past due invoices are now another month later. There’s a time to accept the fact that they’ll eventually run up an ever-larger tab and likely burn you worse that if you end it today.

That’s not an easy call to make. Truth be known in the back of our minds we already know they might end as write off. But we’re tempted to whistle past the graveyard and fool ourselves into believing that they’ll be good for it in the long run.

The fact is that the older those past due bills get, the lower the chance that we’ll ever be paid. And yet we tend to hope for the best and maybe even fool ourselves into believing that by continuing to do business we’re making headway.

And while that’s true if they’re paying for current orders up front, it’s clearly untrue otherwise. So, tough as it is to do, there comes a time to remove your equipment, (and hopefully the unused inventory) and call it quits.

Wire me…The money

It’s a good bet that most of us are paying many (if not all) of our household bills electronically. It’s also likely that we’re paying many of our business expenses either by wire transfer, bank draft, or credit card. So why then are we not pushing harder to invoice and be paid by our customers paperlessly?

Admittedly there’s an odd sort of comfort in sending a paper invoice through the snail mail. Maybe it’s because we don’t entirely trust them to open their emails. If that’s the case, then that hard copy can be a backup or courtesy notice that includes a bold print note stating to ignore it if they’ve already paid.

Sure some customers are reluctant to give up writing checks, but if we ask, we might just find out that most accounts are willing to give up the old approach. Oh, and as a bonus just maybe you’ll find that your collections work will be a lot less effort that it is now.