Rule One of Business: Get Paid
To get paid, just as you would imagine is essentially crucial to your business because if you are not getting paid, what are you doing in business?
You would be surprised at the amount of business people who only have their customers to pay up when and if they get on with it. I know of one businessman who repetitively collects bad debts like charms. How is that possible? Most likely because he cannot bring himself to demand the payment and lets people overpower him.
If you give a client credit, do it only if they have proven themselves to you by paying cash on delivery (COD) for a while. Also, you must gauge whether they have the cash to pay you - if not do not do business with them. Don’t push yourself into saying “I need the work” or “I need the sales”. It’s damaging when you do the service or providing the goods for free if you don’t get paid.
If you are the kind of person who can’t demand the cash even when the job has been finished, try these hints:
Tell your client that when the service is done, you require cash or cheque. They will be likely to have it to hand over at the point of sale and you won’t have to request your payment.
When giving out the initial quote, be sure your payment terms are simple.
Create an invoice including the terms of payment evidently stated and hand the client the invoice when the service is finished up. They can look at the invoice and generally realise they will pay you now without you needing to say anything. Manufacture a “vicious boss” who may torture you alive if you can’t go back with the fee for the service.
Set up your bank to hook you up with Merchant facilities so you can have credit cards including Mastercard and Visa. The large majority of people have credit cards and it can fix the difficulty of the customer not owning a cheque account or not having the right cash in their wallet.
Likewise, don’t be asked not to hand over any goods till you’ve been paid. Understand, until they’re paid for, they are still yours.
If you plan to let someone credit, be sure you have the following contact information off them at a point PREVIOUSLY you give them credit.
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
- Bank name and address
- Account no.
- 3 trade references with their names, addresses and phone numbers
After you possess all this information, contact the branch and make sure that they operate an account there. Then, telephone each of the trade reference and find out if they pay their debts on time or if there are any difficulties with them.
Most people will be willing to tell you if the person is troublesome. If everything is OK, allow them a moderate level of debt, say no more than $500 (depending on your business). Monitor the operation of the account for a few months before allowing this amount to be exceeded.
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Sphere: Related ContentRelationship Marketing Fundamentals
As a customer service concept, relationship marketing is not new. For decades, business-to-business marketers have employed account managers who have the responsibility to dedicate themselves to key clients. In the financial world, `relationship banking’, whereby high-yield customers are assigned a personal manager, has been practised for many years.
When direct marketing is embraced to establish connections or relations between the marketer and the consumer, it is too easy to suggest that all forms of direct marketing communications achieve a closer relationship, a closer bond between the two parties. Such a conclusion exaggerates what generally happens in the marketplace.
Direct marketing is all about generating a direct response from the consumer and about direct communications to the consumer. A direct response is needed to generate better understanding of the advertising message or to motivate transactions. Direct communication is simply about media reach efficiency. Relationship marketing is a concept that transcends these pragmatic direct marketing objectives.
Kotler appropriately positions the concept of relationship marketing as one which applies principally to business-to-business situations:
Smart marketers try to build up long-term, trusting, `win—win’ relationships with customers, distributors, dealers and suppliers. That is accomplished by promising and delivering high quality, good service, and fair prices to the other party over time.
It is accomplished by strengthening the economic, technical, and social ties between members of the two organizations. The two parties grow more trusting, more knowledgeable, and more interested in helping each other. Relationship marketing cuts down on transaction costs and time; in the best cases, transactions move from being negotiated each time to being routinized.
Outside of `membership’ or `continuity’ programs, there are two basic ways to approach consumers. The first is with a product and price combination considered to be `the standard’. That is, the proposition is essentially of long standing and relies on the features and benefits being competitive. The second way, normally of short-term duration, is a `special offer’. Direct marketing textbooks are full of the theory, practice and case histories relating to `the offer’.
The choice of basic propositions or selection of special offers depends on the circumstances of the individual firm and its competitive environment. The right proposition or offer can make a world of difference to response cost-effectiveness.
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