Top Ten Tips – Get your unpaid invoices PAID!

Getting your customers unpaid invoices paid – here is your complete top 10 telephone collections toolkit.

1. Ring in the mornings between 9.30 am and 11.30 am – you will always catch more people at their desks at these hours and there is plenty of time for you to ring back again later in the day.

2. Ring early in the week. Monday to Wednesday is best. More people can be contacted early in the week and you avoid your customer thinking ‘it’s nearly the weekend, so I’ll leave this until next week’.

3. Find out the name, phone number, fax number and email address of the person or people who process and pay your invoices.Ask what days they work and what hours they take calls. All of this information will enable you to establish a relationship with the right people, and to be able to easily communicate with them. Ask what the cutoffs are – some businesses have weekly and monthly cutoffs, after which your invoices will go into the next week or month for payment. Find out the internal invoice approval process, to see if there’s anything you can do to speed it up, perhaps by getting someone’s signature on the invoice before you submit it, or by ringing that person to make sure he has signed and sent the invoice on.

4. Be firm and stay in control. You’ve done the work or supplied the goods, so you’re simply asking to be paid what you‘re owed. Don’t accept anything other than a firm commitment to pay your invoice on or by a fixed date. Never let the customer get away with saying that he’ll look into that invoice or get back to you later. Insist on a commitment for payment now. If the customer’s not there or ‘unavailable’, don’t leave a message for the customer to call you back – leave a message that you called about your unpaid invoices and that you will be calling back. Make sure you do call back and keep calling back. This way you remain in control, rather than waiting for return calls that are most likely never to come and your customer will know that you are not going away.

5. Never be rude or abusive. You might feel like this sometimes, but it won’t help you get paid. In fact, it provides another easy excuse for the customer not to pay you. Remember that this is business not personal, and telephone collections is a game, very often a silly and frustrating game, but a game you have to win if your business is to survive. Don’t turn it into a bloodsport and lose the game.

6. Talk a little and listen a lot. Ask for your invoice to be paid with simple, but firm words, like “I’m ringing for payment of my invoice to you for $xxx, which is overdue”. Then say nothing, wait for the response. Resist the temptation to debate the customer about how long you’ve been waiting, how cross you are etc. You don’t want a debate – you want a commitment to get your invoice paid. Let the customer respond, hopefully with a commitment to put the cheque in the mail that day.

7. Always get firm commitments. Your objective is to get a commitment for payment right now, but if you can’t get that, then get a commitment for payment on a subsequent day. Get it clear as to what that means, by repeating it back to the customer; like ‘OK, so you will mail me your cheque for $xxx this Wednesday, the 21st, and I’ll receive it on Thursday the 22nd. Is that right?’ Then immediately email or fax the customer with words like ‘I confirm your commitment to mail us your cheque for $xxx this Wednesday, the 21st, to be received by us on Thursday the 22nd.’

8. Keep good notes of your conversations, the commitments made, when payments were received, what emails, copy invoices etc that you sent to the customer. Each time you talk to a customer, review those notes so that you know and can tell a customer exactly what the previous conversations were, what the customer said he would do, and when he would do it. Make sure your customer realises that you know exactly what was said and promised. If anything is disputed, always say that you made notes at the time and this is what they say.

9. When a customer asks for copies of invoices, get them to the customer same day. Email scanned copies of invoices, or fax them, or courier them or drop them in yourself. A request for copies of invoices might be legitimate, but very often it’s just a delaying tactic. Ring the customer back same day to confirm that they have received the copies of invoices and resume the conversation about the payment. Get the customer’s commitment to pay. If the customer says that the copy invoices now need to go somewhere else to be authorised, find out how long this will take, and make a note for follow up. Then get a commitment for payment now in respect of any other invoices for which copies were not sought.

10. When a customer asks for credit notes, resolve the request same day and ring the customer back to say that the request is denied, or if approved, get the credit notes to the customer same day. Email scanned copies of credit notes, or fax them, or courier them or drop them in yourself. A request for credit notes might be legitimate, but very often it’s just a delaying tactic. Ring the customer back same day to confirm that they have the credit notes, that the issues are resolved and resume the conversation about the payment. Get the customer’s commitment to pay. If the customer says that the credit notes now need to be processed against the relevant invoices, find out how long this will take, and make a note for follow up. Then get a commitment for payment now in respect of any other invoices for which credit notes were not sought.

We hope this information from Cashflow Finder helps you get your unpaid invoices PAID!