Yet through obstacles like these, you gain valuable learnings and insights into consumer behaviour, your market, and business in general.
One area where you may run into hurdles is during debt recovery.
Healthy cash flow is instrumental to running a successful business, with the power to turn a struggling operation into a happy one.
In this blog, we explore some of the biggest obstacles that businesses run into during debt recovery.
Small businesses are known for moving quickly to try and hit the ground running. Often this comes at the expense of critical details, such as setting up a clear and streamlined way of doing things that everyone in the organisation can follow.
Taking the time to create internal processes and communicate these clearly with your team will ensure everyone is singing from the same song sheet.
It is also important to build and clearly communicate your external policies with customers, such as payment terms and cancellation policies so that there are no gaps in the system and everyone is clear and happy with the arrangement.
What you can do about it?
Another common small business debt recovery problem is not having the time to follow up debts, despite the best intentions.
It can be easy to procrastinate because you are either too busy or would honestly rather be doing something other than chasing your customers for debt collection. The days and hours after a debt falls overdue are critical.
We should also remember that trying to do everything yourself is often not the most productive use of your time. If you are not adequately resourced for prompt debt collection, now is the time to sort it out
What you can do about it?
It can be uncomfortable having tricky conversations, especially if it’s not part of your everyday practise. There is also the added worry of potentially damaging relationships and losing rapport with your customers, which many find a challenge of debt collection.
It is also common within small business to lack experience in conflict management or not be fluent in the type of language to use. Many of our small debt collection clients describe the feeling of having ‘put their foot in it’ when it comes to their debt recovery conversations and have felt relieved once they have handed over the problem to EC Credit Control’s team to navigate.
What you can do about it?
The reality is that your customers and their businesses may be declared insolvent without much warning. While customer bankruptcy is not an everyday occurrence, it is especially relevant to consider in the context of today’s COVID-19 pandemic and economic environment and can be particularly painful if you have customers with large balances owing.
Whatever the reasons small business fail, if this has happened you will want to ensure your chance of debt recovery is as strong as possible.
What you can do about it?
If your business sells to a large number of customers and offers them credit terms, often the sheer scale of your customer base can be the biggest debt collection challenge your small business faces.
With more people to follow up, it can become really hard work to reconcile your payments and keep track of all the outstanding debts. In our experience, this often results in customers and invoices slipping between the cracks, either by forgetting to firstly invoice them or failing to realise they have fallen behind and following up.
Whether you run an accountancy practice or a lawnmowing business, you are going to want to effectively manage each customer on your books with care.
What you can do about it?
Having robust Terms & Conditions of Trade is really important. With a free consultation, we will:
Fill in your details and we’ll be in touch within a day to arrange a suitable time.
Heather Finlayson-Drower21. March, 2024.EC Credit Control were amazing to deal with Quick and Efficient, I sent a email, I was emailed back saying they had forwarded within 30 minutes of sending it and within minutes of that email I had a call. From there it was easy, I explained what I needed what industry I required it for and they sorted everything.AutostopAutomotive Limited19. March, 2024.Awesome and easy to deal with thanks..jan Tasker11. March, 2024.EC Credit are always able to answer questions and give advice on Debt collection and PPS Registration matters. They respond quickly and professionally.Queenstown Engineering26. February, 2024.Great working with EC Credit Control and having that support to keep our Terms of trade up to date, advice and registering applications with PPS. Makes running the business easier as one less thing to worry about.Faye Thomas20. February, 2024.Super helpful, easy to deal with. Platform is easy to navigate. 10/10Andrea Bracey15. February, 2024.Very helpful and explained the process very wellRogerio8. February, 2024.Very fast and easy to load documents. Great team very eager to help.Melissa A25. January, 2024.Superb service, customer service, they get results and communication is top notch. Highly recommend in my experience.
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