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 can you 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 can you 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 can you 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 can you 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 can you do about it?
These are just a couple of things you can implement within your business.
If you are noticing changes in a customer’s payment behaviour, we can help. Let’s chat through your options in more detail.
Fill in your details and your Business Support Specialist will be in touch within the day to arrange a suitable time to catch up.
VENASO SELECTIONS2. July, 2024.we used EC Credit cony toll to write our T & C and we have been very happy with their service.
Joe Clark1. July, 2024.Terry has been very helpful. Has answered his phone every time I have called him.
Jamie Kemp18. June, 2024.Excellent customer service, strong knowledge, and always willing to help and provide advice when needed.
Aidan Lucas11. June, 2024.EC Credit Control have been great to work with. We have been using their services for around 10 years now. They are always available to answer any queries and absolutely happy to help whenever we need.
Felix Lim6. June, 2024.I have been with EC Credit almost for 15 years now. Overall I am very happy with the service they provide throughout the 15 years as they have all the times successfully collected money owed to me by my clients, never failed. As well, I highly commend their professionalism in dealing with me all these times.
Yvette Rose20. May, 2024.Portal is very easy to use and the EC team great to work with. Results in this case paid and finalized within 2 weeks.
Brett Parker13. May, 2024.I cannot speak highly enough of EC Credit Control and the exceptional service provided by Terry Foley. As a long-term client, I have consistently been impressed by the professionalism and efficiency of the team. Terry, in particular, goes above and beyond to ensure that every interaction is seamless and stress-free. His dedication to client satisfaction is evident in every aspect of our partnership. EC Credit Control makes the credit management process effortless, and Terry's expertise and guidance have been invaluable to our business. I highly recommend EC Credit Control to anyone seeking reliable and effective credit management solutions. Thank you, Terry, and the entire team, for your outstanding service!
Mairin Best23. April, 2024.I have engaged EC Credit Control services on behalf of our business and found them to be extremely professional. EC have provided a review of our terms of business and their debt collection services and we have been pleased with these outcomes to date.
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