Late Payers
“My snow globe is stuck in Japan!”
That’s still the best excuse any of my clients have ever received from one of their own customers for them not paying their invoice on time. I mean, it’s comedy gold isn’t it?
It’s about 12 years ago now but this particular client used to have a whiteboard in their office with a league table of stupid excuses from their late payers. Believe me they had some absolute corkers.
Now, I know that might make it sound like we made light of late payers and found the whole thing funny.
In truth though, the silly league table was there to keep things front of mind & lighten the stress and emotional burden that late payers so often have on a small business.
Because the reality was that the impact on that particular business of having so many late payers was brutal. And getting the right processes in place and the right customers who actually cared about paying on time was definitely not a quick fix. It was several months of blood and sweat and plenty of tears but eventually they got there.
And you guess correctly if you’re assuming that their tolerance of late payers is non-existent these days. And personally, I think that’s how it should be.
I still find myself regularly helping a client or two to deal with their late payers. It’s much easier for me to be objective about it (and far less apologetic) because it’s not my business.
Now, I might be trashing my reputation here, because you might say that I must be a rubbish business coach if my clients still have problems with late payments.
But the truth is that it’s not something you can completely eliminate. There’s a LOT you can do to improve things, like making sure you take deposits or full payment up front.
But there’s still a human involved in sending you the payment and humans make mistakes. Some of them even make daft decisions, like deliberately paying every invoice late, or only ever paying an invoice once they get chased for it. And of course others are just spectacularly disorganised and your invoice is just one of 3 million things they need to get around to!
One of the biggest frustrations with late payers is the massive dent they can put into your flow. So often it happens just when you’re thinking you’ve finally cracked this business owner malarkey! You know those times when your business is just building some nice momentum? Your confidence and your cashflow are finally feeling easy and consistent. And then up pops a late payer to shove a dirty great stick into the spokes of your lovely shiny wheel.
So, much as I’d love to be able to teach you how to completely eliminate late payers from your business, I’m actually not a miracle worker. I mean I’m good 😉 but I’m not superhuman!
What I can do though is give you some brilliant and very simple steps to help you reduce your late payers and then handle them in a way that doesn’t feel like a stress overload. Instead, you can feel diligent and professional. Like a proper business person!
So, watch this week’s video for 4 great tips to reduce the stress and help you get paid much faster.
And if you’d like to understand more about how I can support you to grow your own business take a look at the different ways I can support you here and then use the website contact page to arrange a chinwag with me: https://taylory.co.uk/how-i-can-support/
