Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists
To a small business, a customer who hasn't paid their bill is a terrorist. They're holding your product or service ransom and aren't paying you what you owe. When I first started out in business, I owned a recruitment company, I used a factoring company for all my invoices. I could swallow 4% of the invoice being paid to the factoring company because I knew that without fail all my invoices would be in my account and I didn't have to do any chasing or running around after people.
Now I'm a Virtual Assistant; I do it all myself. The money is much more important to me now because it's all my wages.
I've now got myself in a position where I have a 'cushion', so if people don't pay me one month, I can still pay my bills comfortably, but it took a long time to get to this stage. A lot of small business owners don't have that luxury. It only took me nine years to get to that stage!
I tell all my clients that I am happy to extend my payment terms as a one-off if they need help. They need to be HONEST and OPEN with me. Give me a chance to plan my own finances. If I know your bill will be 2 weeks late, that's cool. I can work with that. Just don't go quiet on me.
Small business owners can really struggle, especially in the first few years, if the companies they are working for are not either A) paying on time or B) totally upfront and honest.
I'm no longer negotiating with companies who refuse to be honest about payments. I don't care if your invoice is £1 or £1000; if you're not paying me on time, then the work I do for you will stop. I'll send you a payment reminder, and then I won't bother doing the work for you. Harsh? Maybe, but I've offered honesty, lifelines and help to people, and they would still rather bury their heads in the sand.
Don't negotiate with SME Terrorists, people. Stay firm, and stop providing the service or product.
If you have customers in your business that fit into the "SME Terrorist" category, get shot. It'll save you time, money and stress in the long run.
If you think YOU fit into the category, be honest with yourself and your suppliers.
Until next time,
Dee x