Million Dollar Consulting® Mindset
From Alan Weiss
Volume 3 Number 8
August 2013
Welcome to the third year of Million Dollar Consulting Mindset. Our mission is to spark new thinking and ideas for creating a thriving business and rewarding life. Hence, I'm changing the format slightly, striving to create quick ideas, easy to read and absorb. As always, I'm happy to answer questions if you send them to me and specify they're for MDCM.
Collecting money
Let's examine some basic procedures in detail that may bear frequent consideration:
Terms
Your terms should always call for payment on agreement or commencement for small projects. These may include a speech, or a day of coaching, or a brief analysis, or feedback of any kind. Sometimes you will have to wait while payment is "processed," but at the end of 30 days if you're not paid you should go to your buyer and say, "We have a problem, my payment hasn't been received per out agreement."
Never argue with accounts payable, or purchasing, or procurement, or other "strangers" in the organization. Go back to your buyer and ask for help with "our" problem.
Never accept payment terms of, say, "net 90 days," which means the agreement is not to pay for your 90 days and you may well not be paid for 120 days. If your payments are in installments for larger projects, treat each installment as I have indicated above with single payments.
With small companies (legal offices, start-ups, real estate agencies, insurance brokerages, franchise owners) you may find the excuse that there are "cash flow problems." That may well be, but that's not your problem. You're a small business deserving to be paid per the terms of the agreement. Note: If you accept these excuses you will be placed at the bottom of the priority list for payment because it is now known that will agree to wait, so the effects are cumulative. Banks don't wait for mortgage payments, they make it clear they should be top priority.
So should you.
Thought from Alan:
People who don�t pay you on time are trying to pass their problems on to you. That's unprofessional and unethical, and you should make it unacceptable.
Suggested reading:
The Trusted Advisor (David Maister and others, 2000)
© Alan Weiss 2013. All rights reserved.
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