Good Collectors are Super Sellers

Sales people persuade their customers to buy their products. Credit people persuade the customers to pay for the products they bought. Good persuasion skills are characteristic of both sales and credit / collection personnel. A good sales person is persistent, doggedly pursuing the potential customer until he buys. A good collector is the proverbial squeaky wheel who gets the grease. Persistence is another key component of both credit and sales. Sales people regularly negotiate sales deals and credit people regularly negotiate payment terms, schedules and settlements. Add negotiation skills to the list of critical characteristics of both sales and credit professionals.

It has been said that a very good sales person will convince a customer to purchase something he had not originally intended to buy. It can also be said that a good collector can get the debtor to pay more than he originally intended; the 60 and 30 day amounts for example. Effective sales and credit people are very much alike, contrary to the commonly held belief that they are opposites.

Yet, I have never met a sales person who claims to be a good collector. It is a job they usually loathe. However, obtaining payment is the final act of any sale and it is the reason for the sale in the first place. Therefore, given the similarities in the tools and characteristics, good collectors are actually, above average sales people. Yet companies are reluctant to compensate collectors on a similar scale. The logic is, sales people are revenue providers and credit departments are cost centers. Yet, if a good collector or a good collection team were to significantly increase the level of collections would that not be a providing revenue?

Businesses tend to focus more on past due amounts than the entire accounts receivable. If, though, the level of collections were to increase, the company could rely less on their lenders for immediate cash.

This is where CreditPowers comes in. We can analyze your current collection trends and if they are less than par, we can make the recommendations that will increase the collection levels. We can train the collection staff in strategic collection procedures and we can follow up to make sure they are on track.

For more information, e-mail us at patrickpowers@sbcglobal.net