There is one challenge that all service industry businesses, large or small share: the act of collecting payments from customers.\u00a0 \u00a0Small business debt collection can often cripple an entrepreneur and their business.<\/p>\n
Payments Made Easy<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n In today’s age of on-line payments, businesses make it so convenient for people to pay there really shouldn’t be a delay in receiving monies owed.\u00a0 There are interac payments, which take the money straight from your account with an email, PayPal, pre-authorized credit card payments, the Square (portable point of sale attached to your cell phone), as well as good old cash or cheques.<\/p>\n So it makes you wonder why people who retain service industry professionals simply don’t pay their bills.\u00a0 Would you go into Walmart and buy groceries and smile and wave and say “just bill me” and walk out the door?\u00a0 Or would you go and get a haircut and not pay for three months?<\/p>\n We Have Bills Too<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Why do customers think it’s ok to not pay their bill when they have received a service from a small service based business?\u00a0 Service industry small business owners have bills too.\u00a0 We have bookkeepers to pay, insurance payments\u00a0 to make and advertisements to pay for in order to get new business .\u00a0 We rely on our monthly receivables in order to make ends meet.\u00a0 Most small businesses operate on a very tight budget and don’t have large lines of credit to carry them over for several months without cash flow from their receivables.<\/p>\n Debt Collection<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n The number of hours a small business owner spends on the phone trying to collect outstanding debts takes away from time spent working for new clients.\u00a0 Let alone the hostility you experience when you try and collect the monies owed.<\/p>\n As a customer, when you reached out to that individual to design your new resume, place an ad in a newspaper, or do your taxes, you knew the fee or rate they would charge when you agreed to the service.\u00a0 You should be ready to pay the bill when you receive it.<\/p>\n If you need more time, or need to make arrangements, then talk to the owner of the business and set up arrangements and stick to them.\u00a0 Most of us have been in your shoes at one time or another and are willing to be flexible.\u00a0 But being flexible and being taken advantage of are two different things.<\/p>\n More than just the money<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately, human psychology comes into play and reminding people of their debts distresses them.\u00a0 For some clients, they may just pay their bills sporadically, or they may be experiencing financial difficulties and your bill gets moved to the back burner after buying food and paying their hydro bill.<\/p>\n The flipside of that is the clients who see you at the grocery store, or networking events and pretend that they don’t owe you any money or address it by saying “I’ve been so busy – I’ll send you some money next week” – but you know they won’t.<\/p>\n Fool me once, shame on you – Fool me twice….won’t happen!\u00a0 I guarantee that the next time you need a service, my small service industry business owners and I will be asking for payment in advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is one challenge that all service industry businesses, large or small share: the act of collecting payments from customers.\u00a0 \u00a0Small business debt collection can often cripple an entrepreneur and their business. Payments Made Easy In today’s age of on-line payments, businesses make it so convenient for people to pay there really shouldn’t be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rossstreetagency.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}