Ideas in Credit Management and Collections ? Part Seven for ...

Sound Telecom is a leading nationwide provider of telephone answering, call center and unified communication services. It?s friendly, courteous, and professional staff represents your company the way you want it represented, with your messaging, your branding, and your mission.

As we said in Part One, every business from utilities like electric, telephone answering, and water to services like call center services, telemarketing, medical services, to retail, wholesale, e-commerce, and every other business to business industry you can think of, needs some form of successful credit management infrastructure.

We said in Part Two that our credit policy should consider our invoice terms, conditions and discounting.

In Part Three we determined that our credit management and policy should be made part of the sales effort.

In Part Four we decided that the credit policy and management effort should and could actually aid the sales effort, not hamper it.

In Part Five we decided that our credit and collections personnel should be Ambassadors for our company, and employ several different strategies depending upon the account relationship and the idea of prioritizing our efforts based on the value of an account, not just the age of the account.

Part Six found us making the Radical Decision to actually manage the activity of our collection agencies.

In this final installment on Radical Ideas in Credit and Collections management, let?s summarize what we?ve learned.

Summary

1. We are going to actually commit to paper our Credit Policy and our Credit and Collection Procedures.
2. We are going to re-think the role of credit and understand that credit management starts with the sales process ? it is not an afterthought, it is not an inconvenience, it is an essential part of qualifying higher-risk? accounts.
3. We are going to include risk assessments based on customer and industry knowledge, and start looking at our receivables portfolio differently ? we going to group by region, by risk, by product line, by industry, by volume.
4. We are going to start focusing our collections on high-risk, high dollar accounts first, age second.
5. We are going to utilize an account?s sales representative, or our upper management levels in collections contacts in those situations where escalation is necessary.
6. We are going to employ at least two collection agencies so we can rotate accounts between them ? and we are going to actually manage those agencies? efforts.
7. We are going to utilize small claims courts in serious cases, and even legal means when necessary.

With our new radical thinking about Credit and Collections Management, we can finally move these processes out of their darkened recesses in the back corner of the finance department, and bring them to the forefront to be included as part of the sales effort, included in the relationship among finance, credit, sales, operations, and our customers.

If you get stuck in any of these ideas, remember, just close your eyes and click your heels together three times while you repeat:? We?re thinking outside the box, we?re thinking outside the box, we?re thinking outside the box?.

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Source: http://www.sound-tele.com/blog/ideas-in-credit-management-and-collections-part-seven-for-telephone-answering-services-call-centers-and-all-businesses

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