O.K. So you have a great new product or service to offer consumers, your marketing skills are showing because your business phone is ringing, and the public is placing orders. Now… why is is so difficult to actually collect money from these people who seem so satisfied with what you provided them?
As a business owner who likes to speak to other entrepreneurs I get this question a lot - what procedures do I have in place so that I don’t have to be the “bad guy” and hound my clients for money all the time?
I spent the first 15 years of my working life in the debt collection business and I swore that collecting money would not be a part of any business that I owned. The days of typing up an invoice - mailing it - waiting - and waiting - and waiting are over, nothing leaves my shop without a credit card number in-hand. You see I get paid first, then, if they don’t like my service or product I will refund the customer… at my pace. There is a small fee associated with processing credit cards but the 2% is worth knowing that I never have any accounts receivables… NEVER!
There are two points that I want to make; the first is about processing credit card payments. You do not have to be a giant retailer to make this happen if you have a computer and an Internet connection you are 80% of the way there (if you do not have these two things you should consider not owning your own business). From there you simply obtain a merchant account through your local bank or “Google the process” and credit card payments can be happening within hours. My second point is about receiving payment upfront. There are two ways to go about this, the hard way is to be convincing - convince your customer that this is a policy that you will not budge from and hope they comply. The second way to easily get money up front is to be excellent. If you have a reputation for offering outstanding products and service, people will give you credit card information that they wouldn’t trust their own families with.
