There is a saying: “Nobody on their deathbed ever said they wish they had spent more time at the office.” I’m not so sure.

Thomas Edison’s wife figured he was tired out and stressed, needing a vacation. She told him he should go to the one place he would rather be than anywhere else in the world. “O.K.,” he told her, “I’ll go tomorrow.” Next day, he was back at his office. Hugh Hefner was surrounded by the most beautiful women in the world and he went to work in his pajamas and a housecoat. Most of us, o.k., the men, will agree it’s not exactly a fate worse than death.  And what about Steve Jobs? Ignoring his Apple shares for a moment, he was worth between 6.5 and 7 billion from his sales of Pixar alone. This was not a man who went to the office and put in hours because he had to pay the rent.

A young professional woman was recently presented with a dilemma. She was involved in an outside activity that brought her excitement and a sense of accomplishment. The employers at her ‘day job’ could tell the difference. They told her she would have to choose. Claire tendered her resignation and decided to go with her passion. Good on you, Claire!

One does not have to be as drastic. You can find the work you need to stir your passion, but it may already be waiting for you when you next walk into your office. A month or so back, I was working with a client on the West coast of the United States. Some good people working for the receivables department of a utility thought they were collecting past due accounts. “No,” I told them, “you are bringing power to the people. If you are not able to work with them to clear their past due status, they won’t have any power.” Three brick layers on the same site. One says he’s laying bricks. Another is building a wall. The third is building a family home. Same bricks, same wall, but one has an attitude that will lighten his step to say nothing of his heart and his soul.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to be a doctor, actor or concert musician to be passionate. I have seen passion displayed in a credit manager. Two weeks ago a doorman at a hotel in Pakistan consistently demonstrated passion in his work and just the day before I wrote this blog, passion for their work was evident in two sales clerks at a 7-11 in Manila.

Perhaps you believe you need to be involved in a life saving operation in order to be passionate? Your wish is granted. We are all involved in a life saving operation – our own.

The philosophers Crosby, Stills & Nash said it best: “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.”

What are you working on today, what about tomorrow?

Like I said, they have their challenges.

One of them I tackled head on was how they saw themselves. I asked the question straight out: “What is your objective?”

There is often some hesitation at this point of a program and it wasn’t any different with these folks.

Eventually, someone responded in a hesitant voice, “Our objective is to collect money.”

“No,” I said. “Collecting money is what you do, but your objective is to provide power to your customers. You are able to “make it so” thru effective collections, working with people who may be facing difficult times, perhaps under the influence of many pressures including financial. Gather information, help and redirect where possible, work out payment plans if that is a reasonable option and yes…sometimes to disconnect a service. Without the latter taking place on occasion, nobody gets any service.

In your situation, when you do your job to the best of your ability – it truly is, Power to the People.”

This is when we are needed the most and when dealing with one of these fire-breathing customers it helps to remember “when they are at their worst – you need to be at your very best”.

Back in about 1942, Lieutenant A. Zirnheld, a college professor before the war, was killed in action behind enemy lines in Lybia. This prayer was found on his body and has since been adopted by the French Foreign Legion. We may not jump out of airplanes or put our lives on the line, yet the sentiments are applicable to the unique challenges we face in the business of “Effective Collection Techniques”.

THE PARATROOPER’S PRAYER

I’m asking You God, to give me what You have left.
Give me those things which others never ask of You.
I don’t ask You for rest, or tranquility.
Not that of the spirit, the body, or the mind.
I don’t ask You for wealth, or success, or even health.
All those things are asked of You so much Lord,
that you can’t have any left to give.
Give me instead Lord what You have left.
Give me what others don’t want.
I want uncertainty and doubt.
I want torment and battle.
And I ask that You give them to me now and forever Lord,
so I can be sure to always have them,
because I won’t always have the strength to ask again.
But give me also the courage, the energy,
and the spirit to face them.

I ask You these things Lord,
because I can’t ask them of myself.

Early last month I was visiting a client and reviewing their training. I discovered their sales people received several weeks of classes, one-on-one and working with a senior and seasoned partner before they were allowed to call on a customer ‘solo’. One of their accounts receivable representatives went on maternity leave and was replaced by a young woman from accounts payable. When I asked what kind of training she received I was told, “She didn’t need it. She already knew the system.”

How many times have you walked out or at least didn’t return to an organization because of employee incompetence or worse, dealing with someone who didn’t care?

When you are dealing with a delinquent customer, they can be MORE valuable than a sales prospect. After all, they’ve already proven they will buy your product, now we just have to get them to pay for it AND want to return and do business with us again. Most of us know the stats. It can cost six times as much to replace a customer as to get a new one.

Professional and well trained collectors know that it is the money AND the customer.

We can help with a short video and a test and there is good news.

• It shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes
• The information is very good

Better news?

• It’s free!

You may want to call it a policy, guideline, a rule but implement the following for your business (even if it is just you and yes, it includes sales:

“Nobody is allowed to speak to a customer about a delinquent account until they have passed testing for Accounts Receivable 101.”

Here is a link to a video on YouTube where we cover essential telephone collection techniques as well as key elements of effective email.

You may develop your own quiz from the video or feel free to contact us for one.[1]

A surgeon once said that he could teach someone how to take out an appendix in less than a half hour. But, to teach them what to do if something went wrong, could take several years. Getting good in collections and staying that way takes more than fifteen minutes. You will find information on our site and I am sure you may find others offered in your area. But that takes a budget as well as time and a course may not be available for weeks or months and you need something now.

Fifteen minutes and free. Not a bad investment when you consider what can be lost.

Yet, there were two additional lessons from the classic 1996 Tom Cruise film.

1. Asking for the money in collections, using an assertive but not too aggressive approach is one of the most important skills to master. It is one of the most difficult balancing acts in business. Most times, we want the money AND we want the customers.

   Yet, even when we don’t want a customer to darken our door again, we want to avoid complaints.

   Saying it and how we say it is the most important task in collections. But, not the only one.

2. “You had me at hello.” Showing up, on time. If your customer has not paid you as agreed, don’t waste any time. Get in touch with them right now. Good customers? All the more reason to contact them and ask for the money. If they like you and they are in trouble, they figure they can pay you last…if at all.
3. “Help me to help you.” We can cajole, tell it like it is or it will be but we are not going to make a deal without the customer. Let’s try to sit on the same side of the negotiation table. “Mr. Customer, I don’t expect us to put our arms around each other and sing Kumbaya at the end of this, but both of us have to have a deal that we can live with and I’m hoping you’ll work with me on this. It’s your call, but here are some of the alternatives.”

Note: Based on Tim Paulsen’s Keynote and ebook: “Everything I need to know about collections, I learned from the movies!”

Do you remember Chief Brody (ably played by actor Roy Schneider) stepping back, cigarette dropping from his mouth and saying, “we’re going to need a bigger boat”.

You are not going to convince an accounts payable rep to pay you against their company policy or instructions from their boss or company owner. Sometimes, you need a bigger boat.

Get all the information you need from them and if you don’t have the title and experience, bring in your own Richard Dreyfuss (shark expert in the movie) to join your team. It may be that you need your Director of Sales, Controller, Vice-President of Finance or even
C.E.O. to help out.

Pithy Quote of the Month:

He who burns his bridges better be a damn good swimmer. 
~Author Unknown

With not many words, Rocco successfuly conveys a number of messages:

Rocco

1. You are getting an excellent price.
2. You feel special (there always seems to be some emphasis on the you from Rocco).
3. If for some reason, he can’t come in at that price (though he always has with me), he has forewarned the customer.

Quality craftsman like Rocco are hard to find. Those who can also share a negotiation lesson with you are rarer still.

Pithy Quote of the Month:

“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that fits all cases.”
…Carl Gustav Jung

This tip was originally published in September 2009.

Perhaps a better suggestion, one simple for the customers and a better ‘fit’ for the representatives is to wear just one hat – call it grey.

Let’s examine a bit further.

In Customer Service, if you do not resolve the outstanding issues, it can be costly for your firm because customers may not pay and you will lose future sales. Also, they will speak ill of you and studies tell us people talk louder, longer and to more people about ‘bad service’ than the good service they experience.

Collections? If you don’t collect, it can be costly for your firm because customers may not pay you and you will lose future sales. If you do collect, but not professionally then you lose future business – they will get you now or get you later.

In my training seminars, I ask “what is the objective of collections?”.  Invariably people will say it is to collect the money.

No.

Collecting the money is what we do, but the objective of collections is to maintain/keep the customer.

Suppose you shut down the collection department? Some customers would pay you, it’s in their automatic payables system and they don’t need any prodding. Others? You’re not going to get paid AND they will take their future business elsewhere. If they know they owe you money, they won’t return, figuring they’ll have to pay for past invoices. So, you lose the past sale as well as future sales.

On the other hand, go to their office and pull a gun (hey, just for discussion purposes) and you may collect the past-due account but future sales? Forget it.

The professional collector recognizes that customer retention, now and in the future is their prime objective – that includes customer service. Once the team recognizes true and clear objectives then “serving AND collecting” becomes achievable.

After months and perhaps a few years in the business, you know collections. You’ve heard the stories – all of them. (It would be nice to have a dollar for every time you heard it’s in the mail, wouldn’t it?) You have the t-shirt and the video and if the movie studios ever decide to do a remake of “The Collector”, your name is on the short list.

It takes a lot of talent, not just to do the best work, but to be fresh and enthusiastic – ‘cause we know that it isn’t just what we say, but how we say it. Easy? No it is not. When you are speaking to the 21^st customer that morning, it is difficult not to sound like you’ve had them on the line 20 times already that day.

But if it was easy – they wouldn’t need a professional. Anyone can do the best job when they ‘feel like it’. A professional does the best job – period.

Operation Fresh Start:

1. Register and attend a collection seminar. I don’t care how long you’ve been in the business – education never stops.
2. Go to the dark side. Attend a program for Accounts Payable. Put on their shoes and go ‘walk about’.
3. Take some time over coffee or lunch to remember what it was like and how you approached your very first day on the job as a collector.
4. Write a one-page training program for someone who is new to the business of collections in your organization. List for them the top five mistakes they should avoid.
5. Pick out one of your accounts – always a day late and a dollar short and devise a new ‘never tried approach’ – just for them.
6. Find someone in your organization or out who has absolutely no experience in collections. Describe a situation and ask them what they recommend.
7. Stretch your performance. If your standard is talking to 20 customers in one day, give yourself a target of 25. (Without a sacrifice in quality.)
8. Recommend three changes in your department that will improve performance or job satisfaction – bonus if you can do both.
9. Put on your debtor’s shoes. Have an associate call you to try and collect.

10. Post a slogan – just for you or department – every day to help with motivation.

It’s all motivation of course and it may not last long, but it’s like washing your socks. The effect is short lived, but it’s a good idea just the same.

All right? We can help you with #1 if you are in the Toronto area. A collection program is scheduled for November 25^th. Details at: www.trpaulsen.com/upcoming

By the way, if you only rely on our emails, you may be missing out on some great tips. You may want to visit and register to receive all tips from my blog at: www.trpaulsen.com/blog

I mentioned it to my client soon after I arrived and it didn’t take them long to set me straight. Bermuda is a relatively small country and almost all business will take place in the capital city of Hamilton. Most people know each other and if you don’t honk, it could almost be an affront, like not saying ‘hello’ when you walk past someone you know on the street.

My next question to them was, “It must be impossible for anyone to have an affair in this town – where just about everybody knows your name and maybe the car you drive.” My ‘interpreter’ smiled and said that while it does have its challenges, human nature being what it is…, well how shall we say this? Affairs in Bermuda are not unheard of.

A lovely country to visit and charming people, but if you walk the streets of Hamilton, Bermuda and you hear the honking of an automobile, I suggest you keep three things in mind:

a.) Do not (always) ask for whom the horn beeps:
As explained, it is a friendly place and what you are hearing is ‘hello, I see you’.

b.) Step lively – it may beep for you:
If you are like me, from a country where we drive on the ‘other’ side of the road…you need to be careful. Look BOTH ways when crossing – even one way streets.

c.) A friendly place – like I said:
Perhaps the horn does beep for you but for an entirely different reason “hello there” in a much lower voice (think Barry White or Diana Krall). Careful though, the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in your case may end up as a relationship rather than a geographic location.