Small Business Tips: The Secret To Getting Paid Promptly

by

Justin Arnold

Running a small business should in theory be relatively straightforward. The trouble is that very often people get in the way, and it only takes a single wobble for the whole house of cards to come crashing down. So how can you protect yourself?

Wouldn t it be nice if everyone paid on time? If everyone delivered on their promises? If everyone was honest, straightforward and communicative? It would make running a small business so much easier.

Big corporations have teams of people working for them to protect them from these troubles, they have strength, power and authority, and they have massive safety nets which protect them from the daily trials and tribulations which small businesses also have to deal with.

The problem is that small businesses don t have such teams of lawyers, accountants, sales people and such like to look out for them, and safety nets are fragile things, and only relatively small. Building up and running a small business can often feel a little like a juggling act, and it only takes one ball to slip and things can look very unpleasant very quickly.

It s a fact of life that sometimes people won t pay their bills or invoices promptly, or even at all. Sometimes people will make promises to place orders, or deliver goods, but then end up changing their mind for some reason.

As a small business you need to keep on top of your accounts, chase people up, stay in touch with them regularly. But that s not easy. Not when you re trying to do a hundred and one other things at the same time.

Talking with many business owners it is clear that their experiences confirm that the more a business stays in touch with customers, the more likely they are to pay bills promptly. Also, the more a business stays in touch with a supplier, the better the service is likely to be. Communication is key, and increasing the level of communication could well make a huge difference to the success of the business.

So the bottom line here is that if you want to get paid, stay in touch, and if you don t want to be let down, make sure that the channel of communication is always open. What you don t want to have are missed calls, unanswered calls, messages to call back that get covered up on your desk, emails you haven t got time to reply to.

You don t want to give people a valid excuse for not paying or staying in touch. You’ve got to be available all day, every day, no matter what. You’ve got to be proactive in staying in touch with people, finding good reasons to keep the conversation going, both to increase the likelihood of prompt payment as well as increasing the opportunity to solicit further orders and custom.

But the real problem is of course that as a small business owner you just don t have time to talk to every one of your customer and suppliers on a regular basis. You can t be sitting by the phone waiting to take any calls which come in, and as for email it would be nice to be able to have the time to sit down and reply individually to every message within a couple of hours of receiving it.

The solution is to outsource. You can outsource a range of services, including telephone answering services, virtual receptionist services and bookkeeping services. By employing a telephone answering service you can be certain that any and all calls which come in to your business are answered promptly and professionally.

You can also outsource a virtual receptionist or virtual secretarial service which will be able to actively follow up invoices and orders, keeping the channel of communication with the customer or supplier well and truly open, whilst you re free to run your business.

By outsourcing virtual secretarial and virtual telephone answering services not only will you be able to invest more of your time on moving the business forwards, but you re more likely to find that customers pay more promptly, and suppliers deliver as promised, helping your business to remain stronger and more resilient for the longer term.

Justin Arnold writes on a number of business related topics, and strongly recommends Saracen s House for outsourcing

telephone answering services

, bookkeeping services and

secretarial services

.

Article Source:

Small Business Tips: The Secret To Getting Paid Promptly