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3 Keys to Dealing With Financially Troubled Clients

By Elaine O'Gorman

December 17, 2013, 10:36 pm CST

Times are tough. Even though the economy appears to be slowly improving, clients are still hanging on for dear life and struggling with the financial repercussions of recent years. Growth is slow. Businesses are still dying. The cost of my Venti Bold Coffee at Starbucks keeps going up by 10 cents. It’s a jungle out there, which means some clients may have a tough time paying you.

If some of your clients are facing financial difficulties, you will have to be diligent about following up to ensure that you get the money you are entitled to. Here are some tips that will help you proceed with caution as you seek to get paid:

1. Watch for the early warning signs. It’s rare that a client will declare bankruptcy out of the blue. It’s usually a slow, painful, and tragic decline. By watching for the early warning signs, you’ll get ahead of the problem and be one of the first in line for what might turn out to be their final payouts. Pay close attention to your clients’ payment habits. Take note if they become irregular in their payment patterns. They might be stockpiling for the financial winter that is before them. The sooner you identify a client who’s facing financial difficulties, the better chance you’ll have of getting paid before things get really ugly.

2. Be a friend, but be firm. Working with customers who are facing tough financial times is more about client service than collections. Jerks don’t get paid. Jerks get ignored. Money problems are embarrassing, and they can feel extremely personal even to a business. Barging in and demanding payment will only shut down the negotiations. So you must be willing to meet your clients in the middle, hear them out, and try to understand exactly what’s going on. Make a point of talking to them in person or over the phone, rather than just through email. Be a friend first — be a human. Once you understand the situation, you can start working out a solution—whether that’s a negotiated settlement, a payment plan, or some other creative solution.

3. Be consistent and be persistent. Being persistent is not the same thing as being pushy. Persistence means reminding your client that you exist, not that he or she owes you money. Trust me, if a client owes you money, he or she knows it. Reaching out on a consistent basis to check up, touch base, or just shoot the breeze is a great way to keep you—and your outstanding invoice—top of mind. People just respond better when follow-up is consistent and when the follow-up is something they can count on.

Ready to Take Action to recover from clients who owe you money? ZenCash helps you setup consistent, routine follow-ups for all of your outstanding accounts receivable. That’s what we do best: take the monotony of recovering client receivables off your hands—professionally and courteously. Phone calls from a professional AR manager, print and mail services, scheduled emails, and B2B collections built right-in to the product.

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