Never sending, or collecting on invoices happens far too often.
The previous sentence sounds ridiculous! However, it is true for small, medium, and large companies. Reasons for this are usually rooted in the lack of systems or adequate procedures. Very few customers will volunteer to pay an invoice they never received. Today we flush out, and ask critical questions about this Silent Business Killer (SBK), We encourage all businesses not to leave hard-earned money on the table.
Alright , Mr . Simple Biz Sky . Let's guide to show.
Speaker 2:
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into this episode of the Simple Biz 360 podcast. This is episode two 16. So for those of you who've been with us since the beginning, we really thank you. We appreciate it. Uh, we are so excited in year five to be sharing with you, and it's a five minute format. It's fast. We try to just lay some questions out that you can ask yourself, and they're questions baked on continued improvement, but they're kind of centered on this whole notion of creating better experiences for our customers. We've been chasing this concept since 1988 when I read a TARP study that simply said, 26 outta 27 people have had a bad experience, failed to tell the company that, you know, created that bad experience. And why is that? 'cause they don't expect anything to change. 91% of those unhappy customers, they defect, they leave, they never come back. A good portion of those go on to tell nine or 10 associates, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and 13% of those, 91% of the people who left, they go on to tell 20 or more people. So there's this infectiousness that happens , uh, to companies that aren't in touch with what's creating this bad experience. And our job is to talk about this, is to, to flush out some of these things that are causing or that could cause these bad experiences and get you to ask yourself questions at home and your place of business and your rocking chair and your lounge chair at the lake in the cabin, wherever. And man, come to terms with this and try to figure out ways you can prevent this from happening. So today we're gonna be talking about sending tracking and collecting on invoices. And you're probably thinking, what a , what a crazy, who doesn't do that? Well, let's, let's take my family and, and you guys have families, you got stories, you got business stories. Just check this out. I have a family member who paid for a wedding in the seventies. The reception was a $10,000 reception in the mid seventies. This was done out at the midea in a luxury hotel. And to this day, they've never been invoiced for that wedding. And my relative took pride in that. And you know what? That's crazy. How does that happen? Well, my book, I talk about it in my book about a contractor who just wouldn't send me an invoice. I had lunch today with a guy who said one of his clients one year didn't collect $30,000 in invoice business. It was like, oh, well, you know, whatever. I just missed it. How do you miss that? You , you know, and it's, it's just so easy to , um, you know, I guess not have procedures and, and , and programs in place to protect against it. But guys, this is really crazy. This is happening at levels that are costing companies money. And uh , you know, I'm amazed that I'll do speaking events and somebody will raise their hand and say , oh my gosh, I had this problem for years. You're like, how is a cable company, a lighting company, a you know, electrical company, a , a , a , you know, a company that does gutters? I mean, it just goes on and on and on and on and on. So what do we suggest? Will you send them the, if you're gonna email 'em the , uh, invoice, make sure you also send them a copy of that invoice in the mail and make sure if it's an email that you send, copy yourself. It's just so easy, right? And set up a program that you can reconcile a transaction and you can make sure that that invoice has been sent both ways. And then you can start tracking it and collecting on it in a timely fashion and then track it for 30, 60, 90 days and older. Make sure you're looking at these open ar I mean so many little companies don't do it. You have to, you gotta get some help from the outside if necessary. But you've gotta do it. And make sure you ask for these payments. I mean, you just can't let it go to the win . This is what brings co companies, small little companies to the business graveyard. It happens. So it's not really creating a , a better experience for your customers, but it is. 'cause if you're a good little company, you're gonna be around to create better experiences for 'em later. We don't wanna see you go to the business graveyard, so just think about it. But you know, please send track and collect those invoices. You'd be shocked at how many companies don't. So today we're gonna end with this little look at Fillmore East, Fillmore West. We're gonna go back to west, we're gonna go back to Van Morrison outta Ireland. He graced the stage on April 24, 20 fifth , 26th . He does a version of come running to meet . It is just awesome. Enjoy it. We will see you in 168 hours .