It is not surprising to have a client refuse to pay you regardless of the quality of your products and services, and undoubtedly, it can make it difficult for you to pay your suppliers. To have a smooth cash flow, you mustn’t chase your clients for payment.
However, sometimes they straightaway refuse to pay you. Getting such clients to pay you for the product or service can be difficult because sometimes they are disappointed with your offerings. You slip up identifying their problems, and as a result, your clients get dissatisfied.
As an entrepreneur, you cannot wait too long for them to pay you because it is obstructing in making payment to your suppliers.
If you have taken on debt, it becomes more necessary not to cause any delay. It will keep mounting up your debt, and in the end, you will have to take out debt consolidation loans for bad credit in the UK. To avoid making it worse, you should follow the following tips mentioned below:
Communicate effectively with your client
First off, you need to send a gentle reminder to your client. Your clients are also running businesses as you do, and they have a lot of work to do. It is not strange that they have forgotten to pay you. If you cannot hold of them, send them a gentle reminder by email.
Draft a proper mail that mentions who you are and why you are writing them. Attach a copy of the invoice because they may have misplaced it. Clearly mention the invoice’s due date in the email, so they know they are to pay it as immediately as possible.
Do not fight shy of warning them that further delay will cause the penalty. Some clients will not turn to your emails and phone calls. They will ignore them on purpose. You should think of alternatives.
Try to contact them in person. Go to the address they have registered with your business to get your message to them. If you do not find it there, you can ask the front desk executive or any other senior executives to take your message to them.
Make sure that once the payment is past the due date, you should keep sending the invoice every other day through different communication means to ensure that your client receives your message.
For instance, you can call them, send emails and emails, and leave a text message on their phone. Sometimes the payment delay is because of failing to send the invoice when the work is complete. Make sure that you do it as immediately as possible.
Ask why
If your client is not making the payment, you should know the reason. Some clients do not pay because they are not satisfied with your services. If you can be in touch with your client, ask them straight away why you cannot pay them.
You do not need to be impudent. Be professional and sound ceremonious. Understand their reasons for not paying on time. Write to them, “We have noticed that you have not responded to our payment reminders.
Is everything all right? Is there any problem with our work?” Although you aim to get the money, you should listen to them patiently. Do not be rude, offensive and never shout. This will make the situation uglier and more complicated to deal with.
Sometimes they fail to pay you on time because of financial problems and too much debt. In this situation, make them believe that you are ready to cooperate with them in their tough time. For instance, you can ask them to pay it in installments without worrying about any interest.
You can also suggest to them some valuable ways to overcome their bad financial conditions like they can check their debt consolidation loans eligibility and merge all of their debts. This will undoubtedly make repayments far easier.
However, sometimes reasoning cannot help you get paid because some clients are dodging it. They may threaten you to post negative comments on social networking sites. You still do not need to shout at them. All you need to say that they cannot escape footing the bill.
Work out a payment plan
Sometimes clients fail to pay you because of monetary problems. You do not need to spoil your relationship just because they are not able to pay you outright. You can either ask them to pay in installments and if that is not possible too, you can put their account on hold.
Tell them they do not need to pay, for instance, “until you are ready to pay off”. In this way, you can make them feel grateful to you. They will likely buy your products and services down the line. Make sure that you have come up with a repayment plan that suits your and your clients’ needs.
You should generally emphasize installment plans because getting paid overtime is always better than not getting paid at all.
However, some clients may not be interested in paying you because they are dissatisfied with your service. They may complain about your product and service. Listen to them patiently and then see where you slipped up.
Sometimes you may fail to provide better service to your users. If that happens, you should try to find out how you can remove their complaints. However, if you have seen that you provided your client with what they asked for, you do not need to discuss adjustments.
Plan for preventing payment issues in the future
The last resort is taking legal action when your client is still refusing to pay you back. However, at the same time, you should learn a lesson from it. To prevent this from happening in the future, you should start agreeing with your clients.
When they sign the agreement, they are legally bound to pay you no matter what. They cannot make an excuse for dodging from paying you. Make sure that your clients are well aware of your payment policy and the consequences of not abiding by them.
Some clients do not like the idea of getting into a contract. Just tell them how you work and move on if they do not want to get into a deal. Try to put a clause of an upfront payment. Getting some money paid beforehand can help you mitigate the loss.
Make sure that you have a strategy to deal with people who avoid paying invoices on time. Think about alternatives to how you can prevent yourself from facing the consequences of non-payments.
Never take lightly the inability of your clients of paying you on time. You know very well that your business cannot run smoothly if you do not get paid on time. This will disrupt your entire cash flow system.
Though you can borrow money from loan agencies, you can rely on them for a long time. It is why you must come up with the right strategy to deal with your clients who are flinching from paying invoices.
Jessica Rodz is the Senior Content Writer at Cashfacts. She has a long career in the field of content writing and editing. Jessica has the expertise in the UK lending marketplace where she has worked with 7 different lending organisations and acquired many responsibilities from preparing loan deals and writing blogs for their websites.
At Cashfacts, Jessica is managing a team of experienced loan experts and doing a major contribution in guiding the loan seekers via well-researched blogs. She has done graduation in Business (Finance) and now currently doing research papers on the UK financial sector.
