Hi, my name is Adam Stewart, Debt Collection Expert and owner of ADC Legal Litigation Lawyers.
Following on from last week’s blog about writing a letter of demand, a great way to ensure you are paid and paid on time, is to get to know your customers. Following up outstanding debts is actually a great excuse to call your customer to find out how they are doing and how they like your product/service. Therefore, my big tip for this week is “get to know your customers”.
This will serve firstly to prevent bad debt happening but secondly, if it does happen, it will serve you well in collecting the debt.
Sure, you can send as many letters as you want to try and get payment, but what if the address is wrong? Or what if the company is now in administration? What if they have changed hands? Or merged with another company?
This is why you need to build a profile of your customer, even before you do business with them. Get them to fill in credit application forms and get them to sign personal guarantees if you can.
If you still run into strife and your customer owes money, you can hand it over to a collection agency, who can do a skip trace (search) on your customer. We can do such things as ASIC searches to see if your customer’s company is still operating. We can find out who the directors are, alternative addresses, assets of the company or individual. We can also use resources to obtain fresh telephone numbers and emails. This information includes, but is not limited to, the following –
• Do they own their own property?
• Are they bankrupt?
• Are they a company director?
• Do they own shares?
Even these few small examples show the type of picture you can build up on a person right at the start of a collection procedure.
Similarly, we also believe there is little point in simply issuing court proceedings from the outset. Not only is there an outlay of funds on court fees, there is also the fact that you cannot guarantee a recovery after they have been issued thus in effect throwing away valuable funds.
Knowing your customers is the key: spending the time gathering all the information possible will reap dividends when moving forward.
As I said before, if you still have no luck with your debt collection letter, hand it over to a professional. Do not try and do it yourself. We provide free profiling, skip tracing, location and free letters of demand. We work on a commission basis so we are going to work hard to get your money back so we get paid as well.
ADC Legal- Litigation Lawyers is a legal practice specialising in commercial advice and litigation, debt recovery and insurance claims recovery disputes. We partner with Debt Recoveries Australia to be your “one stop shop” for debt recovery and litigation services. More information can be found at www.adclegal.com.au or call us at 1300 799 820.