Preparing your sales relaunch period
Sales reminders are one of the tasks of administrative or accounting departments in SMEs.
The aim is to contact a customer in arrears to understand the reasons for the delay, and to encourage payment in order to secure cash flow.
To best prepare for this type of reminder, you’ll need to plan your relaunch campaign properly.
Discover our tips!
Anticipate and define the right moment for your invoice reminders
Dunning periods are often correlated with important moments in the life of a company, often at the end of the year, when accounts have to be closed or cash flow requires it.
But by operating in this way, the company exposes itself to a number of problems: customer vacations, delays before payment, disputes to manage during rush periods, etc. The best thing to do is to anticipate these periods with regular, non-seasonal reminders. In particular, avoid dunning a bad debtor at the same time as all your other creditors (at the end of the year, for example).
Anticipation requires organization and a good knowledge of the customer, so you can act at the right time.
Preparing the dunning file
Who will you be dunning?
Which invoices have yet to be paid, and for how long?
Which customers have priority?
To do this, you need to keep an up-to-date customer file throughout the year, or for your dunning period, with historical information and, if necessary, key indicators for prioritizing dunning.
To get through this stage as smoothly as possible, we recommend you create a customer file with essential contact details and information: company, contact name, telephone number, email address, invoices to be paid, amount, comments if any, and a note.
Prioritize reminders according to certain indicators
Prioritizing customer reminders is a very important step.
It helps the person in charge of dunning to organize the work and make it more efficient.
Customer rating is a delicate stage.
It allows you to identify which customers should be given priority, but it will depend on a number of indicators that need to be identified beforehand if you are to keep an efficient file.
It’s also important to remember that priority must be given to your ultimate objective: to collect your customer debts in the most efficient way possible, without damaging the customer relationship (when this is still possible).
This involves putting several indicators into perspective, for example:
- Amount of debt: large single bill, several small bills, etc.
- Customer typology: good payer but poorly organized, bad payer, end-of-life customer, customer in dispute
- Type of company: VSEs or entrepreneurs, SMEs or major accounts.
- Late payment : D+1, D+30, D+90.
Thanks to the file you’ll create with all your customer data, you’ll be able to identify and select priority customers. Our advice: Companies often tend to focus on the largest amounts.
But small invoices should not be forgotten. This type of customer often involves a larger number of customers. They will tend to pay more easily (and quickly) because the amount is not very high and they have the necessary funds. The acceptance rate for small claims is higher and less restrictive in the majority of cases. Eventually, of course, all your receivables will have to be paid by your debtors, even if it means calling in a collection service.
Follow up with the customer as required
An e-mail is easy, but not always very effective.
A call is immediately more human, more effective, but more time-consuming.
It also requires a great deal of control, as the customer may be acting in bad faith or making excuses.
Your reminder file will be your best ally when making contact.
Be careful: on the telephone, it’s very important to nuance your discourse, and your approach should be as neutral as possible. Your objective: to understand the origin of the debt and find a solution that suits all parties.
Why call on a service provider for commercial relaunching?
If you manage a large number of invoices, dunning them is often a time-consuming task for many reasons:
- Internal resources limited or overloaded with other tasks
- Highly seasonal business with a large number of reminders to be made in a short space of time.
- Language barriers
By delegating your sales reminders, you put all the chances on your side to guarantee your cash flow.
The service provider does not handle collection.
He calls the customer to obtain a commitment to pay.
As the service provider is remunerated on the basis of the volume of successful calls and not on a commission basis, you can delegate all your reminders without worrying about the amounts involved. Outsource a large amount of work to a professional.
How Collectel works for reminders
We can help you meet these challenges effectively, with the Collectel solution.
No matter how many invoices you need to manage, we can help you :
- Know your customers’ payment processes
- Identify all disputes upstream for urgent resolution
- Get precise settlement dates and converge funds directly with you
- Reduce your payment times and the risk of non-payment
We’ll work with you to design a customer reminder strategy that’s totally in line with your specific needs, and put the flexibility and expertise of our SSPCollect teams and tools at your disposal.
You benefit from the professionalism of experienced negotiators, well-versed in commercial reminders on behalf of your company.
You can rest assured that your reminders will be sent out at the right time and within the agreed deadline.
How does it work?
- Receive your file (.xls, .txt, .csv) ;
- Follow-up by our teams during the defined period;
- Update of elements with feedback of disputes (missing documents, commercial dispute, cash flow problem, etc.) and agreed commitment (date and method of payment);
- End of assignment with precise summary and breakdown of the various reasons for non-payment.
As you can see, customer reminders are time-consuming and require a great deal of interpersonal skills. If your company doesn’t have an expert or a properly trained person on hand, it’s possible that your relaunch will be unsuccessful. You’ll have wasted a lot of time and won’t have solved your problem.
In this case, or if your volume of reminders becomes too great, it’s best to use an external service provider like SSPCollect.