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How Curtis handles late payments
- After a week of not getting a check when he is expecting one, he sends out a friendly reminder with a statement of open invoices attached.
- If more time lapses then increases the frequency.
- Then he calls and/or goes down there.
- He typically will stop delivering if they keep saying the checks in the mail, when it clearly isn’t.
- Switches to COD when someone creates a debit.
- He trys to work with the restaurant to come up with a payment plan. So he can still deliver product to them restaurant and re-coop some of the debit on each invoice.
- If you can keep working with them, it’s mutually beneficial because they need the product to generate cash flow to pay you back.
- He trys to work with the restaurant to come up with a payment plan. So he can still deliver product to them restaurant and re-coop some of the debit on each invoice.
- He has started doing COD across the board for all new customers starting out.
- The first year is all COD, then if payments have been steady he can talk about going to terms.
Lessons learned dealing with customers
- It’s important to try to establish a diverse customer base and with a variety of market streams. It spreads around your risk.
- The odds of all of those customers and markets being slow and/or going under at the same time is low.
- Then he calls and/or goes down there.
- Problems will happen. Be ready to adapt so they don’t happen again.
- You need to always be thinking ahead to protect yourself?
- What if something changes?
- What if something goes wrong?
- How will that affect your business?
- Do you have a Plan B?
Learn More from Curtis Stone:
Listen to The Urban Farmer audiobook