Golioth’s Weblog

Hello to all, as an independent contractor and business consultant; I come across the opportunity to evaluate corporations and their business dealings. My experience has taught me that unfortunately when it comes to business most people (businesses) fly by the seat of their pants so to speak!

This is not recommended, when it comes to running a business. Planning your business procedures, protocols and routines are necessary. I have come across too many companies that I have provided consulting for that are in debt, and barely being able to hold on to their business relationships with vendors and which in turn damages their relationships with their customers.  How does this vicious cycle work? Well it is a bit long winded but let me tell you how this occurs and we’ll look at how to avoid this trap!

You see when you are in the course of business there are many details to look at, there’s your marketing and networking to make sure you have business (customers) rolling in and then there’s the operations side which is maintaining production and product flow. Both are imperative and both require vendors that you need to deal with. Upsetting either marketing or operations vendors hurts your business! How can this happen? Not paying your bills that is how. It is very important to analyze your weekly cash flow and be able with a big degree of certainty telling your vendors when and how they will be receiveing payment. There are many factors that will affect your cash flow; lavish company spending, lack of controls within your company where employees are being wasteful within your organization and the big one: not collecting on your receivables!

Too many companies let the issue of not collecting on their receivables from customers slide because they think that it will alienate the customer, or they will not have processes in place to follow up and keep track with these types of customers to collect on your businesses services that were provided. This is uncalled for and quite frankly not fair to your business! Your vendors wouldn’t tolerate with this type of behaviour from you, so why put up with this kind of behaviour from these kinds of  customers? Worries of losing such customers is wasted energy that could be efficiently used to drum up new business. There are milions of people out there in the world do you really think that customers who behave that ways are keeping your business alive? NO!

The point is this, if you have a solid business with good services and products being provided; than it is much more worth your time developing relationships with new customers and contacts rather thatn wasting your time with customers who do not respect or appreciate the products and services your business provides. Lastly, you still should collect on those receivables because the capital collected will go a long way in assisting your business gather new clients that are the kind of clients that you want to have business dealings with.

Prosperity and Regards,

Saverio Filippis

Goltioth Enterprises