Your Intensive 1-day Course Outline
The importance of customer service during the current credit crunch
- Identifying and ensuring lifetime value of a client
- Getting the client on your side
- Choosing between a phone call, a letter or a visit
- The importance of first impressions
- Looking after your contacts
- Developing long-term working relationships
- The role of consistency
- Making your account a priority for payment
How to spot common signals that may indicate "we have a problem"
- Indications gained from the way that payment is received
- Change in the way a customer communicates
- Alteration in a company's direction or strategy
- Warning signs in the make-up of company staff and the personalities or experience of the directors
- Spotting a credit application with "manufactured" references
- Tracking unexplained changes in purchasing patterns
The key elements of a successful debt-collecting call
- Making contact with the "correct" person
- Getting confirmation of the outstanding amount
- Probing and drawing information on delayed payment
- Negotiating a win-win solution with the debtor
- Achieving commitment to pay
Telephone mannerisms for improved debt collections
- Basic call etiquette
- Developing rapport and empathy
- Verbally conveying understanding without condescension
- Using effective active listening skills
- Questioning techniques
- Structuring and controlling the call
Effective negotiation and conflict resolution skills
- The problem identification process
- Establishing your positions and fall backs
- Negotiation tactics you can use over the phone
- Defusing angry or defensive people
Ways of securing payment in tough times
- Cultivating a relationship with your contact
- Creative solutions to payment problems
- Investigating the use of part payments
- Offering a settlement discount
- Levying an overdue interest
- Getting it down on paper - memory alone can prove disastrous
- Taking control of the follow-up
- When all else fails - collection agencies and lawyers' letters
- Collecting debt in difficult situations - case studies
Looking out for the bad debt warning signals
- Spotting changes in payment patterns
- Other more subtle warning indicators
- Implementing limit checking and payment monitoring
- Understanding the real cost of a bad debt
Overview of the South African legal system
- An overview of the working of the legal system
- The current law relating to Debt
- An update on the latest debt rulings coming from SA courts
Ensuring that your company is complying with the National Credit Act
- Communicating the legislation's directives to employees
- Identifying areas where your company could be contravening the act
- Amending company policies to include provisions of the National Credit Act
- Looking at the penalties imposed by the National Credit Act for noncompliance