Collecting accounts receivable

One of the best ways to minimize sales staff time in collection is to train them to make sure they explain your payment terms completely when setting up the account initially. An excellent motivator to get your sales team to do this is to make part of their compensation based on profit and successful collections. This will encourage them to develop higher quality accounts.

Clearly, sales and collections don’t mix well. Not only does account collection divert valuable sales time, but also it can poison the relationship between salesperson and customer if they have to get tough to collect.

Of course, the best way to avoid diluting sales staff time with collection tasks is to install tight credit terms, follow them closely and professionally, which is to say, don't let customers get too far behind before taking action.