Strategy No. 3: Collect Past Due Accounts Do you have a significant number of invoices out more than 60 days? If so, is your staff doing anything to shorten this timeframe? Call clients whose invoices have been out 30 days and inquire about invoice. Devoting a few hours a week to completing this task is money well spent if it ensures that even half of your outstanding invoices are paid a couple of weeks earlier.

Some delays in healthcare industry, for example, are intentional. Prolonging turnaround for payment controls costs. In these cases, you don’t have any recourse. As any doctor can tell you, calling insurance company to inquire about a claim can be a fruitless task.

Homework: Review your collections procedures and tighten up your ship, if needed. Assign one person to follow up on invoices outstanding for more than 30 days. Realize, though, that collections results fluctuate with your clients’ priorities. Don’t count on this as your only means of improving your cash flow.

Strategy No. 4: Turn Existing Equipment Into Cash As we know, keeping current with technology improvements are constant and necessary to remain competitive. Leasing is a way to stay up-to-date without incurring charges of frequently buying new equipment. But have you ever considered leasing equipment that you already own? One option is selling your equipment to a leasing company, and leasing it back from them. This way, you generate some cash for your business. You will, of course, incur lease payments.

Homework: Take stock of what you own. If you need capital, contact a few leasing companies and gauge their interest in purchasing equipment for you to lease back. Alternatively, a Certified Cash Flow Consultant will shop for you. Since they are independent consultants paid by leasing companies, you will avoid any additional charges.

Strategy No. 5: When In Doubt, Outsource Outsourcing certain support areas of your business, in which you are not an expert, is an excellent way to reduce payroll and insurance costs. You will spend a higher dollar per hour for importing experts, but reduced costs (no health or workers’ compensation insurance) usually compensate for cost variance. Be sure to hire these experts with as much diligence as you would any in-house employee. As you’ll typically retain this type of assistance through specialty staffing houses, interview individuals to be assigned. As integral members of your team, they must be as reliable as any employee on your payroll.

Homework: Contact area firms that provide kind of staffing you need. Compare cost of those contracts against cost of keeping these staff on payroll. Be careful: Consultants can get expensive, so be sure to build cost controls (i.e., fixed fee for a weekly basis or hourly with a “not to exceed” clause) into your contract. Be clear on their scope of work, to whom they report, and how you define satisfactory performance. In addition, you must directly approve any staff changes.

Strategy No. 6: Inventory When You Need It Inventory that sits in warehouse, not being sold for income, eats away at your available cash flow. It is an asset, sure, but it should not become a liability because it is not quickly converted to cash. Over-ordering of inventory gets many businesses into trouble.

Review your inventory forecast all time, and be aggressive. Know your options in times when you have shortfalls. Fulfilling customer orders on time is a number one priority, so don’t take unnecessary risks. If you simply hoard inventory to offset any chance of being caught off-guard, you lose potential profits made by managing it more aggressively.

Homework: Review your current and projected inventory for coming months. Do you need to make changes, or is it all under control? Make any necessary calls to your suppliers to negotiate better terms or better understand their supply controls.

Make Your Working Capital Work for You Working capital management is a key element to business success and number one way to prevent business failure. By implementing strategies such as accounts receivable funding, outsourcing, or inventory management, your business can optimize return on assets it already possesses. Your company will then be well positioned to handle future growth or economic downturns.

“Reprinted from Create Business Breakthrough You Want: Secrets and Strategies from World’s Greatest Mentors © 2004 Mission Publishing, a division of The Mission Marketing Mentors, Inc., www.missionpublishing.net, or www.missionmarketingmentors.com.”

* "I don’t know why you are so upset." * "That’s first complaint we ever got on that." * "I know how you feel." (Because you don’t) * "Boy, you’re sure mad."

In above story, students told manager that they weren’t happy with service because they didn’t have time to eat their meals. The manager, not listening, said, "Would you like dessert?" The solution was not more food. Listen for solution!

4. Be Sorry for Right Reasons Be sincere in your concern for customer and say sorry correct way. Many time in heat of customer service situation we what to show some sign of concern so we do following:

* The first words of interaction with words, "I’m sorry." First, you didn’t find out any information from customer to be sorry.

* Say sorry throughout conversation with saying what you are sorry for. When saying you are sorry, say exactly what you are sorry for.

The students, even though manager kept repeating she was sorry, didn’t think manager was sincere in her apology. The correct say to say you are sorry is:

* "I’m sorry you had to wait so long for your food." * "I’m sorry that you were treated that way." * "I’m sorry that our employee said that to you." * "I’m sorry this situation happened to you."

Let customer know exactly why you are sorry. The students thought manager’s "sorrys" were insincere because she never mentioned why she was sorry.

5. Give Your Personal Assurance. Let customer know you will personally create a solution for them. It could be as simple as saying, "I’m taking personal responsibility for this."

6. Ask Them What They Want One of fears that we have when trying to satisfy customer is that we think they want something out of our reach. Ask customer, "What would you like you to do?" or "What would make this situation right for you?" You will be surprised that in most cases customer will ask for less you were willing to give.

7. Use Statements of Conviction Sure following to gain confidence of customer:

* "We’re going to do something about that!" * "We will make a change right now!"

8. Present a Clear Plan of Action Make sure customer knows what you are going to do to correct situation for them. 95% of making things right for customer is making them aware that you are taking action to make a difference for them. Explain to them actions and timelines you need to take to make things right for them. If you need to leave or make a telephone call to obtain additional information, say:

* "Please excuse me while I make a telephone call obtain best solution for you. This will take five minutes, can you please wait?" * "Excuse me, I need to ask person with missing piece of information so that we can quick resolve this for you. Do you mind waiting five minutes?"

Note: Make sure you get back to time customer before time you specified. If you promised ten minutes, get back to customer before ten minutes. Rule of thumb, double time it would normally that to get information. If you know it will take ten minutes to get answer for customer then tell customer you will get back to them within twenty minutes.

9. Move Quickly to Solution If you applied steps 1-8 you are ready to give customer solution they wanted for a win-win situation. You can confirm this by saying following:

* "Would this be agreeable for you?" * "Is this solution you were looking for?" * "Will this make things right for you?"

10. Ask for Business If you did everything right this is perfect time to ask customer to come back and do business with your organization. You showed that you were professional, caring, sincerely, positive, and proactive. Why wouldn’t they do business with you again?

Some of way you can say this is:

* "We would appreciate opportunity to serve you in future."

* "Please come back and I will personally guarantee you receive outstanding service."

* "Here is a 20% coupon. Please use it on your next visit to our establishment."

It’s important that you let customer know that you appreciate their business and want them to come back. Remember, if you did everything right, not only will them come back but they will other people to do business with you. Use challenging customer service situations to build your business.