Excerpt from a blog series by Dave Sewell on BNIonline
It’s the start of a new week, six days on from the earthquake, there is still the odd tremor that is registering over 4 in magnitude, strong enough to get us to stop and ask “is this another big one?” but generally they are over almost as quickly as they start.
My intention this week is to get back to work, and try and treat everything as if it is business as usual. I pull out my list of things to do that I prepared on Friday just past and started the day with a ring round all my current clients.
My longest running client was the first on my list, the news was not good. Having been displaced twice previously from their offices, the first time after the September 4th quake, then again after the Boxing Day aftershock, this client had only just moved into new premises on Monday 21st February, the following day the most recent quake hit, they were in the office at the time, watching everything around them, very quickly being destroyed.
They all managed to get out of their building and escape to safety, now they have nothing, all their equipment was destroyed.
The client is resilient, they are currently talking to their insurance company to get the equipment replaced as soon as possible so they can carry on doing what they do best. We have agreed to catch up later in the week, I am going to donate my time (at no cost to them) to help them re-focus, prioritise what needs done immediately to help them get back on track as quickly as possible.
My other clients have work premises that did not get hit quite so hard, they should recover reasonably quickly, albeit some of their homes are nearly destroyed. There is a very mixed bag of issues everyone is facing, having talked to all those that were contactable
I realise that really, my family and I are blessed, we still have a roof over our heads, we have power, we haven’t lost any friends or family, I really, under the circumstances can’t ask for anything more than that. It is likely to be another couple of weeks before my clients get truly back on track, financially I will be able to cope with that, so I carry on down my list and tackle other areas of my business.
Cash flow will be really important over the next couple of months, having wrestled within myself over the weekend as to what I should do with those who have not paid my invoices, I decided to follow them up. My reasoning for this was, the invoices were all ready overdue prior to the earthquake hitting, so no-one can really blame that as a reason for delaying the payment; also, I have already done the work, I do this not only to help the client but to put a roof over my families head and to put food on the table, that more than ever is of the greatest importance.
So I send out another email, it’s short, straight to the point, “This invoice is now well over due, please give this your immediate attention”, there is nothing soft about the email, it is designed to spur the client into action.
To any business owner in a similar position, there are a number of things you should consider when ensuring you’re clients don’t compromise your cash flow.
>>> Read all of Dave’s post here
