 |
 |
| |
Winning Business and Loyal Clients
in Factoring Accounts Receivable
Part II
Carpe Diem! |
|
Advice Desk
In the second in a series of articles aimed at assisting
you in winning business and loyal clients, Mark Mandula,
Principal, Vice President, United Capital Funding,
offers his guidance from the viewpoint of an experienced
business finance professional based in the US. |
|
| |
|
|
I will try to make my observations from around
thirty years of hands-on experience in the
financial services industry. Much of this
experience has been from the “school of hard
knocks!”. My comments are geared to any
professional in the financial services industry,
and this could be an asset based lender, factor,
a broker looking for a funding source, or a
professional who may be considering this as a
career. |
| |
|
|
|
My goal in these series of articles is to
challenge you to think about how best market
your business financial services to your
clients, and to encourage to step back a moment
from the “day to day” grind and think outside
the box. I believe I will have succeeded if you
are able to use one idea or more in your
business that allows you to better serve your
clients. |
|
|
|
As a quick recap, I discussed in the first
article a series of ideas, attempting to answer
the following question, “Is your firm a Service
Focused Firm?” In order to address this
question, ideas and practical applications for
use daily in your organization were presented.
Finally, the following questions were introduced
at the end of the first article, to stimulate
thinking and analysis of the organization. These
questions were: |
| |
|
|
| |
Question 1: Are all your
factoring clients treated with respect, even the
ones you don’t like? What picture does the
client/prospect form in his or her mind of you?
Question 2: Do we constantly
fret, gripe, and complain about client turnover?
Don’t we realize that the most profitable
invoice factoring client is the one that we
already serve?
Question 3: Have you ever
asked, really asked, what your clients think of
you, your business funding services and level of
professionalism?
Question 4: Here are some ways
to objectively assess your performance. Ask
these questions about yourself, and all levels
of your organization. Do we/ I, always act in a
professional manner? Again, what picture does
the financing client/prospect form in their
mind? Does our client/prospect know who I am or
we are? Do we treat them as special, unique? Do
they remember my name? Are we genuinely
concerned about their best interest?
We concluded the first article with the
following statement, “We must have each of our
clients answer positively to these questions. It
is with this perspective that we will start the
next article in this series: “Carpe Diem”. |
|
|
|
|
|
Carpe Diem |
|
|
|
|
|
All organizations need to have a well-defined,
focused purpose for their existence. In
addition, all effective marketing strategies
require a written plan in order to be
successful.
Each year our firm adopts a theme for our
marketing efforts. This theme becomes the focus
of all of our marketing strategies and
initiatives. It also is used in all
communications with our clients, prospects,
partners and others whom we deal with.
Our current marketing theme, and the focus of
this article, is “Carpe Diem”. This is, of
course, the most famous of Horace’s odes. Horace
used agricultural metaphors to urge us to
embrace the pleasures available to us in
everyday life, instead of relying on remote
aspirations for the future. Hence his immortal
motto, CARPE DIEM, or “pluck the day”. As you
may recall, the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society,
starring Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard and
Ethan Hawke, did much to resurrect this obscure
Latin phrase. The central theme of the movie
was, “Live life to the fullest, get the most out
of each day”. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
I believe that
all human beings strive to follow this motto, in
their daily lives and business affairs. I
believe that if you took an informal poll of
people, most or all would say that this is what
they want from their lives. I think it would be
unlikely, or the exception to the rule, that
people would respond to this question with
statements like; “I want to be mediocre”, or “I
want to strive to be #2”. Even if they truly
felt this way, I also think most would not be
willing to admit it in public!
By nature, I believe we want our lives to be
full. All you have to do is turn on the
television, surf the internet or drive on the
highway and observe the billboard advertisements
to know that advertisers all over the world
understand this. Think a minute about some of
the most common and widely copied advertising
slogans used today. Nike’s famous campaign of
“Just Do It” would be the best example of this.
Unfortunately, as financial entrepreneurs
running and managing our businesses 24/7, we too
often get caught up in the day to day details of
life, dead lines, mortgage payments, etc. that
we just never make time to “Seize the Day!”. As
the lyrics in Bob Seger’s 1980 hit song Against
the Wind go, “Well those drifter’s days are
past, I’ve got so much more to think about,
deadlines and commitments, what to leave in,
what to leave out…”
Although all of us want more fulfillment from
every single day, it always seems to be just
beyond our grasp. In owning, operating and
managing our factoring business, I have
concluded through much trial and error that in
order to succeed, we must be an efficient and
effective ‘servant’ for our clients.
Unfortunately, many believe that the word
‘servant’ has a negative connotation. I use the
word servant using the following definition, “a
person working in the service of another.”
In order to serve well, I have found that our
business needs to focus on a very narrow menu of
professional services, invoice factoring, and do
this very, very well. This focused or “niche”
approach, I believe is the most important
element to survive in a very competitive
industry such as the one we compete in - the
specialized financial services industry.
As part of this focused approach, our Strategic
Marketing Plan must be consistent with our
financial and operational initiatives. For
purposes of this discussion, I define “Strategic
Marketing” in the following manner: “the
management process responsible for anticipating,
identifying and satisfying client requirements
profitably.” All three components of the
process; anticipating [planning ahead];
identifying [sorting out the preferred client to
serve]; and satisfying [ensuring that we offer
the highest quality services, consistently] must
be in place in order to achieve the stated
objective: Profit.
If you have a desire to research this issue of
focusing your business to achieve client
satisfaction and profitability, I would strongly
encourage you to read as many of the 35 books
written by Peter F. Drucker. Drucker, who
recently died at the age of 96, is considered by
experts in the world of business and academia as
the founding father of the study of management.
His works have been translated into more than
twenty languages. |
|
|
|
|
|
Drucker
published his first book, The End of Economic
Man, in 1939. He served as a regular columnist
for the Wall Street Journal from 1975 to 1995
and throughout his career, consulted with dozens
of organizations ranging from the world’s
largest corporations to entrepreneurial startups
and various government and nonprofit agencies.
If you have not read Drucker’s writing, you
should.
I have posted several of Drucker’s quotes near
my desk, in an effort to ensure that I follow
his excellent advice on how to “focus”. Odd as
it sounds; it has really worked to for me, and
causes me to think about how to better serve our
clients profitably with a focused approach. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Several ideas run through most of Drucker’s
writings, including:
A desire to make everything as simple as
possible. According to Drucker, corporations
tend to produce too many products, to hire
employees they don’t need (the better solution
is contracting out), and to expand into economic
sectors that they should stay out of.
The need for “planned abandonment.” Corporations
as well as governments have a natural human
tendency to cling to “yesterday’s successes”
rather than seeing when they are no longer
useful.
Companies have three responsibilities; 1) make a
profit, 2) satisfy employees, and 3) be socially
responsible.
Questions to ask about your business
How can I, as a business owner or marketing
professional, use this “focused” approach in the
successful, day-to-day operation of my business?
As I presented in the first article in this
series, I think the correct approach is to ask
yourself a series of questions about your
current strategy. Once you have answered this
series of questions, the results can then be
used to prepare or amend your marketing
strategies and goals
Ask these questions:
Understand your purpose. What is our purpose? In
order for any business, organization, family, or
for that matter, individual to be successful,
they must first know what their purpose is.
As an example, the sole purpose of our firm is
to provide clients located in the United States
with the highest quality factoring services
possible, increasing their working capital and
cash flow. I would suggest if you and everyone
in your organization cannot answer this
four-word question, [“What is our purpose?”] you
cannot be successful. Because if you don’t how,
how will your employees know?
This approach, I believe, requires one key
common denominator: Focus. As was mentioned
above, this is the key to long-term success in
running any business or organization.
One of the most important criteria we look at
before we provide funding to a client is their
focus, or lack, or same. Frankly, one of the
most important marketing tools you or I have is
the ability to provide a menu of services to
allow the client to FOCUS on why they went in
business to start with. Of the hundreds of
clients we serve, I cannot ever recall a single
one saying, “I went in to business to chase down
an accounts receivable from a client that I
worked overtime to produce to sell a product or
service to 45 days ago.” Not one! Isn’t this the
exact service we look to provide our client, and
the solution to their cash flow issues? |
|
|
|
|
|
This need to
focus on a limited menu I believe is what
separates the “best of breed” firms and
organizations from the rest of the pack. Again,
it is important I believe to define what I mean
by focus, as part of this discussion.
My quick Google search looking for the
definition of ‘focus’ resulted in over
32,900,000 websites that provided a loose
definition. |
 |
|
|
This desire to focus on a single service line is
why our firm provides only commercial US-based
accounts receivable factoring. We get calls all
the time for every conceivable type of financing
and funding, medical, cars, consumer, etc. etc.
I always tell them the exact same thing: we have
elected strategically to focus on a narrow menu
of excellent services, only in the factoring
area. I encourage clients to do the same thing.
We need to also sound a warning of caution to
this approach. There is no question risk in this
strategy. This approach requires that we do well
the limited menu of services we provide. We must
be, and always be adapting to be the BEST of
breed. Not the largest, but the best. This
approach requires a commitment to excellence,
and a never-ending vigilance to never allow
mediocrity to creep in.
In the next article, we will present the next
three key questions to ask about your firm, as
part of this self-assessment process.
Feel free to contact me with questions,
observations, comments or if you need any
additional information on the discussed topics.
I can be reached via email at mark@ucfunding.com |
|
|
View and Print this Article (pdf
version):
Winning Business and Loyal Clients in Invoice
Finance (part II) |
|
|
|
 |
In this
series of articles to assist you in winning business and loyal
clients, Mark andula, Vice President, Principal, United
Capital Funding Corp., offers his guidance from the viewpoint
of an experienced business finance professional based in the
US.
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part I)
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part II)
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part III)
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part IV)
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part V)
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part VI)
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part VII)
Winning Business and
Loyal Clients in Invoice Finance
(part VIII) |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Other Invoice Factoring Articles of Interest
Commercial Finance
Perspective:
How to survive the current economic malaise
(part I)
Commercial Finance
Perspective: How to survive the current economic malaise
(part II)
Trust Based Financial Services
in Factoring of Accounts
Receivables:
How to build a sustainable
trust based financial services firm
Winning Business
and Loyal Clients in Accounts Receivable Factoring
"How to Sell More to Your Existing Clients"
Winning Business
and Loyal Clients in Accounts Receivable Factoring
"Work
Smarter, Not Harder"
Factoring: Fact vs.
Myth: What types of companies use factoring?
Factoring: Fact vs.
Myth: Will factoring negatively affect your
customers perception of your company? |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
