Patience Is An Important Post-2008 Virtue

Attitudes to debt collection, and collection techniques that were appropriate, and which worked well in the past, need to be adapted if they are to work as well in the current economic climate. 2009 demands a more imaginative, flexible, patient approach to collection, and a greater willingness to compromise and look to long term goals rather than short term gains. Consequently, if your customer has a genuine problem of the sort I was talking about a few days ago, it’s a bad idea to insist on immediate settlement, try to impose settlement terms that are unrealistic, or rush to issue proceedings – or in fact to take any action that might push the customer ‘over the edge’ and into insolvency.

It’s far wiser these days to accept long term settlement offers and continue to trade on a cash with order basis and accept small instalments on the outstanding balance of the account than to push for larger or more frequent payments and/or stop trading altogether. After all, even if the arrangement fails and instalments stop after two or three months, the outstanding balance of your account will have been reduced – and you will have been selling your goods or services safely in the interim.

This is obviously better option than getting little or nothing by pushing too hard – and the rewards gained from exercising flexibility and patience would be infinitely greater than anything you might receive from exercising your right to issue legal proceedings to try to recover the debt. Proceedings are already very costly – and the cost of issuing them may rise by 233% if Ministry of Justice proposal are accepted. There are indeed times when issuing legal proceedings, obtaining Judgment and then putting the whole issue on the back-burner until times get better can be a very good option – but those occasions come along a lot less frequently than they used to, simply because businesses are recovering a lot less frequently than they used to, so on the whole it’s better to avoid using the Court system.