In Focus Collections


Taking sales forward


The credit professional: are they probably the best untapped sales person in your business?


Denis Lynch International accounts receivable lead, Nuance Communications denislynch008@eircom.net


Many years ago, I was part of a collections team of a large multi-national – the process for new sales recruits started with a sales induction programme to make them more familiar with the company’s products lines and so on. I sent an e-mail to the sales director asking


if I could also be included in this sales induction and was quite flatly turned down and was told to stick to my day job. I was still eager and undeterred, and pursued this further asking for a face-to-face meeting and requested only two minutes of his time. This initial face-to-face request was


ignored, but, still indeterred, waited for the sales director to grab a cup of coffee and used this as my chance to get inducted in the sales induction. I approached him and said “Hi my name is Denis Lynch and I can out-sell any of your sales people!” I remember the look on his face: startled


by such a radical claim. He took a moment and said “OK, you are not going to let this go, so come into my office and explain to me why I should let you go into the sales induction.”


Making a start I first started by telling him that different occupations march to different banners. Sales will generally go under the banner ‘A Sales Is A Sale’ the credit professional will generally go under the banner that ‘A Sale Is Not A Sale Until It Is Paid”. I explained to him that I already had an


advantage over his new recruits, as I could combine both mantras as I was able to ascertain ‘customer worthiness’, ‘credit risk’ and so on. That my skill set could understand


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the process of mitigating risk on a new application: even this alone, I told him, put me in a better position than the recruits he had just hired. This meant I was not wasting my time


trying to convert poor prospects. As many sales people would testify that they can spend hours trying to convert a prospect and then, feeling the end is in sight, only to find that their prospect’s credit application was turned down. I told him that, with my experience and


the tools I had at my disposal, I could in theory out sell anyone else. The sales director looked at his watch and


told his PA to postpone his next meeting. He said to me: “Go on then, how would you do it?” Firstly, I told him that the high-risk


customers were the ones with high selling margins. I told him I would sell to them more, but, instead of offering better credit days to pay, I would offer a payment discount if they paid on time. He laughed at me at first. I told him that


these customers would pay early if they got a discount. He said: “Well you are eating into our margin.” This was true, but I also told him that the


customer was already paying on a margin higher than most companies on our given product range – and I would have a bonus: I explained that the cost of credit relating to these customers would be reduced. I made it clear that the company was


already funding the overall customer’s debt, and was thus basically acting as the customer’s personal bank? I also told him I would do my investigations and collate risk


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I sent an e-mail to the sales director asking if I could also be included in this sales induction and was quite flatly turned down and was told to stick to my day job. I was still eager and undeterred, and pursued this further asking for a face-to-face meeting and requested only two minutes of his time


information on a given group of high-risk customers. I would not just sell to them all our high-


risk customers in this way, but trail a few at least and only the ones that I could be certain I could hedge their risk to sell more units based on an overall company benchmarked risk.


Sell more units I told him I could sell more units based on the fact that not all these high-risk customers would default (all at the same time) also


October 2018


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