While you cannot manage time, you can attempt to manage yourself and to influence others. Here are some key tips to give you a bit more time to improve your contact time – which in turns improves the bottom line:

1.) Know your “prime time”. When are you at your best for top-notch collections and negotiations? What is ‘best’ time to reach some of your important customers?

2.) Make it known to people that certain times of the day are non-interruptible. If you have an office door, close it. Turn your desk so that you don’t face people when they walk by. Work in a cubicle? Check out the great product at www.cubeguard.com. Take some time and maybe have some fun with this one or you can come across as a martinet or a jerk.

3.) Strangers call? Tell them you are very busy and will get back to them when your task is over.

4.) Got a minute? These take on the average 8 to 15 minutes. Put them off if you can, but if it may be fielded in less than a minute or so – do it and move it.

5.) Delegate if you can.

6.) Stop the insanity! There are some things you are doing now, perhaps a report or statistics that may have been important at one time, but could be stopped now and nobody would know. Or care.

7.) You’ll have some waiting time during the day or week, but it does not need to be wasted. Carry some tools with you, pen and paper or a recorder. Most of us have an electronic gizmo or phone that will cover the task these days. Ask yourself a question when you are ‘waiting’ in line for coffee or in a waiting room somewhere “what are three new approaches for my most delinquent customer(s)”?

8.) Save yourself an average of 2 hours every day. No more complaining.

9.) Be prepared. If you are going to save some time, know what you want to do with it or else other work just expands.

10.) Ask yourself ‘the question’ at least once each day: “What is the best use of my time, right now?”

“When I left here” the Major said, “I gave you an order.”

“No sir,” replied the younger officer. “When you left here you gave me a command. After that, I gave the orders.”

A slight pause and the Major agreed, “So I did.”

When we delegate, whether to staff, significant others or kids – do it all the way. There will be blood, mistakes will be made, and it is expected and even somewhat desirable. But don’t buy a dog and bark yourself.

We must reorganize!

“We trained hard – but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”

…Petronius

For your training…and that for your team – clear, specific objectives.

Worth it?

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, it described how special consultants may be called in to deal with a new acquisition of U.S. firms where bribes to local officials may have been the norm in the past.  For a number of years, there has been an Act, strictly enforced by the Justice Deparment – that makes it a criminal offense to pay bribes abroad.

If it was just a simple matter of telling someone ‘no more money’, a firm may not need a communications expert. However, it is often more complicated. For example, a firm may have been making payments to a government official to do (at least in a timely fashion) what they should be doing in the first place. The situation may be rife with confrontations, ego and the need to continue to do business.

What to do?

Some firms turn to specialists such as Ken Springer of Corporate Resolutions based in New York and if the acquisition is in India, perhaps Ashish Sonal, founder and chief executive of Orkash Services Pvt. Ltd. By the way, according to Mr. Sonal, “Orkash” means “Nothing is impossible” in Sanskrit. It is their job to inform the bribe recipient that that things are about to change.

To do this effectively they have to research and know who they will be dealing with and deliver the right balance of both internal and external communications.

There are at least two areas in Accounts Receivable where such an approach may be successful. One may not need to call in an outside communications expert, but for some clients and situations this would be effective.

Two major challenges in Accounts Receivable are the “F.O.B.” accounts and “Unapplied Terms”.

The F.O.B. doesn’t refer to ‘Freight on Board’, but to “Friends of the Boss”, the folks who could be related, play golf with some senior managers, went to the same school, etc, who believe they have the right to pay late – and not be reminded.

For “Unapplied Terms” it means where perhaps the terms for your firm have been 15 days net, but this was never expected or pursued and customers have become used to paying in 45 days or later – again, without having any reminders. (“But,” they may say, “we’ve always paid in 60 days!”)

Set up a special individual or team (even an outside ‘special’ representative) to make contact with your customer. Do not have the regular collector or credit manager call them. You’ve tried that and it didn’t work. The new team or individual has a clear communications objective. We want to keep each customer but also to have them pay on time in the future and also to ‘speak well of us’ whether to contacts within our outside of our organization.

This Month’s Pithy Saying:

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.
John D. Rockefeller

Somebody hands you a lemon...

Many of us may not WANT to be in the finance business, but we are if a client takes extended time to pay. Though we should try and break their habit, all at once or perhaps over a few months, you can still make the best of a bad situation.

In working with a great group in Dubai last month, one of the members of the team described how a valuable client was habitually several weeks or more past due AND looking for a discount. He did some quick calculations and pointed out that by not paying according to terms, he was ALREADY receiving a discount.

This month’s pithy quote:

“When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make lemonade.”
Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

Then and only then…give ‘em the facts and your recommendation.

Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.
Saying (Chinese)

I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Winston Churchill

You learn more from getting your butt kicked than from getting it kissed.
Tom Hanks

To learn is no easy matter and to apply what one has learned is even harder.
Mao Tse-Tung

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.
Mohammed

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
Erich Fromm