how to make customers smile when paying
The most obvious answer to the question ‘How can you make your customer smile when asking them to pay a late invoice’ may be to remind them of the brilliant service or product they purchased. This morning I saw a different way to get that smile and payment…
Payment reminders are often curt and sometimes unfriendly… ‘if payment is not received within 10 days we may have to take debt-recovery proceedings‘ – the one that arrived on my friend’s doorstep was the exact opposite. And, when she showed it to me, it made me chuckle.
This is what it said…
Dear Customer,
Here we go with a little rhyme. To remind you that your payment has not been made in time.
To enable us to keep our customers happy. Could you raise our payment and make it snappy.
The sender may not be a Poet Laureate – but it is certainly a different, friendlier way of asking for their payment. 
How do you encourage your customers to pay your invoices?
~ Carol Bentley
16th December 2011 at 10:23 pm
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12th December 2011 at 9:18 pm
That is kind of hard of a bargain when monetizing online. That was one thing I was worried back then when I use to sell stuffs, that people may or may not change their minds about it.
8th December 2011 at 6:12 am
Dear customer, to effect reliability and a sustainable flow we hereby request for early payments within seven (7) days. Any delays should not exceed two days unless on special reasons. We call for co-operation.
You don’t need to quarrel with your customers when they delay payments for they are your sustainers. Good day Carol.
8th December 2011 at 5:38 am
handling your customers well is something very nice, because you are creating a good reputation to yourself and the business as a whole. it will attract more and more customers. one can delay because of unavoidable circumstances so we need to be very careful about it and try to be understanding fellows. thanks for posting
7th December 2011 at 4:54 pm
Hi Brian, (sorry for the delay in replying, your comment got blocked!) I checked the RSS feed in my browser – the web address is http://www.copywriting4b2b.com/feed and it displayed all the feeds to my posts without any problems. See if using the direct URL instead of the link on the menu makes any difference for you. Carol
6th December 2011 at 10:26 pm
When I open your RSS feed it puts up a whole lot of strange characters, is the deal on my end?
17th November 2011 at 2:59 pm
Thanks for sharing Karin – offering a ‘discount’ for paying on time is a time-honoured way to encourage timely payments. For businesses delivering services or products over a longer period, arranging interim, staged payments is also a good way to keep cashflow positive.
17th November 2011 at 2:49 pm
Hi Carol
Late payments, that can be a bottleneck for your cash-flow.
We try to encourage our clients to pay on time and also to use a payment method we prefer most: debit card of by bacs. We offer a 2.5% discount if payment is made in this way and on time.
Plus, when installation/restoration work is involved, we have the habit to hand over a feedback form (with sas-envelop) which is often used by those clients to send us a cheque when we finish our labour when they are still out.
Just little things that makes my “bookkeeping” tasks a bit easier.
Karin H (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)