Credit Management
The importance of credit management/accounts receivable in your marketing program By Kim Radok MICM CCE*
How do you market the concept that you are prepared to protect your business’s assets and cashflow, without down grading the positive image of your business projected by your marketing and sales departments?
Introduction Image and perceptions mean everything in business. We currently live in an age where everything is visible and there is nowhere to hide our secrets. Despite all the current evidence supporting these facts, I rarely see signs that management is understanding this point. When it comes to marketing and sales, Australian management also appears to rarely, if ever, learn the lesson, “a sale is not a sale until the money is in their business’s bank account and for six months and one day after receipt.” I fear this lesson, unfortunately is about to be learnt in the coming months and years.
Kim Radok MICM CCE
One version of marketing reads something like: Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and offering products or services to consumers, (retail) or other businesses, (business-to-business). When it comes to marketing a business today, management must understand that image and perception cover the “whole of business experience.” Having just great products or services, simply is not enough. Your business also needs to know that every interaction “sells’ an image of the business and their representative(s), irrespective of whether that image/perception be good or bad. Likewise, customer service is no longer perceived as just involving selling. It encompasses the processes relating to every invoice raised, queried or unpaid. Therefore, the
“When it comes to marketing and sales, Australian management also appears to rarely, if ever, learn the lesson, “a sale is not a sale until the money is in their business’s bank account and for six months and one day after receipt.””
40 CREDIT MANAGEMENT IN AUSTRALIA • July 2021
