Here's Another Idea For Bad Times

Coupons for Past Due Accounts


All businesses are in the position of waiting for people owing them money, for one reason or another. Sometimes writing letters reminding about this money proves to be rather irritating and time consuming to the businessperson. Therefore, you could offer a service for businesses of writing letters to these people. This service would be a coupon service where you sell coupons for the recovery of money.

The coupons that you sell are actually forms where the executive has to enter information of the person with a past due account, information on the due account and the amount of money owed, each coupon reasonably priced, at about $10 per coupon. Upon receiving the coupon, or coupons, the businessperson fills in the relevant information, and sends the coupon back to you when in need of your services. You then write a personal letter to the person who has the legal obligation to pay money.

This letter is a reminder for the customer to pay the amount that is due to the business. For $10, you could offer to send about three letters to the customer, with each letter relaying more importance than the one before it. Make sure all these letters urge the person to pay their overdue amount. These letters collectively called; collection letters or dunning letters, meaning to press somebody persistently for the settlement of a debt.

When writing collection letters, it is important to keep in mind that the business wants payment, and at the same time, maintaining customer goodwill. So write letters that are short, about a page long, and with short sentences and paragraphs. When opening the letter, use the word dear, and sign the letter personally. Avoid using threatening tones in the letter.

Make sure to contain all relevant information in the collection letter; like the date of the invoice, amount due, need of full payment by a stipulated date and convey a sense of urgency by requesting the payment be by phone payment with business or EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). Be as firm and urgent about the money as possible. In addition, never become apologetic in the letter!

There are different types of collection letters you could send. The first letter, a sort of simple reminder of the amount of money owed to the business. Your letter would be a friendly letter; presuming that the recipient had forgotten about the money, and should treat the letter as a reminder.

Then there is the inquiry collection letter in which you beat around the bush to find out the reason for the customer not paying the balance amount. You could also offer different terms for repayment if you find that the customer did not pay the proper amount due to financial constraints. The appeal and ultimatum collection letters sent, if both these letters fail to bring any results, you state the action taken if the amount is not paid within a stipulated date or length of time.

Once you develop a knack of writing effective collection letters, and help businesses receive owed money, they will be happy with your services. The more collections acquired for businesses, the higher the number of clients you obtain who will be interested in your services. This in itself provides all the advertisement you need for your successful service!

Ok, This would not be complete, (although some of my ideas are no where near complete on purpose so the reader can think on their own), if I did not include some collection letter templates. You can get them here:

http://makemoneyalert.com/collect/




Resources are:

http://www.creditguru.com/collection.htm

http://www.writeexpress.com/

Best of success,

Skip Rosell