Oct 7, 2016
Oct 11, 2016
Sep 16, 2016
Aug 30, 2016
By: David Feigenbaum, CCE & Scott Blakeley, Esq.
The history of the relationship between sales and credit departments is a long, often painful one with story upon story of unhappy encounters between two parties who appear at first glance to have diametrically opposed objectives.
But are their objectives really opposed? If the relationship is truly understood by all parties, they will come to the realization that they are actually pursuing the same goal – PROFITS – from different directions. Each discipline has its own priorities within the goal of profit. Too often, sales want the order and do not care about the potential risks. For its part, credit, in its desire to assure payment, becomes so conservative as to choke sales growth.… Read the rest
Aug 30, 2016
Boilerplate terms and conditions attached to the various purchase orders (POs) have become almost typical to find as a credit professional. These stock terms, however, not only don’t always apply to the specific transaction or type of business they’re involved in—terms and conditions are often geared for manufacturers or contractors—they can, if ignored, lead ultimately to disgruntled customers, delayed payments, and legal ramifications.
Every credit team should create company policies and procedures for handling terms and conditions proposed by a customer, said Sam Smith while speaking during NACM’s 120th Credit Congress & Expo. Team leaders must ensure that department staffers, as well as the sales team, have been trained on them, including what to do if a term or condition from a customer needs to be stricken or should be added.… Read the rest
Aug 30, 2016
Being able to negotiate effectively is an important skill because almost everything is negotiable. The ultimate goal is to reach an agreement where both parties feel as if they have won something. Typically people don’t like to negotiate because they have doubts about their skills. Negotiation takes a lot of work and practice.
With some advanced planning and strategies, you don’t have to be a hard bargainer who aggressively articulates his or her position or a soft bargainer who makes too many concessions to preserve the relationship. Using the following four concepts can help find a middle ground:
Separate People from the Problem.
You want to be hard on the problem but soft on the relationship.… Read the rest
Aug 30, 2016
By: Erin Mahoney, Cascade Employers
Once again, what we learned in early education is relevant to gaining insight in our leadership style. The four sentence types – declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory – and how you use them reveal much about your leadership competency. While each one has its time and place, the interrogative is vastly underused by most leaders.
While the declarative (“I think you should do this”), the imperative (“Do this”) and even the exclamatory (“Do this now!”) all get a fair amount of play (hopefully with ‘please’ peppered in), not enough leaders are asking enough questions. Surely, all interrogatory sentences are not equal. Although leading questions (“Don’t you think I’m right?”) and rhetorical questions (“What do you think I am, an idiot?”)… Read the rest