More Cash

Recipe of the month:

What does a girl have to do to get paid round here?

I remember, aeons ago, when the English newspapers were full of stories and rumour about the goings on between English Rugby captain Will Carling and Princess Diana that she was purported to have propositioned him by saying “what does a girl have to do to get a coffee round here’.

The phrase flowed through my mind the other day when a friend asked me how she could collect her cash a bit quicker.

So, what does a girl have to do to get paid round here? Well for starters she has to ask for it. And here’s how.

What you need

9 ways to make asking to be paid more palatable

What you do

Print on your eyelids “If-you-don’t-ask-you-don’t-get’.
Make a regular time each week to contact all outstanding debtors.
Prepare a little speech to you make when you chase cash. Something authoritative but friendly, that simply rolls off your tongue.
Have a copy of the invoice and any other useful paraphernalia handy when you call up your debtor. Feeling organised will make you more convincing.
Contact debtors via a mixture of personal emails and phone calls. Emails leave a nice “in-writing “trail for you to store up as evidence, but they are easy to ignore. Phone calls are hard to ignore but less easy to use as proof of what someone has said.
Keep a memo of all contact you have had chasing your debtor so that you can point out to them how recalcitrant they are being.
Make friends with the payment clerks at your client, they will find it so much harder to ignore your requests for payment when they like you.
Keep calling. Whoever said ‘it’s the squeaky wheel that get’s oiled’ was right. Your customer will pay you simply to save their sanity.
If you are getting nowhere with the payment clerks then call up the person who hired you. They will probably be devastated to find out that you haven’t been paid and will pull a few strings internally to get you sorted out.

Like this recipe? We have many more on how to max your cash……