Hug your credit manager
Credit management, as I'm often told, is not rocket science. A problem in some of the credit management seminars I teach is people who feel that they know everything there is to know about collecting money. "I've been in the job for five years/10 years/20 years and I know everything there is to know. I didn't ask to come on this course. It's a waste of time me being here." Credit professionals are often pretty frank and outspoken, but generally they don't say this in the seminar. However, some of them may be thinking it. If they've come with a closed mind, then unless I can open it, they're absolutely right - it is a waste of time them being there.
So what I tend to do these days is tell them, "I've been in this industry since 1987 and teaching this stuff since 1994 and every seminar I learn something, and every year I fill in another important piece of the jigsaw about how to be good at credit management. If I can keep learning, you can too, no matter how experienced you may be... if you haven't already decided you have nothing to learn."
I also say something like, "whatever your problems, I've seen them before, and if there's a solution, I probably know what it is. So don't go home thinking, 'I wish I'd asked him about my particular problem.'"
The problems that I hear about tend to be one of two sorts:
- Problems relating to processes and the practical issues of the job. For example, a woman who recently attended our Psychology of Credit Management 1 wanted to know what to do to train customers who always waited until she called before they paid?
- Personal issues relating to the job. For example, when the same woman attended our Psychology of Credit Management 2 seminar she wanted to know how to raise her status in the organisation and get more recognition for the good job she was doing?
Both types of questions are important but the crying need is for conversations of the second type. People working in credit roles often don't get to talk about their jobs. This is because (a) few people, and especially senior people, in the business understand what credit managers do (b) working in credit management isn't always something you admit to socially, and (c) it's not perceived as being thrilling conversational material anyway.
Credit professionals are the only honest people I know who are allowed to call people and threaten them. They spend their professional lives forcing people to face up to issues they often don't want to face, and in some cases making them answer questions they don't want to answer. They are regularly lied to, they deal with lots of broken promises, and in some cases they receive personal abuse. Some of them enjoy the power and fall into bad, bullying habits. Others become very cynical. Many find the job stressful. In some cases there are tricky ethical questions to resolve. And as I've said, it's not helped by the fact that the role of the credit professional and the measures of success are often poorly understood by senior management. Often there are few people in the organisation who have any idea of what the credit manager does in practice and whether they are doing it well.
I find that even very experienced credit professionals, the ones who are most likely to feel that discussions on how to talk to debtors are beneath them, are crying out for the chance to discuss how they feel about their job and related issues of stress, assertiveness, trust, status, ethics, and so on.
For example, one of the women at a recent seminar said that she enjoyed her job as credit manager for a subsidiary of an oil company and believed she was good at it (after over 20 years in the game). However, as she was the one who had to make hard decisions to stop supply of her company's product to local farms and businesses, she found working in a rural New South Wales town of about 80,000 difficult from a social point of view. When she's asked what she does, she tells people she works in "administration" rather than "credit". When she puts people on stop credit, they sometimes cry. In some cases they threaten her. In a few cases they threaten to harm themselves. Stress had seriously affected her health in the past.
One of the most common problems being expressed (though it's far from universal) is a lack of appreciation. "My job title is credit controller," one attendee told me. "I'm not allowed to call myself credit manager. My boss says you're only a manager if you manage people, and I have no staff. However, our sales people are all called account managers!"
Of course credit staff (whatever they're called) are important. If your customers don't pay, the business fails. If your customers pay too slowly, your business doesn't have enough money to do what it wants. It's the other half of the sales process. However, bosses and companies don't seem to appreciate the job being done. Part of it is no doubt related to money. If you give people more recognition, the next thing they may be wanting more money.
"I know I do a good job," said another credit manager. "If I don't get properly rewarded, eventually I'll leave and find a better paying job."
I also know credit managers who get plenty of recognition. Credit management is about persuasion and these people didn't wait to be rewarded. They demanded respect and they earned their status. The more clout they have in their business, the better they are at their job, and the better they are at their job, the more clout they get. However, perhaps some good people lack the marketing and promotion skill to get the recognition they really deserve.
To remedy this, I propose setting up National Credit Professional Day (or possibly National Credit Manager Day or National Credit Controller Day - I haven't decided yet). Stay tuned for more information.
Peter Hattaway - peter@hattaways.com - is a director of Hattaways, specialists in credit management training and consulting - www.hattaways.com. This article appeared in the New Zealand Mercantile Gazette in May 2006.