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Help!! need advise on how to grow my commercial collection agency. I need direction on ways to capture large corporate accounts. I have called and never been able to get an appointment to discuss are services. Any ideas??

4 Responses

  • Jun 13, 2010

    Owner/Founder

    It occurs to me that large corporate accounts are likely to be largely relationship driven. Where do the decision makers for these businesses hang out? Are their charities, business groups, political action groups or other associations where you can work along side some of these decision makers? Try building a relationship with these people first, and then go for their business.

  • Jun 15, 2010

    CEO

    I can tell you something that doesn't work, but maybe you can benefit from the story, happened to me today. The work line rang and I saw the caller ID as "XXX Associates", (XXX replacing the real letters), and the guy on the phone not only cut me off as I was answering, then asked how to pronounced my name after saying it wrong twice (this was a cold solicitation call), he then name dropped 2 companies and people working in them, neither of which I'd heard of and I told him. Then he proceeded to tell me about his collection services, that they were not factoring and eventually after a long winded speech, he asked how many companies we have outstanding that we cannot collect from after 90 days, to which I replied "None". I explained that we make all clients prepay due to our industry's slow A/P payments. He had nothing to say at that point and we hung up.

    So, I suggest not cold calling, but rather advertising and let the people find you that need your services.

  • Jun 17, 2010

    Julie Rains

    One of the trade organizations that comes to mind is NACM (National Association of Credit Management) in reference to Michael's mention of relationship building; the group has local chapters in addition to the national group.

  • Aug 21, 2010

    Director of Sales

    We used to have the same problems, but we specialize in the Property Management Industry. The way that we were able to overcome a lot of these issues, and rejection from the larger companies was hiring a strong sales team and getting involved with the local apartment associations. The networking and local relationships that the clients build with the sales rep are crucial to landing larger accounts. I would suggest that you pick a specific industry to target (ex....Communications, Construction, Manufacturing, Etc...). Once you have decided on your target market then you need to find the industry associations that those clients belong to, and then hire a sales team to target them. Hope some of this helps you :-)

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