Free Credit Control Resources: Google You’ve no doubt heard the saying “You can run, but you can’t hide” This saying is more true today in credit control & debt collection terms than it has ever been.
Anyone who is “anyone” has a web presence these days. This is especially true with companies and businesses. Companies & Businesses with any "nounce" will have a website at the very least. Most of them would also have jumped on the social networking bandwagon in some way shape or form. In addition to this, there are blogs, forums, discussion boards – I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
Before you do business with a prospect you should at the very least check them out on Google by searching both their company name and the name of the principle director. You will be amazed with the information you can find.
In addition to this, you should also check out all prospects using Companies House Webcheck Service – click here to be taken to an article that shows you how to use this service.
I will give you 2 recent examples that I have personally experienced that will reinforce how great Google is as a free credit control/debt collection resource.
Example 1
We are currently undertaking the credit control function for the trade body for independent record labels. Their customers are obviously in the music industry and therefore have a very large web presence: YouTube, MySpace, Facebook etc. One of their debtors that has owed them money since 2007 disappeared off of the face of the earth. We slowly but surely tracked him down using Google – we found them on practically all of the Social Media networks and eventually made contact with them through a generic email address that we found on the web. The result was: we received payment from this debtor a week ago.
Example 2
This example relates to a one-off debt collection job that we did a few weeks ago. The debt collection job related to search engine optimisation & on-line marketing work done by our customer for the debtor in question. The debt owed was £950 We issued a Statutory Demand for Payment and sent it by post to the registered office address, the Directors home addresses, by fax, by email to named individuals and to generic email addresses that we found using Google. Contrary to popular belief, Statutory Demands do not need to be personally served – you merely need to prove that the debtor received the demand (I digress). Back on track, by using Google, we discovered that the Managing Director of the debtor company had a huge on-line presence and made regular posts on several forums, his blog etc. Perhaps the most important thing that we discovered though was that the Managing Director was also a Magistrate. In other words, this guy had a very big online & offline reputation to protect. We of course used this information to our advantage and received payment a few weeks ago.
The above are just 2 examples Google can be used in a variety of ways to help you with your credit control
go back
|
