Most of the times, margins for key accounts are lower than average. Because they purchase bulk and we do allocate more resources to give them the right attention. Hence, it’s super important for us to ensure the client pay on time to manage the account’s DSO.
Which is why when we sign up a large account, it’s important for us to document the payment process that the client would sign off too. And when it comes to invoices delivery, we were always encouraged by our bosses to deliver the invoices personally to the client ourselves. We would list down all the invoice numbers in a document and had the client to acknowledge that they have received the invoices.
Also, when managing a key account, one of the very important client contact that account managers have to be bff with is the Account Payable person. I remember during this one time I went to a client business review, one of the issues we brought up was we have a sum of payment outstanding for quite some time. And the Head of AP was also in the meeting saying, “It was never escalated to me, otherwise it would had been paid on time. Next time do that.” I realized in that meeting, it was also the first time I met the AP Head, which taught me the lesson how important this contact person is.
In most cases, because of the business volume, if there is any delay from any key customers, the cashflow of the company will be affected. So yes, monitoring the payment from key customers is really important.
Besides, like how my ex-boss used to always tell us, no matter how hard we grow the business with the client, but all that is not actual sales until the money is in the bank.
Bimbo
