"A Sale Isn't a Sale Until The Invoice is PAID..."

**John Lamerton** (0:00)
Coming up on today's episode of the Ambitious Lifestyle Business podcast.

**Jenni Sampson** (0:04)
It doesn't count until that money is physically in your bank, then that sale isn't complete. You're not in the wrong to ask for payment of your invoices. You've done the work, you should get paid. And I think if you've got those right relationships in place, then you're not going to be the victim of stupidly late payments costing your business, and it's costing you time as well, because the longer an invoice is outstanding, the harder it is to collect, then you've got every right to ask for your money.

**Jason Brockman** (0:34)
Have you ever done work for a client who hasn't paid you?
Yeah, me too. In today's episode, we're joined by Jenni Sampson, who explains why simple credit control systems can help small business owners like ours overcome fear of chasing payments and reclaim their financial freedom, and even get paid more than they're owed.
We began by asking Jenni what impact late payment actually has on small business owners.

**Jenni Sampson** (1:04)
I've got some clients who are just one or two man bands, and the impact for them is obviously the difference between them being able to pay their bills or not, being able to pay themselves, put food on the table. That sort of thing. It is a big impact. I also have clients who have 10, 15 members of staff, and it changes slightly where you're responsible for somebody else's wages. So you have that responsibility.
I have a couple of clients at the end of the month, especially. It's kind of a, oh my god, where are we at? We need to get this money in. It's panic stations. We've got payroll to pay on Friday. We've got suppliers to pay, that sort of thing.
But then it can also impact their growth plans. So I've got a client who has quite big plans to grow. But if the money's not there to do that, then that impacts that and it knocks them back and prevents them being able to do it. So it impacts different businesses in different ways. That's part of the reason I set up the business in the first place, because the larger companies I've been employed by in the past, they quite often put the smaller businesses to the bottom of their payment pile. You know, the priority for them was paying the big suppliers, not the cleaning company who comes in to clean the office every week. And actually, those are the ones that probably need the money quicker, more than the bigger companies do.
And that didn't sit right with me. I had seen that over the last 20 years and it just didn't feel right. So when I had the idea for setting up this business, it was purely with those people in mind to be the person that sort of stands up for them and goes, actually, no, I'm just as important as this person. You need to pay and pay on time.

**Jason Brockman** (2:59)
You did a talk for us at One Percent Live and there was a slide that you used. And I managed to get a brilliant photo of Jason actually with the slide in the background. I think the line was, a sale isn't a sale until the invoice has been paid. Can you speak to that a little bit?

**Jenni Sampson** (3:19)
Yeah, that's one of my mantras. You know, business owners quite often celebrate the fact that, you know, I've invoiced five grand, ten grand, fifteen grand, whatever it might be this month. And, you know, they will look at their figures and think that they look great. And they do, because, you know, they've built X amount of money. But if those payments are late, they're in somebody else's account and not yours, it doesn't count.
It doesn't count until that money is physically in your bank, then that sale isn't complete.

**John Lamerton** (3:52)
I think small business owners really enjoy doing the work, whether that's plumbing, whether that's creating stuff, whether that's decorating, whatever that might be.
But when it comes to the invoicing, that's always awkward, whether that's a business thing or whether that's not my bag. So sending the invoice first and foremost is a really big hurdle for lots of small business owners. But then they realize that they rather need to get the cash in because they do need to feed the family, etc.

**Jenni Sampson** (4:19)
Absolutely. I had a client that was so focused on the next sale, bringing in the next lot of business. And we were talking quite large amounts of business. They were invoicing between 5 and 10 grand a month for each new client. So they were constantly, constantly chasing the new business, but not thinking about how best to fulfill that business, to make sure that their invoices were paid. And quite often, we'd be in a circumstance where we'd end up either having to write off the invoice, or we'd have to raise a partial credit note. So where they might have billed 50 grand in May, it would get to June and the invoice hadn't been paid, and we could quite often then end up crediting back 10, 15 grand of it.