Nichola (Nic) Smith began her career in Credit Management at the tender age of 17 years old.
As a Junior Accounts Clerk, she took numerous calls from companies chasing debt, a debt the company she worked for couldn't pay. She quickly realised that the company she was with wasn't as pro active as their suppliers in chasing their overdue invoices. The stress of taking those calls led her one night to devise a system of her own to try and inject cash into the company. The next day she took her system to the MD of the company and asked his permission to do the same. The MD readily agreed and she thrived on the challenge.
However, the pro active approach had happened too late and the company she worked for was forced to liquidate and Nic lost the job she had loved.
'I will never forget the day I was told that I had lost my job and that liquidation had been their only option. I felt frustrated, because I knew even then, that if they had just actively chased their debts right from the outset, this could have been a successful business. Instead, I was forced to say goodbye to a job I loved and the people I worked with and it was just a really sad moment. The Directors had the makings definitely for success, they were awesome sales guys, really lovely people, but the company they had created folded, purely because they didn't have a credit management system in place.'
Nic moved on but stayed in the field of Credit Control, she was to discover that five out of seven companies she would work for, did not have a system in place.
'I quickly realised that companies were predominantly sales driven, but the thought of chasing debt was linked in their minds to losing clients. Sales and Credit Control are like oil and water, they don't mix. The point I had to put across in meetings was that fundamentally Credit Control is the same as Sales, the goals are there. I, as a Credit Controller, was doing the exact same thing as a sales guy. A sales man wants his clients to think of him first when they want to place an order, I always wanted the company I was with to be the first on the cheque run. Once I had done that, purely by using the sames mean that a salesman does, the companies I worked with saw a significant increase in their bank balance.'
With twenty years experience in her field, Nics attention has now turned to re-educating companies.
'Turning a companies cash flow around gives me a buzz, seeing a cheque from someone I have chased is the equivalent, for me, of a salesman getting that top deal.'
Passionate and driven Nic is determined to get the message out there:
'I saw a company that was successful on paper go under, it pained me personally because we were like one big family. When a person or persons set up a business it is like their baby and I genuinely don't ever want to see a person lose their dream or have to say to their employees that time is up, I definitely don't want a successful company to lose out by being sales driven yet not be able to collect the cheque. If it isn't in the bank, it isn't a sale.'