How to Motivate Your Collection Staffs

Recommend these 3 “C”s to motivate collection staffs.  Although this is tailored for collection staffs, organisation can consider implementing them in other departments such as purchasing department.

Communication

Communication is important because communication get things done. 

A STAR communicator describes the Situation, defines the Tasks, instructs the Act and leads to the expected Result.

In collection, try to describe the situation to your team as clearly as possible.  Tell your team the current and near economy situations and the strategies the organisation is taking to handle the situation.  Tell your team ways to contain the accounts from becoming bad and written-off.

Communication is not a one way conversation. Listen to your team what problems they meet and what suggestions they have.

Allocate a time slot for brainstorming for all managers and staffs.  Encourage everybody to provide a suggestion to every question they ask and all can later discuss further.

Coaching

A mentoring culture is difficult to form although not possible.  One way to motivate staffs is to help and train them to do their job effectively.

It is to help the staffs to close the gap between the actual performance and expected performance.

Pay attention to staffs’ performance and communicate specific expectations.  Ask questions to find out what is the inhibition for the person to excel.  You will be surprised to find out things that you might not know.  Once, a staff told me that she was afraid that her debtors would be scared away if she was too fierce with them.  I have the chance to explain to her the difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness.  I help her to speak with confident and taught her to collect the debt with professionalism.  She becomes one of the best collectors now.

Compensation

Although there are a lot of motivational theories, monetary rewards and clear objectives and goals are important.

Perhaps, collection staffs are yet to get a pay they deserved.  In fact, some organisations put them under costs centres and not revenues centres.  It is quite sad to observe that sale staffs will enjoy most of the perks than other staffs.  The distinction between traditional and innovative accounting practices has confirmed that more revenues do not really more profit.  By controlling costs and risks, an organisation can profit more even there is a drop in revenue.  Hence, collection staffs should receive good remuneration.  To further motivate collection staffs, an organisation can also implement incentive programs to encourage collection staffs to increase their effectiveness in reducing delinquent accounts, containing write-offs and increase debt recoveries.