Would you lend your 17-year-old son your £50,000 car?

Your 17-year-old has just passed his driving test.

Would you hand him the keys to your £50,000 car and wave him off?

Of course you would not. You would not be that reckless with something that valuable.

So let me ask you the same question in a different context.

Every single client you are currently working with, right now, today. Are they on a credit monitoring system?

I would like to think you credit checked every one of them before you took them on. But a credit check is a snapshot. It tells you what they looked like on the day you checked.

Credit monitoring tells you what they look like right now.

It tells you immediately if their credit rating drops. If they have picked up a County Court Judgement. If they have gone from paying their suppliers in 30 days to paying them in 120.

Because here is the thing. You would not hand someone a £50,000 credit limit if you knew they had a CCJ against them. But if you are not monitoring, you might be doing exactly that. Without knowing it.

This is what every finance company does as standard. Before they lend a penny, they check. And then they keep checking. Month after month.

Follow their lead.

Creditsafe, Companies House alerts, Experian Business. Yes, the proper monitoring services cost money. Less than £1,000 a year.

Compare that to one bad debt.

And if you want to know what a specific client looks like right now, today, send me their name and Companies House number. I will run a full credit report and send it straight back. No charge. No obligation.

Because the best time to find out a client is in trouble is before you do the work.

Not after.

I do not want your business to be one of the 50,000 UK businesses that go out of business every year because a client did not pay them.

Do not be that statistic.

I am Mark Smillie. Have a great Tuesday.