#BusinessFinance

How to Handle Collections & Refund Requests: The Secret for Keeping the Money & Keeping Your Customers Happy

How to Handle Collections & Refund Requests: The Secret for Keeping the Money & Keeping Your Customers Happy

“Maiko, there was a client who just called up the office really angry, demanding a refund.  He was really angry & rude yelling at me the whole time...  What do we do?!!!  I didn’t know what to say, so I just told him someone will get back to him… He wasn’t happy to hear that…”

 

Clearly, the person who took the call was caught off guard and was shaken up by what she had to go through.

Before going any further, let me paint a picture here.

In this particular case, the person who called angry isn’t my client.  That is my client’s client.  Nonetheless it is a huge deal.

Why?

Because here, we aren’t talking about a mere $195 refund.  If it were, I would be saying, “Please don’t waste my time with it.”  How about 100x that?

Yep, try $19,500.

What if this happens to YOU?

What would be your first reaction?

Let me guess, right about now there are hundreds of scenarios running through your mind a mile per second. Am I right?

 

“How do I NOT refund this guy?  What are my options?”

“How much would I be able to keep?”

“What if we don’t have any choice but to give the money back?!!! We don’t have any room for this!”

 

If this happened 10 years ago, this kind of news would put me in a panic attack for 5 min. My heart would be racing with an immense amount of stress. Since then, I’ve handled countless non-payment and refund cases over $30K+ per pop. 

So nowadays, my usual response is:

“Alright. Get me all the intel about him.”

See, ideally no business owners should get to this point without doing due diligence to consistently weed out clients from hell. At the same time, though, even with the best intention & strategy, we aren’t completely immune to this kind of incident from time to time.

Here we are.  What's done is done.  There’s no going back. 

So, what do we do now?  What would YOU do?!

Behind the Scenes 2: Create Your Signature Workshop from Scratch (Updates & 3 Tips for Digesting Feedback Effectively)

Behind the Scenes 2: Create Your Signature Workshop from Scratch (Updates & 3 Tips for Digesting Feedback Effectively)

It has been more than 6 months since I posted my first update on how I created my signature workshop in 3.5 weeks while I run my regular business.  In the post, I also shared what worked and what didn’t.

If you haven’t checked it out, you might want to do that first so that you get the backstory before diving into this one.

My original intention was to share my process of creating one then testing it so that you would be inspired to work on yours.  Since then, a lot has happened.  So, it is time to invite you back to this topic and see how it has evolved.

In this post, you are going to learn 2 things:

1.     Updates on how this effort of perfecting a workshop took an unexpected turn & what I took away from the experience.

2.     Tips on what to do once you collect feedback from participants.

By the way, you would appreciate knowing this fact, that I did not make this a priority for my business during the first half of this year.  What I am about to share did not come from actively promoting or developing the original workshop. 

Things just started to happen without me doing much to it.

Now, please don’t take this the wrong way.  I am not in anyway suggesting you to lock up your workshop and throw away the key and, expecting an offer or an invitation will magically appear without you lifting a finger.  Although I wasn’t actively working on it, it has always been on the back of my mind. 

This is key so that once you spot an opportunity, you can pull it out and look at it again from another perspective.  We will go deep into how to execute this in this post.

Fed Up with Your Bookkeeper? The Reason May Mot Be What You Think.

Fed Up with Your Bookkeeper? The Reason May Mot Be What You Think.

If you are frustrated with your bookkeeper, most likely it is the sign your business has outgrown your current set up.  It is quite common for 7 figure business owners to continuously focus only on acquiring talent to carry out their core business to keep the momentum going for rapid growth because it is an intuitive move.  As a result, they overlook the backbone of their business such as Finance, HR and Operations to support growth.  

Here is the bottom line:  7 figure businesses with more than 6 or so full-time employees and with a physical office should have a full-time finance person at a minimum, not a part-time bookkeeper especially if you don’t have an accounting/finance background.  In other words, your frustration towards your bookkeeper is misplaced.