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Collection letter for past due invoices for Public Relations

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey guys what is up i am jen berson um for those of you that don't know me i am the founder of a pr firm in los angeles called generation pr um i've been running my agency for 16 years wow that sounds like a lot uh 16 years and oh my god that just like hit me as like such a big number it makes me sound really old um but yeah started my agency out of thin air was a former civil litigator and just did a complete 180 in my career and i still love my business after all this time and about probably four or five years ago i started to create programs resources coaching mentorship for other pr professionals that are looking to grow and scale their own profitable agencies so we have created a community called profitable pr pros that's the identity i want you to start to sink into is how to be a pr professional that loves what you do even 16 years after you start doing it like i do and you get paid for the work you do so you're doing exceptional work you get paid really well you become a subject matter expert and you have a deep expertise and a niche people pay you a premium to provide them with service and you get paid for that so that's like the whole point of this discussion is you know what do we do if clients for some reason refuse to pay you it's the worst feeling right and i really wanted to put something together that empowers you it takes the power back so that if clients are kind of playing these shenanigans you have an approach right you have a way to move forward and confidently get what you're owed for the work that you've done so um just wanna preface that even though i am a lawyer i'm not your lawyer this is not necessarily legal advice in my agency we have things in place that allow us to get us paid um and part of that is choosing the right clients so that's going to come up in this discussion too but how do you approach it if you are moving forward with a client and you're not getting paid so let's help you take the power back one of the things we know is that a lot of people are really afraid to approach a client about a late payment because we're worried that we're going to annoy them or we're going to upset them you know it's like well or it's like if i ask for the money they're going to highlight what you haven't done or that the results have been less than stellar even though we know that things take time to ramp up and we'd explain this to them so it's an uncomfortable conversation but i want to remind you the big news flashes this is your business you're in charge of how you run your business and you deserve to get paid for the work that you've performed and the clients do not hold all of the power and they should be just as concerned about annoying you or upsetting you about doing about you performing the work and them not paying you and more likely in these situations it's resolved by having a discussion so we're going to break down how to approach it if your clients are paying late so first things first as pr professionals if you're not always doing that if you're not already doing this we get paid in advance of service so we get paid on the first of the month for the upcoming month and when you first start working with a client you send them your retainer agreement and you send them an invoice and you get paid in advance of service so you should be doing that first things first um sometimes there are circumstances that arise where you don't maybe don't receive payments on time let's say you're here where you submit an invoice to a client on the first of the month either it's at the beginning of your engagement and they haven't paid or it's in the middle and let's say you bill on march 1st and they don't pay and you perform the service for that month let's say your terms are net 15 and right around that third week you need to remind the client so you have to tell them that um you know they owe you money so it's something like um you're telling them we're getting ready to send an invoice and we notice that you haven't paid the first um the first or the last month's invoice just a reminder as we're going to be sending out an invoice that you have one that's overdue so um they know that it's unpaid and you're reminding them you know basically you tell the client that you're billing again and if you are getting ready to send that second invoice it's going to be something along the lines of um you know with respect i i'm going to have to cease our services if the late invoice isn't processed one week from today i hope you can understand the difficult circumstance that this puts me in and that we can continue to work together to reach a solution um you know uh you're trying to basically like hold the relationship there's there's two sides of it you either want to continue the relationship and it's still friendly or if the client is continually lying dragging their butt and you get the sense that this is going to be a problem or there's something that's going to be ongoing and you don't want to continue the relationship that's a different discussion because you may have to pursue or discuss pursuing legal action um you know so basically with these client relationships you should be it's a mutual relationship um you should be getting value from them respect they're reliable it's they're getting you what you need to do your job really well um and if you continually meet your own deliverables on your side and they're not um doing what is expected of them paying their invoices on time turning things around to you in a reasonable time if your expectations are not being met it's time to take a stand so it's difficult but it's necessary and it kind of lights a fire under under their butt because you're doing a good job you're doing your job and you are providing them a valuable service that makes their you know their business better it gives them visibility so um you know you let's say also you have a contract that's signed for x amount of time so they have let's say a six-month contract that they want to back out early personally on my end i only pursue payment for work that we have done and for that work that we've built so even that month of the payment that they're maybe trying to end at that month sometimes we'll say we want to end early we'll go one more month great honestly um i do think that this gives you leverage i don't go after clients for the full amount like pursuing legal action there's a reason i don't do that um so let let's say a client has a six-month retainer and we do have liquidated damages in our contract which is essentially saying if you reach this contract this is what the damages are so um technically um you can go after that full amount they sign the contract it's in there i don't do that because as an attorney i know the stress the heartache the expense of pursuing a breach of contract action it is something that we can use as leverage so we um yeah so nelson's saying i don't provide an out for clients in any of my contracts technically we do not either we want the client to know if they enter into a six month retainer agreement they are giving us six months but personally unless it's like a really bad ending of a relationship which never happens my objective is that everybody that works with our agency has a great experience if it doesn't work out i i will i will release them into the world and release them from their contract i don't tell them that but i don't want to fight and struggle and i know that legal action is really expensive so what and you don't have to do it this way but i get paid you guys so this works for me and i don't want to fight tooth and nail for like every cent you owe me i will be reasonable about it so what i want to get paid on is the work that i've done and the work i've built for if i do the work if i provide the service i want to get paid for it and if we've already done the work for the month we try to get paid in advance um we want to get payment for what we've built what we've already done and if it's a great client and we haven't been paid then we will keep going because we know they're probably going to pay but once you start digging in your heels because they're a day late a week late it is going to sour the relationship i would rather have that client say you know what for whatever reason we couldn't move forward we lost our budget or it wasn't going the way we expected but this agency took care of us and they were reasonable and their team um you know took really good care of us and they'll go into the world it's just positive energy your contract is there to protect you but it's a choice that you make whether or not you want to pursue legal action for unpaid invoices because it's expensive and emotional um and that's your choice you want to kind of nip it in the bud early so that means making good choices on who you bring into your agency as a client paying attention to the red flags and your instincts on clients that means um cutting it off early so that the amount of money that they owe doesn't get to be so massive that it's a huge detriment to your agency so we will cut it off at a month and let them know we're going to stop work i also let them know that the team has been paid and we need to comp and be compensated for the work that's been performed if they want out of their contract early i will say give us 30 days um and we want to be paid on the last you know the last invoice we built for plus another 30 days and we'll release with no late fees and no penalty for the remainder of the contract that's how we do it you may do it differently um the other thing you can do is send a strongly worded demand letter and that is like pre-legal action that is you saying if you do not pay by this date here is what is going to happen and that's a threat um and what could end up happening is you can um you can attach what's called a complaint for small claims court it's an automatic form that's generated for breach of contract a bunch of check boxes you can make it on the website and just attach it and it's like we will file this complaint or you can draft up a strongly worded letter that says on this date we will file um a breach of contract claim um or like we'll implement the late fees and pursue collections or whatever you want to do um and just know that that relationship is over you're never gonna go at it like that strongly word of demand letter and then the client's gonna be like okay we're gonna pay you and let's keep going it's like it's over you have to be willing to know that relationship is over just make sure you're only saying yes to clients that are a good fit for you um when you really go through that process we teach inside of the program when you've got a prospective client the right way this is less likely to happen and only work with companies that won't have an issue paying you right we cover this in the program um and setting it up and and making sure that you're protected that they know what they're agreeing to you get paid in advance of service