Presented by DocuSign
Simply getting paid can be a challenge for small businesses. Learn how digital payment platforms can remove cash flow barriers, get you paid instantly, and improve customer service in this VB Live event.
“A lot can happen between contracts or orders and payment,” says Meghan Grady, Business Development, Product Partnerships, at Stripe. “There can be scope creep. There can be misunderstandings, delays, distractions, procrastination, laziness.”
Whatever it is, the end result is that you’re not getting paid.
When the time between purchase and payment starts to stretch out, the buyer’s intent to pay slowly degenerates, especially if they’ve already received their product or service.
At that point, when an invoice has been outstanding for some time, asking a customer to take any additional steps to pay becomes a major barrier — especially if they don’t have a lot of choice when it comes to the payment methods you offer. Unsurprisingly, customers are unwilling to exert extra effort to be parted from their cash.
In order to get paid on time, every time, sellers actually need to try to minimize the bad habits of the buyer, which means broadening the payment options you offer to your buyers in order to eliminate the friction from the payment experience and make it easy to pay up without a second thought.
The solution is actually quite straightforward: replace your manual payment processes with a payment technology platform. Suddenly you’re able to offer multiple payment methods, provide payment options, and be flexible around payment terms. You can even expand your total addressable market if you’re able to offer omnichannel payments — taking payments over the phone, taking payments in person, taking payments online, because it boils down to just giving the customer choice.
A client of Grady’s was able to boost its cash flow significantly after integrating a digital payments platform, she says; a whopping 70% of their customers are now regularly paying their bills within the first 24 hours because digital signing and payment is integrated right from the start.
“For a lot of people, there’s some psychology in getting the email [with digital integration] — they’re compelled to get it done right away,” says Bob Gray, general manager of gonavis.com. “I tracked this for the first year that we used DocuSign. A third of the people signed within one hour. 70% had signed within 24 hours. That really sped up business flow. That was before payments. Now we’ve tacked on payments so it’s provided the same benefit to our cash flow. It hasn’t slowed down.”
Adds Grady: “That seamless data integration helps you work smarter, faster, and reduce manual work.”
That’s because on the back end, a payments platform can be embedded into your core business workflow so that transactions are seamless and the process is completely transparent from start to finish. Your payments are already where you need them to be, whether that’s contracting or invoicing, which is part of that quote-to-cash workflow, or already in your ecommerce, or your order-to-cash workflow.
That full digital record of all your sales and transactions is a gold mine. You can track seasonality, keep tabs on who’s been paid, get insight into managing your customer relationships, start identifying opportunities for upselling, or segments you should go lean into and invest in. Crunching that data gives you brand new insight into your business and helps you make better business decisions.
An automated system also eliminates the manual errors that pop up when you import by hand, and will cut down dramatically on chasing payments.
“That takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money,” she says. “In the end, a payment platform that keeps your cash flow healthy just gives you peace of mind, letting you focus on growing your business instead of chasing the money that has yet to come in.”
For a closer look at how a digital payments platform can be easily integrated into your current systems and the ways in which seamless transactions lead to a healthy cash flow and happier customers, register now for this VB Live event.
Don’t miss out!
You’ll learn how to:
- Accelerate sales from quote to cash and eliminate the risk of nonpayment
- Provide the kind of customer service that helps you stand out from the crowd
- Connect payments and agreements into a single workflow
- Eliminate payment delays or failure to collect and the 10+ hours it takes to chase payments
Speakers:
- Chris Davey, Senior Director, SMB Marketing and Strategy, DocuSign
- Meghan Grady, Business Development, Product Partnerships, Stripe
