6 Proven Techniques for Getting Clients to Pay You on Time

You're a freelancer who has bills to pay. You hustled, working for clients and meeting every deadline, with the hope that once your work is done you'll finally get paid and have enough to settle your bills. Unfortunately, it's been five days, 20 days... 60 days after delivering your work, as promised, but there's no pay. The client is satisfied. The client is just not paying you.

For most freelancers, the above scenario is becoming more and more common; in fact, research shows that 16 percent of invoices go unpaid, and a whopping 37 percent of invoices don’t get paid until after 30 days of submission.

Having to wait 30 days or more to get paid is a nightmare come true for most freelancers, and there seems to be no end in sight to this problem. Unfortunately, you have to eat and pay the bills; how do you balance getting enough clients to constantly give you work with getting clients to pay you on time? The following six techniques have been proven to get clients to pay you on time:

1. Use “Positive Reinforcement” to Reward Clients Who Pay on Time

In the 1940s, behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner developed the famous “Skinner box” (also known as the “operant conditioning chamber”) to test his positive reinforcement theory in a series of experiments. In one of his experiments, Skinner placed rats in the box with a lever attached to a feeding tube. Once the rats pressed the lever, food was automatically released to them.

Initially, the rats pressed the lever by accident, but after so many accidental trials they started to notice a pattern. Eventually, the rats learned the association between pressing the lever and getting food, so they started to press the lever whenever they want food. This is positive reinforcement; the rats were getting rewarded whenever they pressed, the lever so they kept pressing it.

What can a 1940s experiment involving rats have to do with getting clients to pay you on time? Positive reinforcement. It isn’t unusual to see clients who were initially responsive to payment gradually start delaying payment as soon as they get used to working with you. Naturally, they are “busy” and plan to pay you “later.” Eventually, later becomes days, then weeks, then you literally have to beg to get paid for work you do. By introducing positive reinforcement, however, you can get clients to pay you on time.

You can introduce positive reinforcement by introducing a reward whenever a client pays you on time. For example, if a client pays you on time for a design job, you can send a message like this one: “Thanks for paying me on time! To show my appreciation, I’d like to design two graphics for you at a discounted price. It’s just my way of appreciating you for being a good client that pays on a timely basis.” After doing this for a while, the client notices a pattern and, to ensure the rewards (the positive reinforcement) keep coming, the client will always pay you on time.

2. Induce “Positive Punishment” to Get Your Clients to Pay You on Time

While psychologists generally tend to warn against using punishment to motivate behavior unless as a last resort, it has its place and time. The first point in this article assumes that a client started off on good ground and was paying on time in the first instance; this isn’t the reality for most freelancers. Some clients start off by taking you for granted, only paying when it is most convenient for them and completely disregarding your needs. How do you get these clients to cooperate? By introducing positive punishment to curtail their bad behavior.

Positive punishment is the introduction of something unpleasant to weaken an undesirable outcome; in other words, in order to discourage your clients from paying you late, you introduce a fine.

It is very important to communicate this right from the outset; you could tell clients, “Please make payment within five days of completing a project. If payment takes longer, there will be a 5 percent fee that increases for every extra five days of delay.”

3. Display Courtesy Before and After Getting Paid

You’ve worked based on an agreement with clients, so naturally you deserve payment. It’s that simple, right? Not necessarily. Apparently, being polite isn’t overrated.

According to a Freshbooks study that analyzed data from its paying users to see how long it takes clients to pay an invoice based on terms used in the invoice, they found out that being polite (by using words such as “please” and “thank you”) increases the percentage of invoices paid by more than 5 percent. Interestingly, this isn’t surprising when you consider the fact that research has shown that displaying gratitude and being polite tends to make people want to get along well and be friends with you.

Continue reading %6 Proven Techniques for Getting Clients to Pay You on Time%

by Joseph Ola via SitePoint