Sales Team Vs. Credit Department

Getting your sales team and your credit department to work in harmony can have its challenges and its rewards. Having a great sales team is critical to the success of your business and so is the revenues generated from your sales team.  You have to remember-you hired your sales team to generate sales and making sure that your team is adhering to your credit and collections policy is a challenge at times.

Sales wants accounts approved ASAP! (Meaning while they wait on the phone) and the credit department says it’s not going to happen ASAP!,  Being the aggressive sales team you hired, that’s just not acceptable; the concern is the potential client is going to take their business to a competitor, and the company needs the business. 

Everyone in the credit department should be sure to maintain a good working relationship with the reps and managers in the sales department. It is very important that each understands the others job and priorities. It can only create conflict if the right hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.

Make sure you, know as much as possible about any new promotions or specials the sales department is offering during a month or week.  Meet with the sales department manager on a regular basis--every day would be great. The more information you can gather from sales, the better. Hopefully, your company's first and most frequent contacts with customers are through the sales department and not the credit department.