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If you want to sell services to large companies--even low cost ones--you need to offer invoice payment. At a big company, the corporate credit card is for meals
by GavinB 14y ago
If you want to sell services to large companies--even low cost ones--you need to offer invoice payment. At a big company, the corporate credit card is for meals and travel, not for paying vendors.
- adestefan 14y agoThis is true even for medium sized companies.
- tlogan 14y agoAnd for schools or any other organization.
- jwblackwell 14y agoAnother great point. There's so much obsession with billing credit cards I've never seen this mentioned in any pricing blog.
- jcampbell1 14y agoIn my experience, if you send a proforma invoice, a W9, a federal tax id, and a soul sourcing statement, at the end of the signup form, many times a check will just show up in the mail. It is possible to do invoice payment without having a high touch sales process. You just have to preemptively provide all the stuff the AP department needs. I really think 37 signals is leaving quite a bit of money on the table by not offering PO payments. I understand they don't want to do a whole bunch of customer hand holding, but it is possible to accept POs without ever talking to a customer.
- rgrieselhuber 14y agoThis is a really good idea.
- kanzure 14y ago> You just have to preemptively provide all the stuff the AP department needs. Do you have an example of a SaaS operation doing this well?
- dkokelley 14y agoI don't know for sure, but I imagine Salesforce has this down.
- spatten 14y agoWould you not have to customize this for every country that you do business with, though? Hmm. Sounds like a complete and utter horribly painful schlep. A schlep that puts you right in the path of the money. Interesting.
- jacques_chester 14y ago"Where there's muck, there's brass".
- jcampbell1 14y agoYou don't have to customize anything. If you don't want them to call, you can add a sentence that you accept (or don't accept) foreign currency checks at a market exchange rate. That is about the only question foreign businesses ask.
- duck 14y agosoul sourcing statement I think you meant sole, but I had to laugh at this meaning as well in the whole scheme of dealing with finance departments.
- derefr 14y agoJust dreaming here, but is it possible that this could be outsourced, the way you can outsource credit-card payments with Stripe? Have another organization invoice them, collect the check, and then deposit the money into your account, without you ever having to make more than an API call?
- jacques_chester 14y agoI intend to use invoice payments as a segmentation device. Want to pay by invoice? Expect to pay a lot more. (I think I picked this idea up from Patrick McKenzie -- another one is offering SLAs to expensive clients).