You may be an accounts receivable professional, creditor, business owner, or third party-party debt collector.

You may be a doctor, lawyer or accountant. In fact, if you're in business it is likely that you or someone within your business is engaged in the task of collecting money on past-due accounts. And you want to be able to do it as effectively and quickly as possible. You also want to do it legally.

I've worked with thousands of people who collect money to help them improve their collection techniques. And I've learned that if you will follow what I call the four principles of collection management, they will dramatically increase your success. Also, these principles will help keep you out of legal trouble.

Here are the four principles of collection management:

1. Collect the money. Our primary responsibility is to collect the money as close to the terms of the agreement as possible. And there should be no doubt as to why we're collecting the money. Our customers (patients, clients, members) need to understand that they have a contractual, legal, and moral obligation to pay within the terms of the agreement. We need to understand that it's our job to make sure it gets done.

2. Systematic follow-up. If I could choose one element of the collection management process that I think needs the most improvement it would be systematic follow-up. It's generally done inconsistently and without a very good system. Someone once said that 80% of success is just showing up. And in the business of collecting money, systematic follow-up is about consistently showing up.

3. Discussing the account. Once you get your debtor to discuss the account you're well on the way to collecting the money. The best collectors I've ever seen don't do much talking. They get the debtor to do most the talking. And if I could choose one skill that I think is more important than all the other skills in doing the business of collecting money well, I would say listening skills.

4. Preserve goodwill. Just because you have customers that are having a problem today, it does not necessarily meant they won't be good customers in the future. And not many of us are in a position to lose very many customers. Any marketing professional will tell you that it costs a lot more money to find new customers than it does to keep the ones we already have.

In future articles, I will expand on the four principles of collection management. As we end 2008, the economy is slow. Debts are increasing at an alarming rate. In 2009, it will more important then ever to stay on top of delinquent accounts.