Page:Roy Ralph Hottman - Practical Collection Procedure (1923).pdf/47

Rh but at the same time it loses the debtor’s good-will. When the account is far past due and other tactics have failed, the collection man has no alternative but to use these stronger appeals and consider himself well off for having offended the customer and lost his future business. Study your debtors well, their emotions, their likes and dislikes, and lay your plan of attack accordingly.

Classification of Debtors.

Debtors may be divided into four general classes, each group necessitating a different procedure, as follows :—

Prompt pay.

Slow pay.

Careless and bad pay.

Irresponsible and unreliable.

Prompt Pay.

This class of debtor, as a rule, requires little or - no attention. It is comprised of those people who have a strict moral sense of their obligations and who pay as soon as the statement is received, or within a reasonable length of time thereafter. They may not necessarily be endowed with a large share of worldly goods but are so constituted that they dislike being under obligations to any one and they seldom purchase more than they know they can pay for.

Their manner of payments should be looked after from time to time however, merely to see that they do not fall