Is Your Cheque stuck At Your Client's End? How Do You Get It Out?

Wanjiku: How do I pick my cheque without hustle?

Nervy Twists: This is how we do it.

The anticipation to collect your cheque from a client is such a strong feeling that must be fulfilled like yesterday. When anything comes between you and that expectation, you feel violated and despair sets in as you ask yourself, why me? This is what everyone feels when the promise of payment is not fulfiled.

Most payments today hardly go to savings but onwards to other pressing obligations pushing you just as hard for them. When the promise to pay others on your end is broken by another's commitment to you, a sense of defeat sets in and the resultant frustration manifests differently for different people.

There are two paths at our disposal—the diplomatic route or to play hardball.

The diplomatic route is the best path to follow when your debtor has clearly defined structures and has a reputation to maintain. However, every marketplace has its mad man and even good organisations have difficult personalities to deal with. Rent seekers abound. They range from mild pleasers to heartless dissers.

Business competition encourages the presence of these types of characters and if you specialise in unregulated businesses marked by cutthroat behaviours, then against my advice, be prepared to get asked for facilitation fees. Facilitation is the biggest unofficial product alive in many offices and has made many undeserving people rich. You will pick them out by their arrogance or total silence. They are never in between. But there is a way out.

Before you accuse me of abating corruption, step back a little and ask yourself why all the hard work is done by private enterprises but the richest people by several more multiples of their salaries are civil servants? They hold no patents for any known inventions. They have at their disposal a facilitation product going by many names and brand extensions that put them firmly in the supply chain. It has distorted the logical need for job grades at work. People request to be skipped when promotions fall due because that smaller job grade exposes them to all the suppliers.

In these offices when diplomacy fails, the office of the Controller of Budget—a statutory office, comes in handy. This is in so far as government business dealings at national and county levels is concerned. It cannot be that you fulfilled all the requirements of what the procuring entity ordered for and they had not provided for it. It may be the slower but surer route to follow. The Controller of Budget will listen and seek answers from your client. The entity in question won't let this affect their budgetary allocations, going forward.

And what if you are pursuing payment from a private entity? There is always a predictive index that one can develop and use to know if the path is paved with challenges or not. First, seek to have the specific entity's procurement policy—in its absence you are in for a big surprise.

And even if there is a procurement policy in place, seek the guidance of the internal auditor on how to pick out the red flags. The absence of the internal audit function is another unmanned road to the rent-seeking office.

Then there is the open "what is in it for me" question from an expectant employee or director. That can easily be the door lock that keeps you out of business with that entity. Surprisingly, there are as many clean-business giving entities as there are under-the-table types.

Birds of a feather flock together and it is upon you to find out where those of your plumage regularly perch. Business is about building a strong portfolio over time and not about serving anyone and everyone always. A 70:30 ratio of 70 percent representing the ideal client profile and 30 percent being a mixed bag with all others represented, is a good cushion in such times. You won't be desperate at all.

But your concern now is to pick that cheque. It means everything. Your rent, shopping, motorised movements and all, depend on it. Remember hardball tactics deliver short term successes, but leave you with long term consequences.

You are cornered and desperate for the cheque. Someone even asks you to "teremusha" or to meet with them behind the tent. If you have done a great job in fulfilling your obligation, then don't yield. Escalet the matter to the next level for you are pursuing what is rightfully yours. But if you walked into the deal knowing too well that facilitation fees in exchange for the cheque will be asked for, then I have no advice for you.

But there are bigger favours that you can extend instead of bribes. I once helped someone secure a secondary school place for their child who had missed out on their first-choice school. I never parted with money anywhere in the process and the person I helped never pushed me for a cut of my dues. Your network comes in handy as a strong resource at your disposal.

So, have several moral options at your beck and call that you can extend to others to improve lives without bribing. Are we still in the same country? Yes, we are and I kid you not. It works.