Why do wealthy private clients pay late, and how do you get paid on time without awkward chasing? The answer is to take the money before the work, in stages, and this video shows exactly how to set that up.
For most wealthy clients your invoice simply doesn’t register. £8,000 is serious money to you and small change to someone who has just bought a house for £12 million.
Your invoice often then lands in a personal inbox when a PA, house manager, family office or bookkeeper would have paid it the same afternoon.
And there’s the pain of paying: handing over money hurts more once the thing you’re paying for is finished, which is generally when a supplier invoice arrives.
In this video I discuss how bespoke luxury businesses, from Savile Row tailors to interior designers, handle payment terms, using a worked example of a £30,000 design fee split into three stages paid in advance, with furniture, fabrics, travel and expenses paid in full before anything is ordered.
I also cover why chasing gets harder once a client relationship has drifted into feeling like a friendship (communal versus exchange relationships), why “no rush at all” emails guarantee you won’t be paid, a polite chasing sequence that actually works, and when to stop working for a client altogether.
Useful for anyone running a small business with high net worth private clients.
I hope you enjoy the video.
See you in the next one
Paul
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Taking the money in stages before the work is the part service businesses resist most, because it feels like it will scare the client off. The point about the pain of paying once the work is finished explains why chasing at the end is so hard.