It’s a cliché that small businesses like me don’t like to ask for payment.   That we somehow feel guilty about asking to be paid for the value we deliver – perhaps because we don’t altogether believe in that value ourselves.

The upshot is that either we invoice late, even erratically, or we seek to make the payment aspect invisible to the client, by using a service like GoCardless for example.

But what if there was a better way?

What if you could make payment truly part of the customer experience?  In the way it often is for retail.

What if you could use every invoice to remind your client of how far they’ve come on the journey they enrolled on with you?  Of how much they’ve achieved as a result of working with you?  Of all the ideas and actions you’ve generated together?

To enable them to relive all the reasons they chose you, and the benefits they’ve gained as a result?

That might be a far from unpleasant experience for the client.

Of course to keep invoicing, you’d have to keep delivering value.

But that’s not a bad discipline to put yourself under.

After all, Discipline makes Daring possible.