Listen and Learn – Insights To The Factoring Industry

After reading the title to this piece one would think that I have some great pearls of wisdom to dispense on one of the many facets about the factoring industry.

Sorry, this isn’t going to be a tutorial on marketing your business or collecting the proper documents to close a deal. We’ll save those for another time or article.

This time I’m going to try and keep it plain and simple and focus on something so many fail to do when working with a prospect – listen.

Listening to Factoring Business Prospects

Just recently I was discussing a potential deal with a factoring broker affiliated with our company. He went into great detail about getting the signed application, gathering the required documents and so forth. About ten minutes into the call I asked if he spoke with the owners at any length. He mentioned that he briefly discussed the funding process and what was required to get started. To me this was more of an adequate answer versus the right answer.

Experience has taught me that the best way to learn about a person’s business is to simply ask and listen. It’s amazing how much information you can acquire in a single conversation just by listening to the people that own or run the company. In almost every instance they will go into the story about how the company started, how it grew and the challenges along the way.

So often we are in such a hurry to get out our words that we forget conversing is supposed to be an exchange where one person speaks and the other listens. How often in your daily life do you run into that person who never stops talking and rarely hears a single word when it’s your turn to speak? How annoying is that?

What I really enjoy about the factoring business is that you get to meet so many people in different industries doing jobs you would have never thought existed. Sure our company funds the classic industries such as trucking, staffing and apparel. For me, it’s those out of the box deals that require a real understanding of the business model that intrigue me the most. I’m sure every factor has either underwritten or funded at least one of these types of deals.

So next time a prospect starts telling you their story sit back and listen. Who knows, you might learn something new.

Don D’Ambrosio is the president of Oxygen Funding, Inc., an invoice factoring company located in Lake Forest, California.

For more information, he can be reached at don.dambrosio@oxygenfunding.com or you can visit his company’s website at www.oxygenfunding.com