More on bad, but well meant, advice

Posted on | January 14, 2009 | 3 Comments

See, this is what I mean by being careful about the advice you take.

Not because people are necessarily scam artists but because, sometimes, people make assumptions about things – logical assumptions – that don’t pan out upon investigation.

I came across this post via Small Business CEO.

Now, I think it’s a really good idea to think about what industry sectors are likely to be least impacted by the current downturn and might still be open to opening the wallet.

But I have a slight problem with one item on this list from LEADSexplorer:

14. Incasso – Debt collectors
Many companies and traders will be delaying their payments, while at the same time the suppliers and vendors will be in need for money.
Incasso and debt collector agencies will emerge again.

Here’s my problem with it: it so happens that my husband has been working in the collections industry for well over 20 years, which includes the three most recent downturns experienced by the U.S. economy (also including the current one). And I can tell you that this is not an industry that is likely to be doing well right now.

Why? Because collection agencies generally get paid when their clients get paid. If nobody has money to pay whatever bills are owing, those collection agencies may have no trouble getting clients but they’ll have an awful lot of trouble getting those clients paid and, hence, getting paid themselves.

Collections outfits — whether they deal in commercial or retail paper — are probably doing really poorly in this climate.

Of course, there’s no way I’d know that if it weren’t for the career activities of my beloved spouse. But it illustrates a point I made last week about marketing.

Suppose some microbusiness owner took that advice on its face and started pitching to collections agencies. And suppose they found door after door slammed in their face.

They might come to the conclusion that they were doing something terribly wrong. They might even get so discouraged that they decide maybe their product or service isn’t as great as they thought it was. They might lose faith.

Before they do that, though, they’d be better advised to lose faith in the advice.

Running a microbusiness is always a learning curve because one of the features of the 21st century business landscape is that it is always morphing into something that it wasn’t last week.

So, it’s important for you to be willing to learn.

But one of the things you need to be willing to learn is that sometimes even well-meaning people don’t know what they’re talking about and that you should trust your own experiences before you trust all the advice you get.

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