“LBM Talks” hosts top professionals from different sectors of the lumber and building material industry to share their expertise, with a heavy emphasis on practical, tactical strategies to help you serve your markets and grow your business.
Join LBM Talks host, Thea Dudley, as she brings her razor-sharp expertise to dissect trends, regulatory changes, and offers real-world advice for credit professionals. In this episode, Thea shares some tips for salespeople on how they can build a better relationship with their credit manager.
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Prefer to read about it instead? Take a peek at the transcript below for Episode 7: Becoming The Salesperson of Your Credit Manager’s Dreams
(Editor’s note: Transcript is AI-generated and may include some errors.)
“Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of LBM Talks: Credit. Today’s episode is focused around sales. I know sales credit and relationships. I’m your host, Thea Dudley, also known as the Credit Overlord, and we are talking about relationships, specifically the relationship between sales and credit, and it’s complicated.
We have a love/hate, but it’s like peanut butter and jelly that yet we’re stuck together. Any conversation about credit eventually turns to sales people and sales. So in this episode, we’re going to talk about the five ways to become the sales rep of your credit managers dreams. Because here’s the thing about sales people, you guys are amazing. You absolutely are fantastic. You can build relationships with basically a doorknob if you have to your charm comes out, you get people to follow you. They just they love you. You know you can do no wrong. You sometimes don’t employ that same doggedness in building a relationship with your credit person. And that’s a huge miss on your part. Everything that you touch we touch. So if you’re working with a customer, we’re going to be working with that same customer.
So if you haven’t figured out that a huge key to your sales greatness is going to be building and maintaining a really solid relationship with your credit manager, you are fooling yourself. Credit people also have a superpower. Your superpower as a salesperson might be building relationships. Our superpower is our incredible memory. We never forget anything. I can remember somebody that stuck me for $300.30 years ago. I remember the company name. I remember the the owners names. I remember the details and I could hear credit or sales people when they’re like, hey, you know the you gotta let it go. Let it go. It’s nothing. It was $500 it was 30 years ago. You need to get over it. I can’t that’s not my role in the company. My role is to protect and collect the money. And this customer just didn’t lie to some nameless, faceless corporation. It was personal. You lied to me. This is my job here. So we remember everything. And once you get on our naughty list, it is virtually it is really hard to get off of that. I won’t say it’s virtually impossible, but it’s really hard to get off of there. So same thing with sales people. You lie to me. It’s like, yeah, God, I hate that, because now I can’t trust anything that comes out of your mouth.
So how we interact is really, really critical. So everyone has a view of what they consider a solid relationship. But for today’s topic, we’re going to talk about what your sales person sees as a solid relationship between credit and sales so let’s go through the top, excuse me, top five things of building a relationship between your credit and sales team. Help me find a way to Yes. Listen, if you want me to take a chance on a new customer, or, you know, releasing an order over the credit line, or when it’s past due, then be prepared to get out on the limb with me. I don’t want to be out there on this minute cracks and you’re like, I don’t know why she did that. She’s, she’s a credit person. I didn’t tell her to do it. Now we’re in this together if, if we go in, you know, with you talking, hey, this is why I need this. Tell me every bit of information, why you want me to get out on this limb, why you want me to take this chance? Tell me what’s going on with the account. Don’t hold back. Don’t withhold information. Talk to me about what’s going on, and then keep me updated on what’s happening there. You know, how much credit line are we trying to hit? Why has the guy passed due? What’s happening there? You know, if, if I’m going out on this limb, I need you to be out there with me, because united, we stand united. We’re fallen. Because if I’m going down, I need you to be getting hit with the same poop from that fan that I am. So help me find a way to Yes, it’s your Jerry Maguire moment. You know, help me. Help you.
Number two, come at me. Come directly at me if you don’t agree with my decision, that’s okay. There’s gonna be lots of decisions you don’t agree with, but talk to me about it. Have the conversation with me and tell me what I’m missing. Bring new facts to light. But let’s have a conversation about, hey, here’s why I turned this account down, or here’s why I’m not releasing the order, but don’t go behind my back up the food chain without even giving me the opportunity to discuss it with you. First of all, it’s really bad form. Second of all, I’m gonna know you did it, because who do you think’s releasing the order, or, I don’t know, setting up the account? That would be me, your credit manager. So if you don’t tell me or give me the opportunity to work it out with you, and you just go behind my back, I’m going to find out now it’s awkward between us, because I deal with confrontation and conflict all day long as a credit manager. So the next time I see you, be assured I would. Ask you, Hey, Fred, what up with that order? Man, why did you not come and talk to me? And here’s the thing, if you come and talk to me and we still disagree, and you’re like, look, the I just don’t agree with you, so I’m gonna run it up the food chain. I’m gonna appeal to a higher power. I got no beef with you. I totally understand, and chances are, I’ll go with you. Let’s make a good business decision, but let’s not tattle tale and go behind each other’s back. I don’t have a personal vendetta against you. I don’t have a vendetta against the customer, which is typically what I hear. You know, when it when it gets run up the food chain, the it just doesn’t like me. I like you just fine. I’d like you better if you talk to me.
Number three, show me your character kind of goes a little bit with what we’ve already talked about. You can be the company a hole, and I will still support you, but you got to give me the opportunity. You got to tell me, Hey, say what you’re going to do and do what you’re going to say. Oh, I said that backwards. Okay, you guys know what I mean. The point is, don’t lie to me. Tell me who you are. Show me who you are by your actions and what you follow through on. I don’t want to have to Geo track you through the company to find out what happened with a customer. Tell me straight up what’s going on, and then we can deal with it together. In other words, have my back and I’ll have yours. Don’t leave me hanging.
Number four, mutual respect. Hey, you may not like my decisions. You may not even like me. That’s okay, but tell me the same way you’re telling everybody else in the company, preferably before you tell everybody else in the company, because just like we talked about before it’s going to get back to me, it’s not that big a company, and gossip spreads. So if, if you disagree, just talk to me about it, and if you’re going to talk about it, if you wouldn’t say it to my face. Don’t tell it to everybody else in the company. Come and talk to me about it, and then we don’t have weirdness. Otherwise it’s just going to be weird.
And finally, number five, give me a heads up. Give me the opportunity to support you. You know, just like a bank can pre-qualify you for a mortgage or a car loan. I can pre-qualify your customers too, if you just tell me who you’re tracking. If you tell me, Hey, these are the five companies, or the three companies that I’m courting, and I really want to get their business. Give me, you know, a give me a day or two to run a little bit of a background check on them. Let me pull a credit report on them and give you a preliminary Hey, they look pretty good. Green light. Go nuts. Go get them. Bring them in here. Or, yeah, you know, they don’t look super great. So, you know, understand that, you know, once you get the credit app, they might be cod. Or, Oh, honey, get away from these guys. They are like a toxic waste dump. Don’t even waste your time. Go find some greener pastures. I want you to be successful. I understand we are a sales organization, and without sales, none of us have jobs. So it’s in my best interest to help you find good quality customers. Give me the chance to help support you in a way that’s meaningful, after the fact, doesn’t help you. So I know if we don’t sell product, we don’t make money, help me set you up for success, so that we all win.
And that’s the top five. No great mystery, you know, just be honest up forward. Be willing to do some heavy lifting if I ask you to. You know, have my back and I’ll have yours behind every great salesperson is a credit manager helping to seal the deal. We just need you to invite us in, and that is our episode for this week, and we hope you’ve enjoyed it. Thank you for joining us. Sally, who’s here with me, producing, oh, she’s shy. She’s not going to say anything in this episode, but we’ll make her talk next time. I’m Thea Dudley for this episode of credit talks, and you can find us on Apple and Spotify with new episodes dropping every Tuesday. I’m sorry, every other Tuesday. Let’s not get crazy. I can’t do every Tuesday. And if there’s a topic you would like us to address or explore, please shoot me an email at Thea at credit overlord.com or you can certainly reach out to the folks at LBM journal, and we’ll be happy to get that over to me until next time, keep watching your cash flow. Bye.”
