Sales tip: Maintain customer balances

Vito Abbinante, a Cornwell Tool dealer based in Chicagoland, has found that overselling can actually hurt your business. 

"You [have to] take your good sales tactics and balance them with money management," Abbinante says. 

Abbinante bases his collections off a 10-week term. By collecting 10 percent of a customer's bill weekly, with some people paying more some weeks, his average turnaround time is six-and-a-half weeks. 

“There [are] certain people that I try not to sell to, stupid as that sounds,” he says. “Because if I let them buy the whole truck, they will. But they don’t have the money to pay. You've got to maintain your balances. That’s like the whole game of this. You have to maintain everyone’s balance that owes you money. So every person’s different.”

Balance management is the “trick of the trade,” Abbinante explains. It’s all about keeping the income steady and “not going broke because you’re selling too much.”