Your business was running pretty smoothly — sales growing, and profits growing, too. Then the credit crunch hit, someone said the R-word, and everything started slowing down. Most troubling of all, your customers have been paying later and later, as if they are using your money to fill their own personal credit crunch. Well, they probably are. Most of us don’t realize how dependent we are on credit to run our businesses. Vendor open-account credit — the kind you extend to your customers — is by far the largest source of borrowing power in our economy. When you sell products
