Wilson Cole's Podcast From The Road

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Samantha Cole, in-house counsel for AER, sit down to talk about signing client’s contracts. Wilson explains that signing a contract drawn up by a client company, which is more common when dealing with larger companies, is not necessarily a bad thing but in general it is something that will give them the upper hand over you (as the staffing agency). This will be expanded upon more later, but a key thing the staffing agency should do is actually read, with attention to detail, the contracts they are signing. It may seem like common sense but you would be surprised how often this simple step does is not done properly. The biggest “gotcha” in client contracts is language that says something to the effect of “if the staffing agency doesn’t present an invoice within 60 days of presentation then the invoice will not be valid.” While initially it’s understandable for client companies to want language like this to protect from vendors coming back after a lon

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Ally Cole, brand manager for ELOC Global, cover the topic of getting maximum utilization out of your marketing content. For example, if you do a podcast there are multiple other ways to re-present the content from the podcast, such as an article like this one, a video on YouTube, and images with quotes from the podcast shared on Instagram. It is a good idea to re-present the information in multiple ways because different people learn or retain information better in different ways. Some people are visual learners, some are audio, and some people like reading.

Today Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Samantha Cole, in-house counsel for AER, are talking about personal guarantees. To begin with, trying to get an HR manager to sign a personal guarantee is probably a waste of time because it will likely have no weight (especially if the HR manager gets a different job). A personal guarantee is a form that states something to the effect of “if the business fails or fails to pay, the staffing agency can go after the signee personally.” A personal guarantee can be part of a larger standard contract or a separate/special contract.

For this podcast, Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER), Samantha Cole, in-house counsel for AER, and Luke Menzies, UK solicitor, discuss back door hires. It turns out that back door hires in the UK occur in about the same manner as they do in the US. A recruiting agency introduces a candidate, client company says they’re not interested and then goes quiet, and turns out a few month later that the client company hired the candidate in secret so the recruiting agency would know nothing about it (or that they are owed a fee). The excuses for back door hires in the UK are also very similar to the excuses for back door hires in the US: 1) “we forgot you presented the candidate to us when we just happened to find them on LinkedIn later on,” 2) “we didn’t understand or receive your terms of service,” 3) “the same candidate was introduced by a different agency,” and 4) “we knew them already.” Luke explains that the worst thing a recruiting agency can do to hurt their case after it learns a back do

For this podcast Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Ally Cole, brand manager for ELOC Global, talk about new versions of marketing tools that have been around for decades but were recently upgraded by technology and given new names. Some examples of these new versions of marketing tools include sales funnels and lead magnets. As Wilson explains, the old versions of these tools were known as sales emails, which were super long and went through the details of the AER collections process and the perks of going through it. Before that there were sales letters, which basically did the same thing as sales emails but were in paper form and mailed/given in person to prospective clients. Modern day sales funnels are more effective than tools of the past because of the research into human behavior that has been utilized in the marketing industry when creating tools like sales funnels.

Today Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Samantha Cole, in-house counsel for AER, are discussing statistics related to the cases that are turned over for collections. 80% of the time AER will be able to collect on a case using only the collections processes the professionals at AER have refined over the years. Of the 20% remaining cases, half of them will need more work and are recommend for a lawsuit and half of them are not. This podcast will mainly focus on the 10% where the collections process did not yield a collection and the case is not recommended for a lawsuit. One classic example of such a case is where the case was turned over after the debtor went out of business years ago, all known points of contact are no longer valid, and the agency that turned over the case is mad that AER is unable to collect any money. Here the key factor is that the agency waited too long to turn over the case for collections and had they done so sooner, some collections could have been possible.

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Ally Cole, marketing manager for AER, take some time to talk about Facebook and the marketing opportunities for your company. In some circles there seems to be some confusion on whether Facebook marketing is dead or not. Wilson and Ally are inclined to believe Facebook marketing is not dead because the same people who say that it is are typically the same people who claim Facebook can topple governments and creating much upheaval in general. It doesn’t make much sense for that to be true and for Facebook marketing to not be effective at the same time. Ally explains the 3 types of audiences you can use for Facebook marketing: custom, saved, lookalike. Lookalike audiences are built off of your existing audience by looking for users similar based on given criteria. Legacy forms of marketing such as TV or billboards typically cost much more up front and know much less about their users.

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Samantha Cole, in-house counsel for AER, sit down to discuss asset sales. The popular conception of asset sales is that a purchasing company owns everything from the company they purchased, including their debt. This is not correct. When a company does an asset sale, typically because it is going out of business, the purchasing company typically doesn’t own the purchased company’s liabilities, such as debts or litigation. Asset sales are typically the purchasing company purchasing only assets (the good stuff) and leaving liabilities (bad stuff) behind in a useless shell. Winning a judgement against a shell is pointless because it has no assets so in the end you will never collect any money. Notification/litigation that doesn’t start until after a company begins an asset sale is does not have a high success rate of debt recovery. That scenario frequently ends with the holders of debt winning judgements against a useless shell company, which again, ar

Wilson Cole and Samantha Cole are the president and in-house attorney respectively for Adams, Evens & Ross (AER). In today’s podcast they are talking about what to do when a debtor tells you that they’re not going to pay you. Regardless of reason, it is vitally important for you to stop any and all communication immediately. This need cannot be overstated. There are many reasons for this, the least of which being that stopping all communication is a good legal move in general when you are faced with a situation that has clear legal implications. Next, stopping all communication drastically reduces possibility of a company undermining their own case, sometimes beyond repair. What are some of the ways a company can undermine their own case with a debtor who is refusing to pay? One big way is for the company to attempt to get at least a partial payment instead of no payment at all, so they tell the debtor to pay 50% of the original amount, for example. Attorneys for the debtor will later seize on this offer

The world has evolved a long way in terms of communication. From handwritten letters to emails and now through telephone calls, personal messages to voicemails. But, often calling a person over the phone especially sales calls can often be annoying. When a client was contacted multiple times by a company, they usually ignored and didn’t pay attention to that call. So how do you deal visitors over the phone without being hung up on or completely ignored? With the rise of technology, traditional answering machines have been replaced by voicemail services which accommodate many different types of operations, allowing business to run more efficiently saving time, effort and money. The success of any business depends on client satisfaction.

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens & Ross (AER) and Recruiting and Staffing Solutions Magazine (RRSM) sits down for another podcast from the road. This episode he wants to talk about marketing, an important part of building up his current base of over 3000 clients and handling $50 million per year in collections. One thing that will position your company to close more sales, make more money and have more clients call you instead of having to call out to them, is to position yourself as an expert. Note that being an expert by itself is only half the battle. It is vitally important to let the marketplace know that you’re an expert, aka positioning yourself as an expert, especially as more of an expert than your competitors. There are multiple ways of achieving this, such as webinars or videos, but the way that Wilson ultimately found to be most effective was writing articles for magazines for a trade magazine in his industry. You will most likely find that this to be not as difficult as you may think be

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens & Ross (AER) and Recruiting and Staffing Solutions Magazine (RRSM) takes time to discuss the topic marketing (outside of collections). One key tool for marketing is growing your email list, which he suggests you do by such strategies as creating lead magnets, and not by such strategies as buying a list. To create a lead magnet, create a list of non-competing companies in your sector, create an offer for them to distribute to their clients and create a free resource related to the offer (such as a whitepaper), notify the non-competitor of the offer and give it to them to distribute to their clients, and email the free resource to the new contacts as they respond to the offer. This process can be automated and is a great way to grow your email list because your company is being presented by a trusted source.

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens & Ross (AER) and Recruiting and Staffing Solutions Magazine (RRSM) sits down for another podcast from the road. This episode’s theme is LinkedIn marketing. On the road to his current base of over 3000 clients and handling $50 million per year in collections, Wilson explains that marketing is one area where it has been a necessity to grow his knowledge. LinkedIn has had a huge impact on getting prospects and clients in regards to collections and staffing, especially over the past 2 years. The essence of what to do is make a connection with a cold prospect on LinkedIn, start a discussion regarding issues they may be experiencing, and continue the communication until the prospect has become a client. One note regarding this process is to follow best practices on LinkedIn, as they apply to recruiters and the like.

Today Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens & Ross (AER), takes a few minutes to give information on back door hires (BDH). This is when a company hires one of your candidates or temporaries onto their payroll, leaving your staffing agency out of the loop. There has been a large increase in this issue over the past 5 years. As technology has improved, there are ways it has aided in the detection of BDHs but also ways it has helped companies hide BDHs. There is one trick to cutting the occurrence of BDHs that involve your firm by at least half and that is to get a signed agreement/contract. The reasoning of some staffing agencies to not get a signed contract is that if they have to make a legal argument, they will say that by accepting the candidate, whether the company signed an agreement or not, it’s as if they did. This is an incredibly weak legal argument; even weaker than oral contracts. Some of the shortfalls with oral contracts are that they cannot last longer than a year and if contract cannot be

Another podcast from the road with me, Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens & Ross (AER). Today I want to discuss the secret weapon of collections industry. It’s so effective that here at AER, half of our collections would get paid if we only used this one tool. This tool is the sequential collection letter. It may be stereotypical and dreaded, but again, I am speaking from 27 years of experience when I tell you it is effective. The key to its effectiveness is that it does not need to be aggressive. You can even do sequential collection postcards instead of collection letters. I hear from clients that if they send out collections letters, they would lose all of their clients. Unfortunately these are also the same clients that also ask me “why do I get paid slowly?” The answer, whether they want to hear it or not, is because they have trained their clients to pay them slowly. Frequently in these cases I also see the friendship dynamic working against them. I’m talking about how building a rapport and fri

This is the next edition of the Adams, Evens & Ross (AER) podcast with me, Wilson Cole, President. Today we’re going to talk about reducing credit risk. 80% of businesses will go out of business within the first 5 years. After that window, even the 80% of the surviving 20% won’t make it through the next 5 years. Reducing risk to me means that if you’re extending credit, to make sure you’re covered. The best way I can explain it is that as crazy as it would be to give a large amount of money to a complete stranger, think of providing services to a complete stranger asking for staffing services, without properly reducing your risk, as the same type of crazy thing. Unfortunately I have had many clients who did not have that mindset, or had it but acted against their better judgement anyway, before they called me to explain the bad situation they were in. The situation typically involves a staffing company owner/executive saying that through some type of connection they provided staffing services or opened up

Hi, this is Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens & Ross (AER), and the topic of today’s podcast is the statistics/numbers behind back door hires (BDHs). To start off with, I want to let you know that we’ve performed millions of searches and put in a lot of hours to observe these statistics. The first type of statistic revolves around which industry is most likely to perform a BDH. The industry that is least likely to perform BDHs is the financial industry. Even though they still happen, from the numbers we’ve observed, they happen at a rate of 1 out of 700 presentations. The continue along this line, the manufacturing industry has BDH rate of 1 out of 610 presentations, the engineering industry has a rate of 1 out of 594 and the legal industry has a rate of 1 out of 535. The industry that has the most frequent rate of BDH, note this is industry and not position, is the medical industry where 1 out of 490 presentations turns into a BDH.

President of Adams, Evens & Ross (AER) Wilson Cole takes this podcast to talk about collection letters. This is the first thing he asks if a client has done when they call him to let him know they have a collections situation they may need to hand over. If the client says they have not sent out a collection letter yet, he suggests they do it before proceeding to anything else and this is why. It prompts a response and that response is a litmus test in regards to whether or not the debtor will end up paying. In response to a collection letter, sometimes the debtor will say “they’re not going to pay because…” In this scenario, it obviously lets the creditor know they need to move forward with the collections process, but the creditor should also make note to stop any/all communication directly with the debtor at this point because otherwise, anything said/done beyond this point will be used as a defense on why they (the debtor) should not pay.