Maximizing your sales staff to avoid fraud. (Communique).

In their traditional role, the sales department is not seen as a mechanism to avoid or identify fraud. Avoiding fraud is typically a job that falls squarely on the shoulders of the credit department. But, times are changing and companies need to maximize all available tools to reduce and eliminate fraud using all available resources.

One of the most overlooked resources in eliminating fraud is your company's sales staff. Often, sales and credit seem to be polar opposites in their goals and objectives. However, truly progressive companies are working to merge the goals of sales and credit. For example, just as a salesperson's sales are tracked, fraudulent transactions should be tracked. This would allow one to see if a particular sales representative had a higher rate of prospecting fraudulent accounts. If so, it might indicate that particular sales representative may need more training regarding how to identity possible fraud.

It is important to consider that fraud is often a geographic problem. For various reasons some areas of the country are statistically more prone to fraud as are particular states. Some noteworthy states are California (particularly LA County), New York (NY City), Florida (Miami), and Texas. But fraud is not confined to these states only. Fraud can be found in every state in the United States and every province in Canada.

The main focus in avoiding fraud should be training of your sales staff. From a credit department point of view, sales should be considered their eyes and ears. Sales representatives have an opportunity that credit representatives seldom get--and that is to visit your customer's location. Many small things can be picked up as to the legitimacy of the business--or lack thereof-by being aware of some details that cannot be obtained from a credit application, financials and a credit report.

There are some things a sales representative should try to find out when he has the opportunity to visit a customer's location, From the outside of a customer's location, one should see signs identifying their business. If there are no signs, and your customer's name is not on the marquee, that could signal a problem. Arrive unannounced in order to see your customer during their normal business operation. When possible, find out ...