Imagine signing your company’s largest contract of the year with a new client. Sales staff celebrate bonuses, and production goes to work on deliverables. When final payment is due, however, the client defaults and won’t return your emails or calls. It doesn’t take long, or much effort, to learn that this isn’t an isolated incident with this customer.
Could you have prevented this costly mistake by performing due diligence on that prospective client before signing on the dotted line? What are the benefits and risks of integrating this practice into your business process? And if you do, how would you go about conducting due diligence on prospective clients?