Through three focus group sessions (consisting of 24 business leader-members) and interviews (with 19 bank officers and managers), this study explores the various tactics and ways, both tough and soft, in which Singapore companies' and banks' debt collection negotiators negotiate or get monies back from those who have taken loans from them. An off-shot side issue of the study is that it also highlights some debt collection tactics of some loan sharks' operators.

We negotiate all times be it in our business or personal lives. "Negotiating effectively starts with communicating effectively" (Dessler, 2001: 367). Negotiation is a core management competency and such skills are increasingly important for leaders, and managers in the business world (Thompson, 2005). Negotiation can be defined as a formal bargaining or an informal discussion between two parties, each increases his or her influence over the other party. One increases one's influence so as to win the other party over to one's point of view, and in doing so, getting what one wants (Low, 2004).

Negotiating to collect debts from those who owe the company money is one form of negotiation. The company can appoint a debt collection agent or do the debt collection itself. If the company however negotiates well to recover monies from its clients, it can help itself alleviate its cash-flow problems. The purpose of this article is to discuss, in general, negotiation and debt collection but more specifically, to identify what negotiation techniques and tactics that are commonly used to collect debts.

There are newspaper stories about debtors being beaten because they did not pay a debt. But if one looks closely, they owed money to criminals or illegal moneylenders, and criminals have their own ways to collect, one that is hardly ever by using licensed debt collectors (Heath, 1990).To emphasize, very much different from the "ah long" (illegal loan providers or loan sharks as they are called in Singapore), the companies and banks rely more on reasoning and the fear of being made known to their family members; these make the debtors (attempt to or work solutions to) pay back their loans (Ministry for Home Affairs, Singapore, 2004).