To sign or not to sign?

A recent project has highlighted for me a dilemma faced by many small and medium sized companies in business today.

Simply put, it goes like this: "We want to encourage clients to do business with us, and make it as easy as possible for them, but we're selling high-value products/services and would ideally like them to sign a contract to protect us both. "

So there are two apparently conflicting aims: to make it easy for the customer to buy, and to make it safe for you to sell.

This became apparent when we started having a discussion about our client's sales process, and how we would get the customer to sign their contract. Their concern was that requiring the customer to sign something would slow down the process and put a barrier in the way of the sale. The alternative was to consider using General Terms and Conditions, that did not require signature by the client.

The challenge here is that, particularly if you are making large sales, you want to ensure that your terms and conditions will actually be the ones that govern the sale. This can be difficult with an exchange of Ts & Cs as the customer will often return a purchase order setting out their own Ts & Cs - which, strangely enough, rarely reflect yours! If the customer actually signs your contract then the problem of the "battle of the forms" does not arise (providing your contract is well drafted!), and it's very clear which terms apply to the deal.

After much debate, we have now prepared a set of General Terms that set out a clear process for determining when a contract has been made. The next step will be working with the sales and presales teams to ensure they understand these General Terms, and know how to use them in conjunction with the proposal and sales process. This training activity is absolutely key to the value of the new General Terms, as without it they are simply another document sitting on the company intranet. And for us at Devant, it's essential to build the contract into the business rather than leaving it on the side (or in the proverbial filing cabinet!).

Given the high level of opportunities being generated in this particular customer's business, I think we'll quickly have the opportunity to put these new terms and conditions to the test - I'll let you know how we get on!