Light Bulbs

This post is made by Alison Moss, Devant's new Commercial Contracts Advisor. We are delighted to welcome Alison to the team, and look forward to many future posts from her! - Tiffany
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I wish I had £1 for every Sales Manager, Commercial Manager or FD I’ve spoken to recently who’s said to me “I didn’t know that!” It would have bought me at least a few bottles of good wine over Christmas.

One of the many realisations I had when I joined Devant was the true limitation of most business people’s knowledge of commercial contracts. I’m speaking now as a sales manager who reviewed and negotiated on commercial contracts as a fundamental part of my job. I generally dealt with the commercial issues and consulted the retained solicitor about the legal stuff. It was the set standard procedure, but at huge cost to the company!

As business managers most of us have to deal with commercial contracts and they are frequently seen as a sales prevention tool. Because we have some understanding of the clauses and terms, we assume we can simply rely on the solicitor to spot any legal nasties. But what an opportunity we are missing.

- We could save money in the form of legal fees if we weren’t totally reliant on a solicitor.
- We could save time, and therefore money, by empowering our sales teams so that they aren’t totally reliant on us.
- We can change the focus of negotiations using contract terms and hence improve the power balance with customers or suppliers.
- We could give ourselves and our teams better credibility and confidence by truly understanding what the implications of a contract are.
- We could negotiate more commercially relevant contracts.
- We could do all this by gaining a better understanding of commercial contracts.

I have attended the Devant Commercial Contract Workshops and watched ‘the light bulb go on’ with business managers as well as experiencing it myself.

My one regret? That I didn’t have the benefit of these courses when I was a sales manager.