How to review a contract (part two).

Last week I wrote about how contracts are never neutral, that reviewing a contract means comparing it to your ideal deal scenario, and that a workshop is a good way to establish your ideal deal scenario.

But there’s a more fundamental point that I was not explicit about. Here’s the scenario.

You are the seller, and you are about to enter into a contract with a large company. The deal is of a type you don’t do regularly - in fact you haven’t done a deal of this type for at least 24 months. You are very inexperienced.

On the other side, the large company does deals of this type on a regular basis. They are very experienced.

Plus, they are proposing to do the deal on their standard form which, by its nature, will be heavily skewed towards their interests, not yours.

And their side of the negotiation will be led by their Procurement department whose primary function is not to have an intelligent conversation, but to beat up the supplier and get the lowest price they can.

This is not a level playing field.

How do you level up the playing field? That’s where the workshop comes in. It acts a crash-course for that deal type, and your business emerges smarter and savvier. You now know what your ideal deal scenario – and the accompanying contract – looks like in all its details.

You are ready to go.

15 October 2024