Tip 9: Use general terms & conditions where possible
๐จ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐ป๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐น ๐ง๐ฒ๐ฟ๐บ๐ & ๐๐ผ๐ป๐ฑ๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป๐ (๐ง&๐โs) ๐๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ผ๐๐๐ถ๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ
๐๐๐๐๐ฒ: it takes a lot of time to get your company’s customer contracts (B2B) signed, even if you have great templates.
Do you constantly need to go back and forth with your customers to make small changes to your contract template, which leads to delays because e.g. both the commercial team and legal team need to amend the client contract manually?
๐ฆ๐ผ๐น๐๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป: Consider making T&Cโs instead and add these to your website.
Next step is to create a great ๐ข๐ฟ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐บ with:
– details of the customer and company;
– pricing;
– products list;
– โฆ,
with a references to these T&Cโs.
Make sure to perform a legal and commercial analysis depending on your company to determine that all important clauses are added to the Order Form.
This is a very common practice for B2C companies, but for B2B there is still a lot of work to do. Software/tech companies are leading the way in this way of contracting.
๐ฅ๐ฒ๐๐๐น๐:
– the Order Form can be completed by the Sales/Commercial Team without involvement of Legal.
– there is no need to complete the customer contract so you can share the customer contract in a very early stage of the sales process.
– if the client has no comments, the Legal Team does NOT need to be involved.
– if the client has comments, the Legal Team can negotiate the T&Cs, but only under certain conditions (e.g. approval management, volume and/or strategic importance).
– contracts are signed quicker.
Make sure that all your clients have read and approved the T&Cs. Only mentioning the link to the T&Cs is not sufficient.
๐๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ด๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ป๐ฑ: In the past month I noticed with three clients (all tech companies) that, next to their Order Form, they also had to complete and send out specific customer contracts (traditional customer/client contracts). Traditional contract meaning: manually add name and details parties on the first page, specific contract wording follows where further specific information needs to be added. Of course perfectly fine in a more traditional setting, but when handling with tech/SaaS clients this not very ideal. I advised all three clients to change the contract setup from traditional contracts to Order Forms with a link to T&Cs. They all implemented this approach with great success and very good feedback from the Management and Sales teams.
๐๐ ๐ฃ๐ข๐ฅ๐ง๐๐ก๐ง: this approach does not work for all companies, but is especially helpful in technology companies (SaaS / CPAAS / Fintech / MedTech / ConstruTech / โฆ ). Please discuss with your legal counsel / lawyer how to implement this in your company (and if it would be suitable at all).
Contact me if you want to have a chat about this.