Tip 9: Use general terms & conditions where possible

𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗺𝘀 & 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 (𝗧&𝗖’s) 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲

𝗜𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲: 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?

𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Consider making T&C’s instead and add these to your website.

Next step is to create a great 𝗢𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺 with:
– details of the customer and company;
– pricing;
– products list;
– …,
with a references to these T&C’s.

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.

𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁:
– 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.

𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: 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.

𝗜𝗠𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗧: this approach does not work for all companies, but is especially helpful in technology companies (SaaS / CPAAS / Fintech / MedTech / ConstruTech / … ). 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.