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Customer Supplied Agreements... Two Suggested Changes Before Signing

Guest post by: Marijo McCarthy

Article Overview: The holiday season invariably finds my clients pushing aggressively to turn sales into contracts and lock those contracts down by the end of the year. It's understandable… we all want to begin the new year strong, with lots of contracts in the pipeline. The rush to sign at year end, however, can have dire consequences, particularly for those accustomed to using their own standard form of services contract rather than signing a customer's form of agreement.

Customer Supplied Agreements... Two Suggested Changes Before Signing

Customer Supplied Agreements... Two Suggested Changes Before Signing The holiday season invariably finds my clients pushing aggressively to turn sales into contracts and lock those contracts down by the end of the year. It's understandable… we all want to begin the new year strong, with lots of contracts in the pipeline.

The rush to sign at year end, however, can have dire consequences, particularly for those accustomed to using their own standard form of services contract rather than signing a customer's form of agreement. In the push-to-sign-quickly process, and if relying on a customer supplied document as is, you may be giving up important rights that you'll wish you still had in months and years to come.

Fortunately, and given sufficient time, attention and the patience to follow through, you can often improve on your customer's standard agreement at little or no actual cost to them (they may even admire your keen attention to detail). After all, contracts were meant to be negotiated, not just signed, and doing the latter without the former often leaves unnecessary vulnerabilities.

Consider these two simple modifications to a "standard" agreement:

1. Payment terms. Here's a standard paragraph regarding payment, the kind which your customer may ask you to sign:

Not terrible, but it could be better. By adding the boldfaced words below, you at least frame a time period for this process, giving you certainty on when a complaint will be resolved, and a better probability that the complaint will be judged on the promised services of the contract, rather than vague claims of "inappropriateness."



2. Company attribution. Many companies include restrictive language in their contracts pertaining to the use of their name, logo, trademark, etc. Here's a typical example of what you may find:



By agreeing to this provision as is, your terrific work for the customer will remain a well kept secret, instead of the feather in your cap that you'd like it to be. By adding the boldfaced language below, you get the issue on the table and decided within the signing of the initial contract:



Patience, persistence, attention to detail and reasonable compromise… all of these work in your favor as you navigate through pages and pages of contracts at the close of the year. Yes, you're eager to sign on the dotted line. Just make sure that the end result is a document you'll be pleased with throughout 2011 — a few well-placed changes are often all it takes.

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Article Tags: contracts, customersupplied, services contract, year end



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