5 steps to accelerate sales

Surely you read many articles of marketers about the art of attracting customers, negotiating and making sales. Effective advertising channels, sales funnel, conversion enhancement, etc. are discussed. But it is forgotten that for a successful sale it is not enough to hit the hands, it is also necessary to conclude a contract that will really bring the income you expected.

As it usually happens: the managers have agreed on the key terms of the deal, it seems that both parties are satisfied, but then lawyers with accountants get down to business and spoil everything, right? These are pathological paranoids and lazy people who frighten everyone with the horrors of litigation and pull the rubber.
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The author of this article is one of them: he worked as a corporate lawyer in a pair of Russian IT giants who have no small sales experience in the mass sector and are themselves enviable buyers. Skills of struggle with the opposite side, as they say, are not to be drunk, and therefore you can share them.

Do you want to bypass the obstacles that bureaucrats are building and simplify the procedure for concluding transactions? Read 5 practical tips under the cat.

So, step boldly from simple to complex!

Step 1. Make a contract that can be agreed with the client

Do not say that it is obvious. Message in the words: "can be reconciled." In most cases, contracts not only startups and micro companies are written out of the ordinary bad.

Remember that on the other side no one will delve into the intricacies of your document and make complete changes to it. Lawyers, as well as accountants, agree agreements on the regulations. In it, a specific time is allotted for each operation. Therefore, it is easier for them to say that your contract is worthless and offer an “old proven universal contract”.

And let it concern the delivery of equipment, and you license the software. The ball is on your side, now edit someone else's contract yourself.

In order not to play on a foreign field make your contract clear to the client. To do this, it is enough to write it in simple language, logically and consistently state the conditions of interaction between the parties and observe a balance of interests. It is not necessary to make the agreement one-sided, to include in it a mass of duplicate items and indistinct conditions.

Be honest with yourself: on the site of the client you yourself would not have signed such an agreement.

Total for the signing of the contract spend up to 25 days, of which 15 days. for coordination with the client and 10 days. on couriers. Re-negotiation of the contract will take 5 days less.

Step 2. Make the contract framework

In a framework contract, all material terms are specified in separate annexes, additional agreements, orders, or invoices, which can be issued in set during the contract period.

Firstly, according to the internal regulations, the negotiation of contracts follows different routes: contracts go through the longest journey through the manager, his superior, his lawyer, and the chief legal officer. department, accountant and chief accountant, and depending on the client’s “steepness”, a couple of respected participants in the approval process may be added along the way.

When they are re-signed to the previously agreed contract, the applications follow the shortened route. Fewer people looks, it means fewer edits and returns for repeated discussions with you. As a result, real time and effort savings.

Secondly, you focus the attention of the counterparty on the essential points, distracting from the need to read 5-10 pages of the main text of the contract. The effect is the same - “dear people” will thank you very much for freeing them from the torment of re-learning the sections about force majeure and confidentiality!

Total for the first signing of the framework agreement we will spend the same 25 days (maybe a little less), but the re-sale will be much faster - 5 days to approve the annex to the existing contract and 10 for couriers.

Step 3. Take out the conditions of interaction in a separate document

This applies to any rules that you work on. For example, the Service Level Agreement (SLA) or requirements for promotional materials. More information about the features of TOS and SLA can be found here.

And you will again see that the number of edits in them will fall sharply. Why? Because it is a zone of responsibility of narrow specialists. If he endorsed such a document, the lawyer will not climb into his diocese (with rare exceptions, of course).

And then, do you often read the Insurance Rules when signing a policy? Here, too, the same thing: no one wants to spend their time studying documentation related to technical aspects with a lot of incomprehensible terms and other non-legal / non-financial / non-accounting information.

Total time for the first contract will be reduced due to the exclusion of lawyers and accountants from the coordination of technical details of days by 5 compared with the usual contract. The timing of the renegotiation will remain the same.

Step 4. Replace apps with bills

Think about how much time you spend on negotiating, signing and receiving from the counterparty bilateral applications, additional agreements? Wouldn't it be better to make a one-sided invoice with the same basic conditions that you used to certify with two signatures?

And one more secret: nobody will agree on accounts with rare exceptions, except for the person responsible for the budget. If there is a line in the budgeted budget and an application for payment from a specialized specialist of the customer, he (Oh my God!) Is simply automatically put in a queue, bypassing all lawyers and other tricks.

Total terms of the first approval will not change, but the period of repeat sales will be significantly reduced, because no discussion with lawyers and forwarding applications via couriers are excluded.

Step 5. Refuse the printed form of the contract in favor of the offer

And really, why give the counterparty the opportunity to impose their own conditions - you just need to get ahead of him! In fact, the offer expresses the content of the contract of accession, which can be concluded only by accepting its conditions in full without any objections.

Make an offer or rules for the provision of services / execution of works / delivery and place them on your website. Explanations on the features of the offer and rules, see here .

Total at the last stage, the time for the first approval tends to the timing of the reconciliation, since the client only discusses invoice payment within the previously agreed budget.

We only note that work on offers is the prerogative of not only online projects and mega-companies. We have, for example, a small legal and quite self-contained offline business. Nevertheless, we do everything that is written above and sell services remotely throughout Russia. At the same time, we do not strain counterparties by agreeing on each item of the contract and do not feed the Post of Russia with kilograms of waste paper.

What we sincerely wish you!

If you have your own chips in dragging contracts through the back office of counterparties, share in the comments.