5 steps to speed up sales

Surely you have read many articles by marketers about the art of attracting customers, negotiating and making sales. Effective advertising channels, sales funnel, conversion increase, etc. are discussed. But it is forgotten that for a successful sale it’s not enough to shake hands, you also need to conclude a contract that will really bring the income you were counting on.

As it usually happens: managers agreed on the key terms of the transaction, it seems that both parties are satisfied, but here lawyers and accountants get down to business and spoil everything, right? These are pathological paranoids and lazy people who are afraid of all the horrors of litigation and pull rubber.

The author of this article is one of these: he worked as a corporate lawyer in a pair of Russian IT giants who have considerable experience in sales in the mass sector and are themselves enviable buyers. The skills of struggle with the opposite side, as they say, cannot be drunk, and therefore you can share them.

Want to get around the obstacles that bureaucrats are building and simplify the process of concluding deals? Read 5 practical tips under cat.

So, we are boldly striding from simple to complex!

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

Do not say this is obvious. The message in the words: “can be agreed upon.” In most cases, contracts not only for startups and micro-companies are written very badly.

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

And let it concern the supply of equipment, and you license the software. The ball is on your side, now rule the contract of others yourself.

In order not to play in a foreign field, make your contract understandable to the client. To do this, it is enough to write it in simple language, logically and consistently state the conditions for the interaction of the parties and maintain a balance of interests. No need to make the contract one-sided, to include in it a lot of duplicate clauses and indistinct conditions.

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

In total, we spend up to 25 days on the signing of the contract, of which 15 days. for agreement with the client and 10 days. to couriers. Re-approval of the contract will take 5 days less.

Step 2. Make the contract framework

In the master contract, all essential conditions are specified in separate annexes, supplementary agreements, orders or invoices, which can be drawn up during the term of the contract.

Firstly, according to internal regulations, agreements are negotiated on different routes: contracts go the longest way through the manager, his boss, lawyer and boss. department, accountant and chief accountant, and depending on the "steepness" of the client along the way, another couple of respected participants in the approval process may be added.

Attachments upon their re-signing to the previously agreed contract go along a shorter route. Fewer people look, which means fewer edits and returns to repeated discussions with you. The result is real time and effort savings.

Secondly, you focus the attention of the counterparty on significant points, distracting you from having to read 5-10 pages of the main text of the contract. The effect is the same - “respected people” will thank you very much for freeing them from the pain of re-exploring the sections on force majeure and privacy!

In total, we will spend the same 25 days for the first signing of the framework contract (maybe a little less), however, the re-sale will be much faster - 5 days for the approval of the annex to the current contract and 10 for couriers.

Step 3. Put the terms of interaction in a separate document

This applies to any rules that you work on. For example, a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or advertising requirements. Read more about the features of TOS and SLA here.

And again you will see that the number of edits in them will drop sharply. Why? Because this is the area of ​​responsibility of narrow specialists. If he endorsed such a document, the lawyer will not go into his own diocese (with rare exceptions, of course).

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

In total, the time for the first contract will be reduced due to the exclusion of lawyers and accountants from the approval of the technical details by 5 days compared to the usual contract. The re-approval deadlines will remain the same.

Step 4. Replace applications with accounts

Think about how much time you spend on negotiating, signing and receiving bilateral applications, additional agreements from the counterparty? Isn’t it better to make a one-way account with the same basic conditions that you are used to certifying with two signatures?

And one more secret: with rare exceptions, no one agrees at all, except for the person responsible for the budget. If there is a line in the budget and a request for payment from the customer’s specialist, he (Oh my God!) Is simply automatically placed in the queue, bypassing all lawyers and other nerds.

In total, the terms of the first approval will not change, but the period of repeated sales will be significantly reduced, since discussion with lawyers and forwarding applications through couriers are excluded.

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

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

Make an offer or rules for the provision of services / performance of work / delivery and place them on your website. For an explanation of the features of the offer and the rules, see here .

In total, at the last stage, the time for the first coordination tends to the terms of reconciliation, since the client discusses only payment of the invoice within the previously agreed budget.

We only note that the work on offers is the prerogative of not only online projects and mega-companies. For example, we have a small legal and quite offline business. Nevertheless, we do everything that is written above and sell services remotely throughout Russia. At the same time, we do not bother our contractors with the approval of each clause of the contract and do not feed the Russian Post with kilograms of waste paper.

Which we sincerely wish you!

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