You've been having business discussions with another party. Your counterpart has been receptive, communicative, attentive and optimistic about the future of your business interaction together. Your intuition tells you that there is a powerful potential synergy and that the time is fast getting closer to seal the deal. A contract will be involved, and most people are intimidated by contracts.
Then, that time arrives. No more hesitation: you must reduce all of your mutual and respective objectives, responsibilities and sharing of rewards (as well as a myriad of other relationship or transactional variables) into a distillation -- in a written form. It can be a partnership agreement, and engagement agreement (or "Letter Of Engagement"), a letter of intent (LOI), a memorandum of understanding (MOU)... and it will be somewhat more formal in its tone than your oral conversations and friendly emails.
Its content is crucial, but its method of delivery to your contractual counterpart or counterparts is just as crucial. This contract represents a formalized legal obligation which is binding, and it bodes more gravely than any casual conversations and oral promises.
Please be advised that the author does not provide any legal advice hereby, and that the information presented should be regarded as suggestions regarding communications, marketing, negotiations and business, in general.
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| Many People Are Intimidated Or Phobic About Contracts |
1) Before you send a "proposed form of agreement" (this latter term implies flexibility, give-and-take, and an innocuous, noncommittal opportunity for further refinement or review), phone the recipient, and mention that you are going to send an email with a proposed form of agreement attached for his or her review, and that he or she should look for it in his or her email.
2) Make your email transmittal warm, non-threatening, and reiterate that "the attached proposed form of agreement" is being sent for review purposes only, and that after your recipient has had a chance to review it, you would like to arrange a teleconference in order to get his or her insights, refinements, questions and suggestions.
3) Telephone the recipient within no more than two days after sending the email, and just mention that you wanted to confirm that he or she had had an opportunity to review it, and to schedule a "mutual read-through" by teleconference. Get something on the calendar. Restate your good feelings about the prospects for great things to come.
4) Have your "mutual read-through conference", paragraph-by-paragraph, and if all is satisfactory (after some tweaking and adjustments to demonstrate your respect and receptiveness), repeat the process with the new and improved version as you had "discussed, reviewed and refined in your last teleconference.
5) Repeat the previous process, sending (if legally plausible) your version of the new document fully-executed by you or your company's authorized representative, with a number of days (mentioned in the contract) for it to be countersigned by your counterpart in order to make the agreement valid and legally binding on both parties.
While I must recommend (reluctantly) that you use the services of legal counsel to help you in drafting or reviewing any contract, I would advise that you never, ever let the attorneys for both sides take over contractual discussions or negotiations. Part of making an agreement come together is avoiding: grandstanding; inherently hostile parties having a compensatory interest in prolonging the process; focusing more on minutiae and fine points than the already agreed-to objective.
Proceed to boldly build your bridge.
Douglas E. Castle for
The InfoSphere Business Alerts And Intelligence Blog
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