Someone asked me today where they could find a good standard contract. I’m an advisor on contract management, but I carefully considered my response. There is no such thing as a standard contract.
Do you give your customers ’standard’ service levels? If you do, then give them a standard contract. But do you truly believe you give them just the same as everyone else?
Don’t source and use someone else’s agreement because it will not be focused on the outcomes that you deliver to your customers and will be meaningless.
If your business is as unique as you know it is, then don’t present your customers with an agreement that sells you short, and that has provisions that conflict with your offering. This is what standard contracts do. However, if your customer gives you a standard contract, you may have to look at it.
If your customer gives you their standard contract, then you will have to negotiate terms that match your service offering. This may seem confrontational, and will take a little more effort, but to not do this will leave you your contract and your service on ‘different pages’. If things go wrong, you could find yourself in breach of contract through no fault of your own, just because the contract is poorly constructed.
When constructing your contract, consider the goodwill you are selling. Don’t include unreasonable terms and conditions in your contracts, because presenting these to a customer who has just agreed in principal to make a purchase, may alter the way they see you and might make any contradictory implied warranties or promises look just like lip service.
Create your standard contract to include the quantitative and qualitative measures of what you deliver, make it outcomes based. Make it not a page shorter or longer than it needs to be. Specify your offering well.
You should not include legalistic terms just for the sake of it, but be wary. If you do not understand something have someone explain it to you, it may be very important.
Once you have invested in your own ’standard’ contract that is very specific to your business, you can use it every time, making minor amendments to reflect minor differences in what you agree to deliver. Just please ensure that standard means specific, to you.
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