Agreements

In business, your ultimate goal is to get that Agreement signed and in hand. When I was simply doing Sales - your entire life was focused on that moment when your prospect became a client. I used to even dream about it at times - yes, I know, very sad indeed but it was an essential element. No ink, no deal. Simple as that.

As an Entrepreneur, you deal with a lot of different Agreements, you have agreements with your staff, with your suppliers, with partners in business, and of course with those all important clients. Some of these agreements may have been worked out on the back of a napkin and sealed with a handshake. Others took months of negotiating, of figuring out how you might work together and what would be the most optimal scenario for both (or multiple) parties involved.

This week, we were in London speaking with several parties that we we look forward to working with in a number of different ways. I love those talks, as they inspire all involved to new things, to open horizons and perhaps consider a way of doing business that none of us considered before. Every deal that you do looks different, needs something different to make it work and if you are too rigid in your approach, nothing will come out of it. But if you are willing to keep an open mind, you can come up with brilliantly creative solutions that are still simple enough to implement easily and quickly. Simplicity is something that you have to bear in mind - it's important not to overcomplicate a solution, it's great to dream up a wonderful new scheme, but simple deals are often the most beneficial and easily implemented.

Once you have gotten agreement verbally with your partners, it is important to keep things moving along. If too much time goes by - other things will crop up and you will lose momentum. Agreements are key to your business, even if they are not always the million dollar contracts that you dream about. So get things going, keep people motivated and implement the first steps as soon as possible.

Then one last thing on Agreements. If both parties benefit, it will be an arrangement that you won't need to be tooling over every week but it will more or less continue to manage itself. If that means giving up something in the short-term, then do it - it will repay itself in the longer term and create that so-called "win-win" scenario. If you always want to get the most out of an agreement, trust me, it won't work for a long while. There has to be a trust element and that lovely feeling that you really do wish each other the best in any relationship and agreement - be it with a supplier or a client. If you can get that - then you have done a great job. And in business, that translates into real $$$.

1 Comments

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• Bill Evans | Oct 24, 2009 11:34 AM

  I would add one aspect especially when dealing with other cultures or foreign based firms and that is to put your verbal and personal interactions in writing back to your counterpart. Not offensively but politely. "Let me confirn with you what we talked about and agreed to...." And by email and thus captures most of the details.
  
  Bill
  

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