when you finally get the pleasure of doing a sale, you need to make sure you have the right paperwork in place. One of the key things is the sales contract. Luckily, I had the agreement that I signed for the SAP partnership, so I was able to use that a guide for structuring my own sales Contract. What I learned is that there are some pretty standard pieces of it… then from there, you just need to add your own spin.
For example, here’s the main pieces of mine that I just put together.
1. The general section. From the ones I’ve seen, this is the easy part. It has the name of what you’re selling with a short description, the customer’s information (name, address, etc..) My contact info and any annexes (additional documents)
2. Scope of the agreement. this pretty much specifies what you are selling and what’s included/not included. It also defines who “you” are.
3. Next is the Renumeration… pretty much, what’s the agreed upon price. Any discounts, etc. the short story behind this, what are you getting for the sale. In my case, I gave a list price, then stated the discount the customer gets in exchange for a reference and signing the agreement by a certain date.
4. Invoicing and Payment. Pretty simple… payment terms. when will they pay by, do you offer a cash discount, do you provide the product or service before or after receiving payment.
5. the next one was something I added in because it was a customer concern. that was support. Because I’m a small company, the customer is obviously concerned about how I will support the product after the sale. The funny thing is, actually he’s likely to get much better support out of me than he is a bigger company, but regardless, it still needs to be spelled out in the agreement. Some important things to include are also what isn’t covered in your support. If you don’t clearly state this, you could end up providing support for things you didn’t intend. Do your best to think like a lawyer here =)
Finally, the signature page. Make sure to collect the customer’s PO number. the name and title of whomever will be signing this agreement, and once again the date. Finally, you will countersign this agreement to make it all legal like.
All and all, it was pretty painless, but I”m sure glad I had an example to start with. If you’d like to see mine, just make me an offer on my software and I’ll be happy to send one right over to you =).
As always, thanks for reading,
Mike