Strategic drift Occurs when the customer and supplier do not work to maintain their relationship and/or work to update strategic priorities. This typically happens after a few good months or quarters. Senior management for either organization “checks out”, moves on to...
Performance negotiations Back-and-forth conversations to reach an agreement when the customer and the supplier do not see eye-to-eye on the solution to the performance issue. An organization’s willingness to negotiate is—at some basic level—a confession of mutual...
Termination clauses Either for convenience or for cause, include a notice to the supplier but do not set forth the structure to unwind the business relationship. In fact, these clauses may provide incentives for the supplier to “dump and run”, stripping resources from...
Savvy buyers Savvy buyers will often leverage market competition to seek pricing in more than one way, or with greater granularity than they may ultimately contract for. For example, buying organizations will ask for a firm fixed fee and a cost-plus management fee for...
Customer/Supplier Relationships Each customer/supplier relationship will require its own level of contract management correlating to the level of interdependence and complexity. The contract professional’s goal will be to easily identify the appropriate level of...
I’ve been asked many times, “What should I do if I’m less powerful than my counterpart?” Power plays an important role in throughout the entire contract life cycle. As it relates to the contract professional, power is your ability to alter other people’s...
