Why agreements should change as projects do

In our agency days, we had a digital marketing project where the goal was to generate inquiries for a new elective medical practice. The terms of the agreement required hitting a target number of inquiries each month, a typical project for us at the time. The project was running smoothly, and we are exceeding our targets set and agreed with the client.

About 2 months into the campaign the client came to the realization they were not able to handle the volume of inquiries. They approached us with the changes they wanted, which now meant that they wanted to receive booked appointments.

Now, this changes the whole campaign. Instead of just capturing inquiries and passing them on, we are now required to implement a live booking system, handle follow ups, reminders, and integrate with their booking platform all within the same budget.

Our initial reaction was a big fat ‘NO’, at least not without increasing the budget.

However, with a little back and forth with the client we came to a newly adjusted agreement that worked for both parties. We changed expectations for targets on booking volumes, we requested a pause in delivering inquires and were able to allocate a full month’s budget to developing the required changes. We also ensured the client understood their responsibilities under the new approach.

What could have turned into a lost client, unsuccessful campaign, or unhappy client, ended up with a workable solution for both parties generating better results for the client and without eating into our campaign margin.

Honestly, this is not a standalone story, this type of thing happens all the time with projects of all types and in all sorts of industries. Projects change and evolve as parties involved learn and understand more, thus, so should the agreements that guide them.

A different approach to typical agreements

Typically for many businesses, agreements are exchanged once prior to a new project / campaign, or new relationship. After maybe a few change requests, it is signed off by both parties, filed, and forgotten. They usually only come out again when there is a dispute. Making such a key document very static.

What some firms do and how we handled variations in my previous career as a Civil Engineer, is to amend agreements with each change to a project. Making our agreements a little less static.

Really simply, whenever there was a change request, we would collate all email exchanges, scan phone call notes, and include all other relevant documents into an agreement amendment. Which, we would then get the client to sign off on.

This is a huge risk reduction for our projects and helped with transparency with the client, if you are not already doing it, you should be. Since implementing this practice into our agencies, we never experienced an issue with non-payment for variations or disputes on delivering on differences that were requested during a project.

Handling difficult changes with your client

Handling difficult changes can be simplified by sticking to a simple process. It involves identifying what is happening in the project, the change itself, the structure of your agreement, and your client.

The process we take will commonly involve:

1. Firstly, identifying how significant the change will be to previously agreed terms.
2. The impact the changes will have to resource requirements (e.g. more staff, more budget), expectations, and outcome.
3. Communication of the findings from 1. and 2. to the client to determine if they still want to proceed.
4. Depending if the client wants to proceed with the changes or not, the agreement is amended to account.
5. It is all signed off and the project should be able to continue.

Difficult changes will require a mix of the following:

• Creativity – to come up with ideas to ensure project changes are accounted for and that it is mutually beneficial
• Negotiation – to ensure your requirements are met
• Compromise – to ensure the clients requirements are met
• Communication – to ensure all parties fully understand and agree to the changes.

Minimising the need for changes

Experience is really one of the best ways to know what could possibly happen in a project and be able to account for it in the agreement. Second to that is having access to agreement templates, where those lessons have already been learnt.

In our agencies, prior to using our own Agreemi platform, the agreements we sent out only got longer. We were trying to account for every possible scenario we had experienced or heard others had experienced at every stage of a project in one document.

This sometimes meant we would get an agreement back with a bunch of highlights and notes from a new client for agreement items that were unlikely and or not even relevant to them.

Eventually, what we did was put together an agreement with standard service provider terms, then for each project we would take the project proposal and amend it as the expected deliverables part of the agreement. We then had a templated list of agreement items for the individual services we offered, which we would pull from and include in the final agreement we sent to the client.

This also included notes for specific services to serve as prompts, for example, the following was included under timeframe whenever there was website development work in a project:

The notes for our internal team when putting the agreement together with this item included the following:

• Overestimate timeframe, rather than underestimate. It is better to deliver ahead of time than late.
• Include any additional potential time disruptions to the project.

By taking this approach, we streamlined our agreement creation and signing process. Which provided a better experience for our clients, while also accounting for uncertainties in a project thus minimising the need for changes.

Handling changes with your client

When starting out running our agency I have often found it challenging to push back on a client’s request for changes or in other instances when having to let our client know of changes required from our end.

I simply did not want to make the client unhappy.

It is important to remember that not everyone reacts the same way to similar situations. What I eventually figured out is that the client often prefer that you raise it with them. As it allows you both to work together to resolve it much sooner.

When approaching the client with needed changes, try to present it in a way that makes it mutually beneficial. For example:

Instead of: We are going to need to extend the delivery date by 1 week.

You could try: We would like to extend the delivery by 1 week to allow us to put the finishing touches on the project, this will also allow us to include ‘this bonus service’.

Or in another circumstance, just like with the elective medical practice where the client was requesting a change.

Instead of: Saying no to changing the deliverable from enquiries to booked appointments.

You could try: Proposing a way to make the project continue to work for both parties.

Final words

It is not possible to plan for every single change your business or service may face, changes are going to happen in your projects. Agreements that change with a project help to reduce risks and helps improve communication with your client.

Having a process to make those changes more efficient or using tools that help make it even easier should be an essential tool for your business.