“We’ve signed!” Now, what did we promise?

The contract is signed. Sales brings the good news. A bell, a gong, the usual celebration. Then the consultant or customer success manager opening the project reads the file: “Did we really agree to this?”

Take a simple example. A young SaaS company lands a €60,000 contract. To close it, the team agreed to start earlier, added a bespoke report and included a few days of support. Each concession seemed reasonable. Together, they changed the contract.

The price stayed the same. So everyone can celebrate giving no discount.

But a discount does not have to appear on the quote.

“Yes, we can do that”

I like selling. I understand the urge to find a solution when an agreement feels close. The customer asks for an effort. You look for a way to say yes. That is part of the job.

The problem starts when that effort commits time nobody has costed, or colleagues who were not part of the conversation.

An extra weekly meeting. A different delivery format. Training for a second team. Migrating old data. Nothing spectacular on its own. But someone will have to do it, sometimes every week for a year.

The customer is not necessarily difficult. They are asking for what was promised. And operations may not be inefficient: they may be delivering more than the original estimate covered.

Before asking everyone to work faster, it is worth rereading what we sold.

The customer you would want twenty times over

When choosing the next prospects, we tend to look at our biggest accounts, recognised logos and sectors where we have already won business.

I would add a question: which customer would we like to have twenty times over?

The answer need not come from sales. Ask the person scheduling the work, support and maintenance, the project manager, or the customer success manager handling complaints.

A €40,000 account served well with an offer you know how to deliver may be a better model than a €100,000 account needing an exception every Tuesday. It depends on costs, potential and what the company wants to build. Revenue alone does not settle it.

A large, demanding customer can also justify investment. But “strategic” needs an explanation. What reference will we be able to use? Which market opens up? What additional volume is credible? When will we review the bet?

Without answers, the word can excuse a bad contract for a long time.

Bring delivery back into sales decisions

I would start by reviewing a few recently launched contracts with the people who sold them and those delivering them.

For each one, three things: what we planned, what we actually do, and what explains the gap. You do not need perfect cost accounting to discover that a supposedly one-off service happens every week.

Then separate the causes. A bad estimate can be corrected. So can poor execution. Extra work can be negotiated. Blaming sales for everything would be too easy.

But when the same request comes from several customers, it deserves a decision. Include it and revisit the price, make it an option, or explain clearly why you do not provide it. Continuing to offer it “as an exception” settles nothing.

This also improves negotiations. When a customer asks for a lower price, the seller has more to work with than a discount limit: a different scope, another timetable, a volume commitment. They can negotiate the terms of the agreement instead of giving ground inch by inch.

What to automate once you understand it

AI can help compare a proposal, meeting notes and a kickoff report to flag commitments worth checking. A responsible person still needs to confirm what was actually agreed.

I find that more interesting than producing fifty versions of a follow-up email. It helps prepare a specific decision.

But the tool cannot choose which exceptions the company wants to fund. That choice belongs to the people responsible for sales, delivery and the result.

This is part of sales leadership too: choosing which deals to pursue, preparing negotiations and accounting for what happens after the signature.

If sales are growing but each new contract makes the team’s work harder, let’s discuss a specific deal. Targeting, the offer and commercial terms are where I can help you act.

Knowing everything it now asks of you, which contract would you want to sign twenty times this year?