So, I found this interesting company offering a “breakthrough” Health Digital Assistant solution and call the CEO who was advertising a part-time sales development job on Indeed. Long story short, we talked, it was a good fit – I was a little more ‘expensive’ and had less hours to offer than what he was looking for – but he liked my approach an experience. He was “concerned” because I waived a commission or incentive for the first three months – a trial period. I sent him a proposal. He was ready to go and wanted to get started right away. But…he wanted his lawyer to review my proposal and get it back to me.
Due to the Easter holiday, there was a delay. This guy and I had spoken once or twice, the second time I spoke to him – he rambled on about some story regarding the use of his solution and how it helped his family….talking without any respect to the time.
After the delay, I received the contract his lawyer created with all the “heretofores” and “herewiths”. It was a complete rewrite of the proposal I sent which upon closer review omitted many critical details of my proposal – including some parts that were deemed essential – per my lawyer.
For a 3 month trial, he wanted a long non-compete, not just against a competing company, but I could not approach any “leads” generated (no definition of a “lead” was included). He put in a non-disparagement clause (are you kidding me?). He wanted specifics on how things were to be documented in the CRM system (OK, but I do this naturally?). He wanted to be able to speak to me after the engagement ended whenever, whatever (uh, billable time?). Critical components of my contract were left off. And he changed his tune to – “if we decide to pay you an incentive”. He was going to submit a “second contract” should the engagement continue…..this made no sense – the terms should govern the entire engagement.
Needless to say, I incorporated back a bunch of stuff from my original proposal in addition to the changes made originally.
The end result with nary a follow up conversation was… you guessed it….complete silence. He disappeared….per my note that if this didn’t work for him, the conversations are done.
All I could think about is what if I had to take my elderly mother to a doctor appointment and could not fulfill the time requirements or didn’t document something to his liking – he would claim “breach” and likely not pay me. He could hit me with a lower base pay and implement a commission in the second contract, cause of performance and my base is low enough already! Who knows what he would do.
This is a person coming from a position of complete distrust, more worried about legalese than relationship.
Trust should always overarch any relationship, especially a working relationship and one with the customers you intend to engage.