I have a thing about creating lovable contracts.
After all, contracts help you run your business, which helps you make money, which helps you live the life you love.
Hence, contracts should be lovable.
In Stefania Passera’s thesis, she says that a standard, ‘design-free’ reactively drafted contract
conveys the impression that no effort was put into communicating clearly and empathically with the reader… it is invariably formal, cold, slightly threatening communication, because the lack of a personal or unique tone of voice prevents communication of implicit values and expectations
In other words, most contracts are unlovable. Ugly children born of necessity rather than grace and style.
Contracts don’t have to be like 50,000 piece puzzles full of legal impenetrable jargon (like the blue sky in a jigsaw). They can be beautiful and functional tools to allocate tasks and responsibilities, align expectations, define outcomes, plan for success and build the right relationships to make that happen.
As Helen Haapio says:
contracts do not make things happen, people do
What should you do?
Why not create contracts not as love letters to your lawyers, but as love letters to your prospect?
Every contract is a customer touchpoint – but not if you rely on a ‘bureaucratic style, impersonal tone of voice and undifferentiated layout’. That won’t reinforce your brand or stir any emotional response in your prospect. Those sorts of contract are, at best, hurdles to be overcome and, at worst, barriers to trusting or working with you.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
