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Build a Contract-First MSP: Agreements that Reduce Risk, Lift Profit, and Speed Every Deal
Turn agreements into a daily operating system, not a rainy-day file, with clear service definitions, change-ready terms, and ongoing updates.
Most MSP pain isn’t legal drama, it’s the everyday revenue leakage, scope creep, and misaligned expectations that drain margin and trust. IT Agree (founded by IT lawyer Anne Hall) helps MSPs run on modern, service-specific customer agreements, with guidance and updates baked in, so you can protect the business, communicate value, and grow with confidence.
Explainer: Intro
Purpose & Focus: Establish the contract strategy that underpins your MSP: what you agree, how you explain it, and how it changes as services change. Make agreements part of how you run the business daily, not just “in case of court.”
Key Principles:
- Contracts prevent everyday loss (scope creep, free work, confusion) as much as worst-case disputes.
- Current beats generic: stop using old, one-size-fits-all templates.
- Clarify roles between you, the customer, and third-party vendors to contain risk.
How to Do It (Quick Start)
- List your core offerings (MSP, projects, Microsoft 365/Azure, cyber, BCDR, VoIP, hardware, SaaS, etc.). Map each to an agreement type. itagree.com
- Define “what’s included / excluded,” customer responsibilities, and escalation lanes for each.
- Decide where you’ll explain agreements in the sales/onboarding flow (talk-through before signature).
Metric to Watch
- % customers covered by current agreements.
- % proposals with an agreement walkthrough before signature.
- Support tickets flagged “out of scope” that convert to approved billable work.
Explainer: Why Advisory
Design Next
Purpose & Focus: Create agreements that match how you actually deliver, by service, so expectations, responsibilities, and pricing logic are unambiguous.
Key Principles:
- Use service-specific agreements rather than forcing one master to do everything. itagree.com
- Align plain-English scopes and responsibilities with your operational playbooks.
- Include “If/Then” rules for changes, incidents, and vendor dependencies.
How to Do It (Quick Start)
- For each service, draft: scope, SLAs/SLOs, inclusions/exclusions, “extras,” customer duties, and third-party limits.
- Add change & update clauses so agreements evolve when your services or vendor terms change.
- Use a short, consistent “How to get extra work approved & billed” section across all services.
Metric to Watch
- Time to produce a tailored agreement set.
- Objections per deal (and time to resolution).
- Revenue captured from “extras” vs. written scope (leakage reduction).
Explainer: Shape the vision.
Set Up & Onboarding
Purpose & Focus: Move agreements into your sales rhythm and onboarding checklist so customers understand what they’re signing, and your team knows how to enforce it.
Key Principles:
- Explain before signature: walk customers through roles, inclusions, and how out-of-scope work gets priced/approved. itagree.com
- Lock in payment triggers and prerequisites before work starts.
- Use talk tracks and one-page visuals alongside the legal doc.
How to Do It (Quick Start)
- Add an “Agreement Walkthrough” step to every opportunity and a gate on onboarding kickoff.
- Train CSMs/AMs to reference the agreement when issues arise (e.g., third-party failures, customer-introduced changes).
- Standardise change orders and incident add-ons so “extra” work is always approved and billed.
Metric to Watch
- % projects/services that start after signature + up-front payment.
- Disputes per month after onboarding.
- Average time from proposal → signed agreement (with objections handled).
Explainer: Bring to life.
Foundations first
Purpose & Focus: Treat agreements as living assets: update them as your services and vendor landscape change. Build a lightweight governance cadence.
Key Principles:
- IT Agree’s Beacon model = agreements + guidance + ongoing updates (and member forum). Bake that expectation into your ops.
- Schedule semi-annual reviews and issue updates across the customer base.
- Keep an internal RACI for who updates templates, who explains changes, and how customers accept revisions.
How to Do It (Quick Start)
- Stand up a quarterly “Agreement Health” review (services added, vendor changes, new risks).
- Version your templates; announce updates; track customer acceptance.
- Use the forum/office hours for tricky pushes and customer objections.
Metric to Watch
- % customers on the latest version.
- Time from risk/change identified → agreement update issued.
- Number of tickets resolved by referencing the agreement (vs. ad-hoc negotiation).
Explainer: Benefits
Foundations first
Purpose & Focus: Well-governed agreements increase profitability now and valuation later. Make “contract quality” part of your growth and exit story.
Key Principles:
- Clear scopes & vendor boundaries contain liability and protect margin.
- Consistent, modern agreements with broad coverage and accepted updates look great in diligence.
- Contract education improves retention and NRR.
How to Do It (Quick Start)
- Track coverage: % revenue under current agreements, by service.
- Standardise renewal & price-change language and comms.
- Build a “diligence pack”: agreement index, version log, acceptance evidence.
Metric to Watch
- Gross margin uplift from reduced leakage.
- Renewal rate / NRR for customers with walkthrough vs. without.
- Valuation drivers: % standard contracts, % latest version, objection rates.