Rookie move need advice

hello experienced consultants. I am an experienced professional, but a rookie consultant operating on my own. I just sent a deal off to my first potential customer, and they came back and asked for exclusivity/non-compete. I obliged and drew up a document - probably not a great idea. I am now learning the reason they asked for this was because what I was offering was perceived as very valuable. Duh - ::facepalm::

Now I am wanting to back out. The contract I sent wasn't signed. It was meant to be a working document. But they pushed it to their legal.

What do I do in this situation?

4 Comments
 

You did not sign the document, right? Maybe you can tell them that you can just sign a non-disclosure agreement instead of a non-compete agreement. I'm just not sure if this can push the client away, but you mentioned that what you are offering is perceived as very valuable. What's the duration of the non-compete agreement and what will be the duration of your project with this company?

 
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I did not sign anything. I sent them unsigned paper...it was meant to be a suggestion. My experienced buddy told me this was a party foul. Basically agree in principle without writing anything down. That they will see my backing out as gaming them and I'll look like an arse.

2 months to implement, their option to lock the source code up for 3 years after that, in a predefined set of 10-15 states (it is a geographical analytics tech). My lawyer basically said that 3 years was WAY too long, and that I am an idiot and that the number of states I quoted could be selected ("gamed") such that they could restrict the entire US by picking every other state.

 

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