My 2 cents…
My experience with mostly large utility companies… that are a pain to deal with on the procurement side… Most of the large ones are SOX bound… and they will put you through the ringer initially… however, I find that those large companies are not litigious by nature and are quite easy going once going… the problem is to get them going…
I only sold enterprise licenses… so it was not a problem but I like Daniel’s idea very much… just charge for it…
Now, naturally, those companies are going to take you somewhere else business wise… They will want you to commit to many things… the most complicated of is probably insurance and insurance coverage… but those can be negotiated…
A good commercial lawyer is essential… so a 3000$ sale is really not worth the trouble sometimes…
Things we did sucessfully with some very large entities…
- We never signed unlimited liability… we were always able to limit it to something manageable or max it out to the value of the contract…
- Insurance amounts… can be rachetted down in most cases… commercial liability insurance is a royal pain when they require a specific contract based coverage…
- Discount licenses a lot, but base your support contracts on % of list prices… ha ha ha…
- Charge for support… $$$
- Escrow is easy, just agree on a 3rd party…
The rest, is a case by case I guess… don’t sweat the small stuff… like I said, these are not litigious companies generally (cost of litigation is huge for those guys…) Just don’t go there if you are not comfortable with the process because it is a process. However, once they are in… they are locked up for good… this sets-up a very nice long term recurring revenue…
I would not go out of my way for it… but if approached I would for sure give it a long hard look… it’s good money sometimes… but you definitely need an ‘enterprise’ version …
I survived 10 years of only those contracts with not one gone bad… the largest one 6M$… So hey, might look like a mountain… but I say just put on your mountain gear and go for it… lol
My 2 cents worth…