Get your operating managers on board. Then share the wealth with them.

For a corporate-barter transaction to be successful, all the stakeholders must be on board.

Picture this: In one corner of a triangle, you have the CFO, who understands the transaction because it is financial in nature. In another corner, there's the owner of the asset, who reaps the benefit as it is sold at a multiple of its book or market valueThe price at which both willing buyers and sellers will transact business, the highest value being full market value. and thus tends to welcome the transaction, Finally, consider the payee, the person through whom the transaction's form of payment is tendered.

These third stakeholders – often skeptical and reluctant executives – oversee marketing, print buying or travel services. They operate within a cost center, contending with budget constraints. They are guardians of assets much less concrete than a facility and equipment: things such as corporate image, brand identity and company morale. Their concerns should be addressed, since a large part of the transaction will rest with them. When the CFO drops by to propose a new and unanticipated financial obligation (fulfillmentThe process through which ICON delivers the goods and services clients have purchased from ICON using trade credit or cash or both. Also referred to as the back end of a corporate barter transaction.), things can get unpredictable.

Fortunately, there are solutions, most of which begin by generating buy-in from the corner office and throughout the company's top levels. Which is why, before proposing corporate barterThe creation of value by exchanging a client's unwanted or undervalued asset for the promise to purchase over a period of time from the corporate-barter company a defined set of goods and/or services, called fulfillment. (Sometimes mistakenly referred to as Corporate Trade.), it's important for all parties to first spend some time understanding it.