See that over there? That used to be the area of your warehouse filled with two year’s build-up of custom windows for a stalled residential development somewhere in North Carolina. Such a shame they were all pink!

It’s nice to finally be rid of that inventory, so now what? You did a corporate trade transaction that enabled you to quickly ship it out and finally make room for that hot new door product. While eliminating your inventory is great, the full financial benefit of the transaction has not yet been delivered to you and only will from the process of purchasing services (e.g. media, travel, printing, etc) through the trading company according to your agreement.

While this may seem obvious, many times clients lose track of the mechanism for realizing the financial value of the corporate trade transaction. After all, finally freeing themselves of their inventory problem solves the problem that initiated the trade transaction, so once the inventory is shipped, the tendency is to feel as though the problem is solved. While the problem that needed a solution was the asset,  the full solution includes the purchasing of goods and services from the trading company. The advice here is to make sure you and other parties to the transaction are paying close attention to making both sides of the transaction work (the inventory/asset sale AND the purchase of services).