Rustam Roy, our experienced tech lawyer with 20+ years under his belt, reflects on the most consistent and predictable pain point for sales teams over the years: deal delays caused by avoidable missteps between legal and sales.
Whether it’s quarter-end or mid-year, the bottlenecks are usually the same — and the good news is, they’re fixable.
Here are some practical do’s and don’ts for both lawyers and sales teams to keep deals moving and contracts signed faster.
Lawyers: work smarter, not harder
Prioritise — but let sales lead:
If you’re overloaded with contracts and no clear guidance on urgency or business priority, that’s a lack of/broken process. “Everything’s urgent” isn’t a strategy — sales can help by ranking deals by importance and giving you visibility of the sales pipeline in advance.
Targeted Legal Reviews:
Focus primarily on what’s truly legal. Business, Ops, Finance, or HR should’ve already weighed in on their parts before it reaches you, but if they haven’t, encourage them to do so (and urge sales to ‘own’ the contract).
Be Proactive, Not Reactive:
Work with sales early to have sight of the sales pipeline and the contracts to be concluded, streamline the contracting process, align expectations and remove common friction points. Be a business enabler.
Don’t Be the Scapegoat:
You’re not there to break bad news that customers should’ve heard from sales. If sales knew that certain commercial terms or specific requests were never going to get approved by management, push back and ask sales to take responsibility for delivering the message to the customer and to learn of these red flags for future deals.
Create a Clear Contracting Process:
Align on workflows, escalation paths, and deal checkpoints. Trial runs with dummy contracts (for new or amended processes) can surface issues before they cause pain. Consider creating a playbook for sales – be a helpful business partner to sales.
Push for Commercially Sensible Terms:
Time-wasting negotiations on irrational or completely one-sided clauses help no one. Fewer unnecessary issues = smoother sign-off.
The Liability Cap Myth:
Stop obsessing over headline cap numbers. Actual risk mitigation happens through understanding the real business requirements and risk thresholds your business accepts for IPR, pricing, delivery, and dealing with delivery dependency — not fantasy liability figures.
Communicate Early and Honestly:
If you see a blocker, raise it — fast. Sugarcoating or silence only causes delays later.
Protect Your Focus:
Don’t let constant pings distract you. Put in place proper processes that sales understand and remind them to follow them. Then mute the noise so that you can progress key deals.
Remember Who You Work For:
Your duty is to the company to progress/complete the key deals the business has identified in accordance with terms the business accepts— not to appease a single function or individual or to cater to the one who shouts the loudest.
Sales: be a deal closer, not a bottleneck
Legal Is Not a Blocker:
They’re protecting the business from risk — the same business you’re trying to grow. It’s not personal. It’s a partnership with defined roles. And good collaboration is key.
Involve Legal Early:
Share your pipeline and flag key deals in advance. Legal will work with you to try to get a good outcome within the accepted parameters set by the business/legal. Don’t wait until signatures are needed.
Own the Deal Details:
Deliverables, dependencies, and commercial terms are your responsibility and you’ll need to nail those down early and then work with legal to ensure they are appropriately documented in the contract.
You Help Define the Liability Cap:
The liability cap needs to reflect the commercial realities and underlying risks of the specific deal – it’s not for legal to pull a number out of thin air. But legal will help guide you in defining/determining that cap so please be transparent with legal on all terms/discussions.
Understand Risk:
Instead of relying on arbitrary caps, understand where risk actually lives in your deal and work with legal/other business functions to address it/mitigate it.
Understand the Contracting Process and be decisive:
Know your part in it. Responsiveness matters just as much as urgency – so keep legal updated throughout the process. When escalations happen, give clear direction.
Don’t Pressure Legal for Speed:
If your deal is time-sensitive or complex, communicate that as early as possible. Then trust that legal is getting on with it. Avoid last-minute chases.
Never Work Around Legal:
Shortcutting the process to “get it done faster” erodes trust fast — and often risks the entire deal.
Know the Incentives:
Legal understands that sales is quota/commission driven, but legal’s job is to protect the company, not hit your quota. So work together to get the right deals done so everyone can benefit.
Final Thought
No matter the time of year, the biggest delays usually come from a lack of planning or miscommunication between sales and legal.
Fix those and your deals get signed faster — with fewer headaches for everyone.
Want to talk playbooks, process, or practical templates to make it smoother? Rustam’s got plenty of lessons (and scars) to share – get in touch to book in a 121 call with him.
