How to get your deal through legal
A salesperson's guide
“We’re stuck in legal” is undoubtedly one of the top 3 problems that slow down B2B sales and probably the most frustrating. While there’s no single magic pill to solve it there is a lot you can do by following some best practices for structuring your agreements for maximum clarity and minimum escalation.
In my experience, a lot of startups have poorly structured agreements because a lot of startup founders’ lawyers reuse old contracts to save time on drafting without adequately reflecting on how realistic the contract is for their client’s size and stage.
This post lays out eleven best practices for structuring your agreements as an early-stage startup to ensure a speedy legal review. Note that this post is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer. Think of it more as a checklist to evaluate your current paperwork and discuss it with your own lawyer.
1. Use a separate Master Services Agreement (MSA)+ Order Form to speed up review.
Doing this separates your legal terms (in the MSA) from your commercial terms (in the order form), allowing for each document to be reviewed and negotiated by the relevant expert (the MSA by a commercial affairs lawyer, the order form by finance/procurement) and reduces the likelihood of lawyers trying to become procurement heroes and vice-versa.
2. Write in plain language to reduce misinterpretation
Lawyers distrust unclear drafting and will respond with heavy edits. To avoid this happening write in short sentences, make minimal use of defined terms, avoid triggering terms like “including without limitation” and “sole discretion” and avoid confusing double negatives such as “fail not to”, “not uncommon”, “cannot not” and so on.