Sales Prevention Department

If your lawyers are acting like the Sales Prevention Department, what can you do about it?

The short answer is: not much, unless you replace the lawyers.

If your business sells B2B, then sales contracts are the lifeblood of the business. Lawyers that work on those sales contracts have to wear two hats.

The first hat is the traditional lawyer’s hat. Wearing this hat, they identify the positions that go against the interests of the business and the positions that are ok for the business.

The second hat is that of a person who, recognising that sales contracts are the lifeblood of the business, wants to close the contract.

Those two roles sound like they are contradictory, but they are not. Think Venn diagram: there is a large area of overlap where the two meet.

But if your lawyers have been in business for a while, and haven’t figured this out, it’s because – deep down (or maybe not that deep) – they simply don’t want to.

12 November 2024