Market Insight
Over the summer, TechGC hosted the 6th annual Fullstack General Counsels (GCs) Conference in San Francisco, a must-attend event for modern GCs that serve as strategic leaders at their organizations. TechGC is an independent, invitation-only, community platform for GCs of leading venture capital funds and high-growth technology companies.
The conference had inspiring presentations and thought-provoking roundtable discussions, one of which was hosted by Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares, and Gizelle Barany, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at LendUp. The discussion dove into how Legal can partner effectively with Sales. If you learned one thing from the session, it was this: Legal and Sales need to get to “yes” together. The days of Legal being viewed as a “bottleneck” slowing things are over. Legal and Sales can work together effectively, and as a result, the company thrives and reaches goals faster than ever before.
For those who were unable to attend this great session, below are the 3 steps to a strong partnership between legal and sales.
Roundtable participants learned that the key to a successful relationship between Legal and Sales is to properly set and manage expectations. This is impossible without a true understanding of the existing sales process. Insider takeaway: know the flow.
Action needed:
Ensure that you are able to answer the following questions
Building a relationship is not “one and done.” Once you’re on the same page, the work comes from maintaining that alignment and ensuring the partnership can grow stronger as you scale. This means ensuring regular communication, which enables Sales to understand the issues that Legal is facing (and vice versa). Insider takeaway: align constantly.
Action needed:
At many companies, Sales has Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, like Salesforce, where they spend the majority of their time. Legal has its own tools, including contract management software.
The final step in a strong partnership between Legal and Sales is to join these two worlds. Insider takeaway: enable teams to work where they are most effective.
Action needed:
Contract management solutions integrate with tools like Salesforce, so the contract creation and approval processes are seamless and efficient for both teams. And by integrating a contract dashboard with tools like Salesforce, Sales gets up-to-the-second statuses on every in-flight legal agreement, keeping Legal and Sales on the same page (literally).
Legal and Sales work better together. Follow these 3 steps to empower both teams to move your business forward.