Excerpt from my upcoming book at amazon.com - "Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus - Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales"
How a Legal Service Counsel will engage with others
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Legal Services
Legal services are a corporate function where a legal counsel provides support in enabling or executing a business operation. In the case of business to business (B2B) sales, a legal counsel works closely with the buyers' legal team, internal sales, product engineering teams and other stakeholders to assist in quantifying, negotiating and closing a deal. The key responsibilities of a legal counsel are following:
● preparing, modifying and negotiating a legal framework for contractually engaging with buyers like the master service agreement (MSA), statement of work (SOW) and purchase order● do due diligence, provide assessment and guidance on the following risks:o business
▪ lock-in commitment and its implications▪ probability of damages arising and the magnitude of the impact from such damages▪ service continuity plans for events arising from insolvency or government actions or regulatory requirement
▪ exit options and handovers▪ syncing or adapting the agreement with the current situation, an example in today's world like adapting force majeure to include a pandemic
o finance
▪ the right balance of warranties offered and excluded▪ managing cost spillover arising from certain clauses▪ additional cost or taxes, usage charges like overage charges▪ insurance expectations to cover the risk
o legal
▪ legal compliances like sanction, privacy, data privacy and anti-bribery▪ licensing issues, if any▪ reasonable exclusions and limits on indemnities and liabilities● managing the risk matrix and governance approvals● ensuring the deal is closed and signed off
So, let us explore how a seller's side legal counsel engages with buyers through the lens of the elemental attributes learned in the previous sections.
Legal Counsel for Earth Element – Calm & Stable
● Risk Assessment
o driven by a minimal risk appetite and fear of failure means these natives are pedantic across exposure to any business, financial and legal risk
● Contractual Agreement
o slow in drafting and preparing and sharing with stakeholders, semantically strong, their attention to detail is good, and they prefer long term agreementso they are driven by relentless effort and status quo; the emphasis is on using the standard terms and conditions, ringfencing the scope with a maximum toleranceo they are not open to any financial penalties or liabilities in case there is a failure or delay in deliveryo they are slow and sluggish in following up with the customer for closure
● Negotiation Style
o they have a lot of patience and are good listeners, hide information,o they lack transparency and principles, can often be deceptive or employ pressure tacticso they are accommodative and let others take control and respond only when necessary
● Communication
o they speak slowly with a deep voice, sluggish in response and react at their own paceo they are good listeners and are structured and semantically driven
Next: Coming up
- Cheat Sheet for Sales Planning and Execution using Five Elements
- How a Procurement Executive will Engage
- How B2B Sales are different in Service vs Product
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Previous articles can be read here
- Part 5 on How a Marketing Manager will engage can be read here
- Part 4 on How a Sponsoring Executive will engage can be read here
- Part 3 on Negotiation Styles in B2B Sales can be read here
- Part 2 on Persona Mapping in B2B Sales can be read here
- Part 1 on Marrying Elements of Nature with B2B Sales can be read here
