Are you anticipating business growth? Do you want to create a harmonious relationship between your sales, marketing and legal teams? Synergizing can help meet your goals…

It is no secret that there are often tensions between in-house legal teams and the sales and marketing departments. Such conflicts are to be expected given the different missions of the two departments. The legal department is concerned with compliance, standardization and avoiding future liabilities while sales and marketing focus on getting the deal done upfront with less attention to adhering to standard corporate forms and backend issues

Some businesses muddle through and hope for the best. However, to create a growth-oriented, unified company, it is important to recognize and address the frictions.

To be a successful business owner or CEO, you want to focus as much attention on managing the people who make up the individual segments that combine to form your business as a whole.

Don’t settle for a company made up of independently operating units, or silos, that ultimately slow down operations. If you take action and synergize your key groups, you can reduce delays, support growth and expansion, and provide your employees with a positive work environment.

What to Consider When Synergizing Your Business Units

How Will Each Department Be Impacted?

Before beginning the process of combining your marketing and sales team efforts with the work done by your legal department, make sure everyone is aware of the change and willing to get on board with how their roles will be affected.

It is best to orchestrate opportunities for all three groups to develop some interdepartmental relationship that will make collaboration easier and allow the initial transition to go smoothly for all involved.

The objective is to unify the departments and align their goals. Sell them on the potential benefits that come as a result of their cooperation. In a sense, all three departments are each other’s customers and should understand what they need from each other in order to successfully satisfy their respective roles within the business. Think of it as a complex assembly line where each station knows what the next station needs to complete its part of the process.

Some of the positive changes they may see are:

  • Ease of accomplishing what may have been more complex tasks and processes before combining efforts, such as tracking the success of branding efforts and eliminating resources spent on legacy marketing and outdated products.
  • Reduced tension and strain between the three units, which will create a more positive, comfortable work environment for everyone. For example, streamlining the NDA and contract support processes for marketing and sales, which frequently need quick turnaround times for introductory meetings, product demos and joint venture opportunities will reflect well on the legal department, as being service oriented, rather than a bottleneck.
  • Opportunity for growth as a company overall that has far-reaching benefits for all employees, not just those working within the three departments.

Of course, there are many benefits to the company as a result of combining the efforts of your marketing, sales and legal teams, but to highlight a few ways it can directly improve the day-to-day experience for the employees may improve their willingness to cooperate.

Improving Inter-Team Relations

As mentioned above, due to the nature of their respective roles, there is often tension seen amongst these departments. It is not difficult to determine from where these issues arise.

The purpose of the marketing and sales teams is almost exclusively aimed at pleasing customers and demonstrating why your company is the best option for any goods or services they are seeking.

On the other hand, the legal team is charged with drafting, reviewing and enforcing contracts, agreements, restrictions, and regulations to ensure your company is compliant, not taking on undue liabilities, and managing risks to protect your business.

Since the teams’ focuses are vastly different, it is beneficial to provide all groups with a detailed overview of the responsibilities and requirements of the other team and how their work impacts the success of the company as a whole. Providing this information can offer a new perspective and help bridge the gap between two very different groups that are both integral parts of your business.

Fostering regularly scheduled communication between the marketing, sales and legal teams can help assure that legal is aligned with marketing’s goals and is protecting current and future brands, while reducing resource allocation for legacy brands, for example.

The implementation of contract playbooks is one key benefit that you may see as a result of increased communication between the sales and legal departments. Playbooks enable the sales teams to handle more of their customer relations and reduce legal risk. The use of contract playbooks can also help your sales and marketing teams make quicker sales, close more deals, and alleviate some of the workload and turnaround time for in-house legal counsel. This is often seen as a win for all sides.

Final Words

Take steps to keep all departments on track after the implementation of the collaboration process is complete to ensure they remain aligned in their goals and approach. All three teams are essential parts of your business and provide the framework needed to ensure your business can meet goals and exceed expectations.

Promote regularly scheduled meetings between marketing, sales and legal to encourage communication alignment, review, and innovation of their goals and processes. With the three units working together, there are many opportunities for marketing and sales to guide legal on customer trends and changes.

The combined efforts of your business units are a sure-fire way to improve their working relationship and bring more value to your customers who ultimately drive the success of your business.

I have been helping business professionals maximize their companies’ potential for more than 25 years. If you’d like to learn more about how I can help your business units collaborate effectively, contact me to book a consultation!