“How to Align Sales & Legal to Close More Deals Faster” with G2’s VP Enterprise + General Counsel

Welcome to the stage, Eunice Bühler, General Counsel at G2, and Colin Danaher, VP Enterprise Sales at G2.

Hello.

Hi everyone.

Everybody can hear us? Okay.

Great. Hi, I'm Eunice Bühler. I'm general counsel at G2 and I'm so happy to be here with you. How is everyone feeling? SaaStr 2023? Awesome.

That's great. Good. I am the guy that showed up to a technology conference with a low-resolution photo. So my name's Colin Danaher. I'm the vice president of enterprise sales and customer success at G2.

We are so happy to be here with you today, and we want to share something that's really important to our business that might be important to yours as well. Um, legal and sales, or the revenue org, uh, sometimes have different interests in working in the business, and we have found a way to have a collaborative, respectful, productive relationship that we want to share with you as well.

Cool. So I think it's time that we have that potentially awkward conversation about the bulls and the bears. Some of you may be familiar with it, but for a lot of the organizations I've worked with previously, maybe you're a part of an organization, there can sometimes be friction between the go-to-market engine, sales, and legal. Um, Sometimes this is intentional, other times it just happens. And I know that my responsibility is to drive revenue and grow the company. And I would be more successful in doing that if legal would just get out of the way. I mean, what a drag.

Well, Colin, we'd be much more successful as a company if you wouldn't put our whole business at risk for a few thousand dollars that you might not even close on.

That hurt. If this is familiar to anybody in this room, it has been familiar to me previously. It's actually not the way that things work at G2. Sales, particularly enterprise sales, but all sales and legal have worked together closely. We think it's in the best interest of our customers. We found over the nearly 2 years that Eunice and I have worked together that it's actually moved stuff much faster. So we'll spend a little bit of time talking about how we did that.

So attorneys, and really all business professionals, can deliver much higher value when they're able to work collaboratively with other business units. And legal has found a few ways to do that successfully. To me, it breaks down to communication and respect. And on the communication piece, legal is communicating with the revenue org all the time. I personally have standing one-on-one meetings with my CRO here every other week, and we text and call and meet in between those meetings regularly. Additionally, I have one-on-one meetings with each segment head for each business unit that we have on a monthly basis. And same thing stands, we text and call and communicate regularly in between. My entire legal team has made a point to be extremely available to the sales organization because we understand that our goal is to win more customers over together. And that, that also then brings in that respect piece. It's easy to make ourselves available to the revenue org because they are respectful to us. We make ourselves available. Our cell phones are available. We, you know, answer emails late at night, on the weekends, at off hours. And in exchange, the revenue org is respectful to be mindful of our time. We also make sure that the revenue org knows that there are trusted and valued clients. We make sure that they know that we are interested in helping them achieve their goals and that really our goals are aligned. It also really is important to have the right lawyers on the team. My personal professional background comes from an M&A background where I was constantly taught and, you know, constantly held to never slowing down a deal, always moving the deal forward, and really figuring out how to achieve what your client wants to achieve. It's critical that the attorneys think about how to get to yes, and in so doing, the revenue org will be able to be respectful in the few instances that the legal organization does need to say no.

Before we go on, I want to go back to— Eunice made a point about accessibility. I think it's key in the partnership between sales and legal. I'll offer a personal anecdote here. I'm not recommending, if there are any general counsel in the audience, that this is a must-do, but it is something that has been done here. So Eunice is accessible to me via Slack. Via Slack, but also via cell phone. And the leaders that work for me have access to her team via both Slack, but also via cell phone. It can be dangerous because every salesperson believes that their deal is the most important one at all times, whatever time of day it may be. So if you're willing to do that, and Eunice has been willing to do that for me, it's important that you set up parameters on what qualifies for a personal text message on a Saturday. I have used it.

Still do.

Fortunately, those deals closed. I know Eunice just shamed me for not closing enough of them. But it has worked. So accessibility has probably been one of the underpinnings of the relationship that she and I have built.

Yeah, thank you, Colin. And I appreciate the respect that the revenue organization has in exchange to be mindful of the time of all of their teammates.

Cool. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So I'll share a couple of things that Eunice and I have in common that probably can't be replicated if you're thinking about this friction that potentially exists in your business. Couple of things. You just heard Eunice talk about the fact that she comes from a long legal background, but it was always in mergers and acquisitions. So if you're a founder and currently you're working with a firm, but your company is scaling, you're getting bigger, you're thinking about internal general counsel, There may be something replicable there. Your general counsel might wanna come from a certain background. But Eunice came from a background that favored getting deals done. I come from a large family that has 4 lawyers in it. So I have been working inside of this structure for more years than I will tell you about, not to age myself in front of the audience. Eunice and I also started on the same day. And while this isn't replicable, it actually comes back to the thing that I think is most replicable, which we'll touch on in an instant. So on day 1, Eunice and I were in the same onboarding class virtually. We started during COVID Good times. Everybody remembers that. So we spent a lot of time together organically anyway. Here's the thing that is replicable. Godard— I don't know if Godard is in the audience. He told me he'd be here. Godard Abel is our CEO, and Godard, I think, understands deeply the role that legal and sales play in building our company to whatever we want that outcome to be. Godard also understands that the roles and responsibilities that we have along the way are much different. By and large, at a top level, Eunice is responsible for ensuring that the company is in a good position and protected at all times. I'm responsible for making sure that that arrow goes up and to the right. One thing that Godard was purposeful, intentional about at the very beginning of our both being hired at the same time, which was convenient, is to tie the roles and responsibilities that we do on a daily basis to the same true north star. So while we're working in silos at times, while we're working in different work streams doing different things, We're all aligned to accomplishing the same goal. So the takeaway here is that your founder, your CEO, whatever the title is, your president should be the one to align all disparate business units who may operate in silos directionally to the same outcome. And I think you, Eunice and I share that.

That's right. That's right. We do have a brilliant CEO and he has been extremely instrumental in allowing our organizations to be very aligned. It is the responsibility of the attorney to advise the business based on the client, the business's wants and needs. And so getting clarity from the CEO on where he wants to draw the line from a risk perspective or what his priorities are when it comes to long-term planning for the business, that allows us, the attorneys, to offer counseling with much more precision.

Cool. Ready?

That's it. So we, uh, here's a little Maslow's hierarchy of needs looking at sales and legal. We, Colin and I, as he said, we speak all the time and we understand the other person's viewpoint. We understand the other person's responsibilities. And so we took a second to kind of map this out. From a sales perspective, So Colin is responsible for focusing on the customer's needs first and foremost. On the other hand, my legal responsibilities focus on ensuring the company's long-term needs are met first and foremost. And so that's where you can see a slight difference. Of course, you know, Colin also really focuses on the company needs and I also really focus on the customer needs, but that difference seems tends to be where legal and revenue have different viewpoints. So what we've done in order to better align is we've really put ourselves in the other person's shoes. And by understanding that Colin has responsibilities to the customer, and Colin understanding that I have responsibilities to the company from a long-term view, we've been able to collaborate and close more deals much more successfully and do so in a way that is protective of our business goals. So Colin and I will regularly sit down. Yes, that means physically sit down and look at each other eye to eye, or at least on Zoom, and we will talk about what his needs are and I will share what my needs are. And by being clear with each other and being respectful of the other person's role, 'cause that's really what it is. We just play different parts in a, in a beautiful play that is called the company's success. And so by being clear on our different roles, then we're able to accomplish each other's goals.

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] And I think one thing I would add here, so Eunice and I are a part of a company that's growing and feels like it's getting pretty big at times. She and I have modeled this concept publicly. In front of sales reps, in front of the attorneys that work for her. This business hierarchy of needs has successfully transferred over the last 2 years down to the tactical line level. So this is no longer today, although there are times, where Eunice and I will engage in this sort of dialogue in determining what the best path forward is for our customer and our company. Today that dialogue is now happening between individual enterprise account executives, and the legal personnel that work for Loomit— for Eunice. So we believe this model to be scalable if emulated appropriately by the leadership team.

That's right. Thank you.

All right. Here's another thing we did. I've said twice, so I'll say it a third time. Eunice and I started on the same day. Pretty cool. I would say for the first 30, maybe 45 days while we connected. We spent the majority of our time, well, Eunice building her team, but also learning the team that she had and understanding the challenges that they had. I spent the same time with the enterprise sales leaders and the enterprise sales reps. We came back at the 45-day mark intentionally to talk about the main sand in the gears between the two organizations. We were fortunate enough to identify one that Eunice, sort of putting herself out there, felt like she could fix right away. So when I joined G2, we had external legal counsel. That's why we hired Eunice internally to run legal for us. The SLA turnaround time on an agreement that was not on our paper, and for those of you that work in the enterprise space, you know that by and large, that's what we're doing. We're signing the customer's MSA. The SLA turnaround time on an agreement was 5 days. Doesn't seem horrible. But it's all I heard from the sales team. Oh, we're losing deals 'cause they're not moving fast enough. And this is one of the things that's slowing deals down. What we missed last quarter, not because we didn't have the deals, but it's because legal got in our way. So Eunice and I agreed early to align on something seemingly small. It probably felt small at the time. Eunice was super confident. That her team would be able to do it. It ended up being a big deal over time. So Eunice committed to dropping the SLA from 5 business days to 2 business days. Pretty good. I'm the new guy on the block, I get to go back and tell my team, "Hey, legal's gonna turn these things around in 2 days, trust me." So number 1, all the sudden the sales team was more engaged, sharing more information with legal. Number 2, Eunice's team was doing it in 2 days. They lived up to their commitment. We tracked this over the first year. The average time to respond to an agreement with Redlines was 1.2 days. So we achieved a big win that made sales feel like something is changing here. We are now being heard and things are moving faster. Also removed the excuse for not getting deals done on time, but that's a different story. We celebrated this big win. So we have a number of company events with our SLT team. So we let them know— SLT, by the way, since we live in a world of acronyms, stands for our Senior Leadership Team, of which Eunice is a part. We made SLT aware of this. We also made all of our people aware of this. We also started hearing from the salespeople, hey, this new legal team has got something really good going. Now we get together for company events twice a year. We kick the year off. We get together as a group as mid-year meetup. Now our team events include legal, which as a sales guy feels kinda weird, but it's kinda awesome.

And the legal team feels really happy to hang out with the cool kids.

Which is me, in case you guys hadn't picked up on that already. So this doesn't have to be your big win, but when you're aligning any, uh, organizations that don't have the same day-to-day tactical goals, in this scenario we're talking about sales and legal, The idea that you can find a big win that resonates across everybody in both organizations and then you can celebrate it has drawn the two organizations together. Dare I say, sales and legal are friends at G2.

Yeah, you know, Colin, it's— it was really critical for our team to listen to our clients' needs. We did hear comments about speed. We actually did quite a lot to improve turnaround times. We rewrote our agreements from scratch to make them more efficient, among many other things, to improve our processes. But we listened to what our clients needed. We made a promise, and we delivered on that promise consistently. It's critical to, you know, when you're— obviously, when you're giving someone your word, it's critical to keep that word. And by doing so, we have trust between our organizations.

Great. Ready to take us home?

Yeah.

Alright.

Okay. So a few key takeaways in aligning sales and legal. As a reminder. First, it's critical to partner on customer negotiations. And what this means is truly partner. Sit down on a couch. Look at each other in the eye. Listen to what the other person needs. Help them achieve their goals. Remember that hierarchy of needs. Remember that the, the person that you're working with has— is standing in a different position and put yourself in that person's shoes. Ultimately, you are working together to win for the business, and that is the goal first and foremost that would be set out by your leader.

Whether you do this or not, we, when in doubt, bring our legal representation onto the phone in the meetings with customers. Customers, so that they can listen, hear for themselves. To date, they've always been able to find a positive outcome on every scenario.

The next point is to balance long-term risk with short-term gain. Um, every business arrangement that you enter into, every contract, whatever that might be, is essentially a balance of risk and reward, long and short term. So it's important to communicate what the legal concerns are, what the business concerns are, and ultimately decide on what's right for the business in a weighing effect. Nothing is going to be perfect. Nothing will be academically perfect from either a legal perspective or a commercial perspective. And so understanding that and coming up with a balance that is practical for your business will help you be successful. And finally, embrace a commercially focused business mindset. So actually revenue and legal are really the same in that we're both problem solvers as a profession. Our job is to identify issues from both sides and to come up with solutions. The solutions that you'll come up with are going to be balancing what's best for your customer, balancing what's best for the business. I have to put myself in Colin's shoes to understand, you know, what he really needs to accomplish his goals and he does the same for me. Oh, and just a quick point that I wanted to add in balancing those points for coming up with a commercially reasonable solution. It's critical to remember for both sides that impossible is not an option. It's about getting to yes, and it's about getting to a solution that ultimately leads your business to success. So with that, we thank you so very much for listening. We're so happy to be here with you and really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Look at that. 44 seconds.

Nice.