Nearbound Daily #500: How to Avoid Legal Hold-ups With Partner Contracts
Want to avoid the frustration of legal back-and-forth stalling a contract? Here's how to revamp your partner contracts so deals can close.
3x partnership productivity with AI and automation
30-70% of the work PAMs do is repetitive and could be scaled much better with the help of AI and automation.
Rob Rebholz believes manual processes will be the death of many partner programs in 2024 for two reasons:
- Expectations are high and resources are scarce.
- Every other department has adopted AI and automation to boost their effectiveness.
Partnership departments boast efficiency in closing deals, but still have a long way to go optimizing their processes.
There are two areas where Rob sees AI and automation impacting partner professionals first.
Defining priorities
AI is really good at crunching a load of data, reading context, and figuring out what should be prioritized. AI could tell us who we need to talk to, who to check in on, and in what order.
Taking action
Use GPT to craft the right messaging, draft emails, and send them off in an efficient manner. If you have a good prompt, the output is great!
The right balance between AI, automation, and human touch could be the key to maximizing your partnership potential.
We’re not talking about a 5, 10, or 15% productivity improvement. We’re talking about DOUBLING or TRIPLING partner team productivity.
Read more here.
How to revamp your partner contracts
Partnership contracts govern the relationships and interactions between partners.
Contracts are necessary, but become a point of frustration when legal back-and-forth stalls the momentum of a deal.
The Partner Manager’s goal is to get the contract signed and get the partnership rolling, whereas legal’s goal is to safeguard the interests of the organization and mitigate potential risks associated with the partnership.
Easy solution: revamp the template so legal doesn’t have to do so many edits.
Sylvain Mlodyszewski, the Partnerships Director at Ultimate, shared how their team did it.
Revamping the contract
Assess your existing partnership agreements. Identify the gaps, then deconstruct the contract so you can rebuild it better.
Deconstruct the contract into three sections: intro, specifics, and general terms.
Then, give each section a clear structure and layer on the ideas.
Intro
Your intro should include the following:
- Definition of your partner’s business and yours
- What’s expected from the agreement
- General partner terms
- Date
- Type of contract
- Partnership details
- Note section
- Confirmation (signature)
Your intro should put critical information front and center.
Specifics
Next, come your specifics. This will include specific information about the type of partner engaged:
- Dos and don’ts
- Expectations
- Working conditions
- Important definitions
- Right rules of the game
Tailor this section to the partner you’re doing business with.
General terms
Finally, you’ll outline your general terms. This part of the template won’t change. It’s the stuff that applies to everyone involved. Think:
- Generic partner T&Cs
- Topics related to intellectual property, liability, security compliance, etc.
Tip: Hyperlink standard legal conditions and generic business operations items.
Test the new contract template
Traditional contracts are usually designed only for lawyers to understand them, but a good contract needs to be understood by anyone reading it.
Test the contract with your Sales team. If they understand it, pitch your ideas to your Legal team.
Remember, your Legal team isn’t there to complicate things. They want to protect you, and the clearer and simpler you can make these contract templates, the easier that is.
Download the contract checklist here. And read the full article on partner contracts here.
Get your unmanaged partners growin’
Efe Senel shared a tip for enabling the growth of your unmanaged partners without spending additional resources.
Make it easy for them.
Most vendors offer a lousy partner portal with some self-serve campaigns-in-a-box.
Instead, don’t wait for your partners to take the initiative. Automate the delivery of marketing campaigns and keep an eye on partners you can go deeper with.
And read Efe’s recent article on how alliances can leverage their channel partners.
Mistakes = wasted time
Save your fellow partner pros some time, share this daily.
