Charles Lu: The Legal-Sales Partnership - A Pathway to Streamlined Negotiations

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Today's conversation is with Charles Liu, who's the VP of operations at LexCheck, where he's responsible for executing the C-suite's strategies to grow its product offering and customer base. With a background in law, he has served as an M&A associate at leading law firms such as Lethem and Watkins and Goodwin. And that is what this conversation was all about. The battle between sales and legal that rages on to this day. And so we talked all about this, about how to align and why there's such a disconnect and why sales reps are afraid of lawyers for a good reason in some cases, but not so good reason in others. So we dove into the perception of sales for legal and the perception of legal for sales and how legal is always understaffed and how we actually need to become their advocate.

And we've had some fun stuff about how to negotiate with them, what those red lines need to be looking like and how you should even approach your contract and what you should put in it. And even what pisses a lawyer off, which I was really curious about. It's like, what are the things that sales reps do that really piss lawyers off and how can we make their lives easier? So this was a really good conversation because the more we can figure out how to align with the different departments, specifically legal and procurement throughout the sales process, on both sides, the better off we're going to be a sales professional. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen.

Charles, Lou, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. Thanks for coming on board. Yeah, thanks for having me. Really excited to be here. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting conversation, man. Especially this time of year, right? Because we're going to be talking about the legal side of the sales process and how sales reps cannot get their ass kicked by lawyers. Yeah, everybody's favorite conversation to have, right? With the lawyers right before the holidays, with all your deals that are going on. I'm sure everyone is here because of all the great experiences they have all year round that they're going to culminate at the end of the year. Yeah, and there's such an adversarial approach between sales and legal.

But my experience over the years is the more you work with legal, the better off. Actually, you can expedite your deals in a lot of ways. So we're going to dive into that. But Charles, why don't we do this? Let's give the audience a little background here as far as context. And not just work background, but let's go way back. Growing up, where did that itch come from from a business standpoint and everything? Parents, all that stuff. So I'd love to hear people's origin stories. Yeah, I mean, I think I have a, you know, not like a super unique backstory. My parents obviously immigrated to North America. We kind of grew up really busting my ass in school, trying to make sure that I could, you know, cover all my bases and really set myself up for success.

I actually, you know, my career at this point has kind of morphed a little bit. But like originally, I went to school to be an engineer. So like my degree is in mechanical engineering. And so for me, it was really always about like figuring out what the pieces are, how to put it together, how to optimize for the problem and solve it. Right. Like that's the stuff that's always been really, really interesting to me. From there, actually, you know, who knows how I ended up there, but I actually practiced law in New York for too many years, actually, in terms of like the career capital and stuff like that. But, you know, I was an M&A attorney, right? Big law firm, New York City, doing deals with, you know, big private equity shops, big public companies, that kind of thing.

And throughout that time, I just, you know, there's always like that itch in the back of your head. Like we're these really, really high paid lawyers, but like a lot of what we do is so antiquated, right? So antiquated. Some of the conversations that we're having, so antiquated. There's got to be a better way to do a lot of this stuff, right? And so like the engineering brain kind of kicks in a little bit and then the entrepreneurial bend kind of kicks in a little bit. And then pretty soon I'm taking a call with our, you know, the co-founder over here, who's also ex-lawyer, had his first startup shop called Intelligize that he sold to LexisNexis. And I'm like, this is the opportunity for me, right?

I can get in there and I can actually start making a difference for a lot of these people who are trying to make things happen, right? Trying to like, like, let's not talk about like the big exit stuff, right? Let's just talk about day-to-day, doing deals, getting products out to people who need them, helping them like, helping them just do better work, right? Helping them be more productive. And so, yeah, here we are, right? Here we are a few years later. It's been, you know, I joined LexisNexis like right before the shutdown happened. We were in New York City and it was literally, you know, I joined LexisNexis on like a, on like a, you know, a week in February. And then like two or three weeks later, Broadway shut down, the NBA shut down.

And then we started growing, okay? We started growing. So it's been, it's been really, really interesting. But yeah, that's where I'm coming from. You know, my goal is to, to make it easy for people to work with legal, right? I know that like, it's a thankless job. It doesn't, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be. And it's so, so important for what people are doing all the time. And it's, it's so beneficial in so many ways. Like, let's just, let's figure out a way for everyone to kind of realize that value, get in there, make it a more positive working experience and get these deals done. Love it, man. And that's, I think that, you know, hopefully the mantra moving forward here is like working together, like, you know, each individually, like as, as companies, these, all these silos and, you know, even the sales and marketing divide is, is, has been there for, since I got into this.

But the legal and the procurement side, it's like most sales are, especially younger ones are scared to death of legal and, and they feel like they have all the cards. And so, first of all, why is the relationship so adversarial? Like, cause coming from your side of the house, from the legal side of the house, why don't we start with that perspective? Like when you were on the legal side of the house, what was your experience with sales reps and how they engaged with you? And where did you see good engagement, like throughout the sales process? And where did you see the bad engagement happen? Yeah. So this is, this is a great question. And it's like, in a lot of ways, it's super obvious, right?

It's when you're, when you're looking at just like the ground level view, what gets lost is that we're all on the same team because the sales rep is trying to close their deal, right? They've been working on that deal for weeks, if not months. And they're at the point now where the customer is ready to sign on the dotted line, ready to get started. But first they need some legal approval because, you know, people got some comments on this agreement. The lawyer has been brought in for all of like, let's call it 30 minutes, right? And they're asking questions that they've been told they need to ask, which is how do I protect the company, right? What are these issues that are coming up? And the first thing that they have to do and they have to tell the sales rep is slow down, right?

That's where a lot of this, that's where the adversarial nature of a lot of this stuff comes through, right? In terms of like when you see the most friction is when you got deadlines, right? And, you know, legal is only, legal is always understaffed, always, never. We've been selling a legal now for what, four or five years? Not once have we seen an adequately staffed legal department and that by its nature has to be true, right? Because like your deals are not smooth. No company has like a perfectly level deal flow. And you can't, you can't staff your lawyers like to match a volatile flow. That's just impossible, right? So your lawyers are coming in. They're always understaffed. They're always overworked.

And they always have to be the unpopular person in the room saying, we got to consider what's going on in here before you sign this deal up. Now, if people were to take a step back a little bit and realize like we're all on the same team here, you can solve a lot of these problems. At the end of the day, the lawyer is asking you questions because they don't want this to turn into a nightmare for you. They don't want to affect your retention, right? They don't want to affect your customer's expectations. They don't want you to have, you know, these big issues where you have like a mismatch between, you know, your seller's perspective and the person they're selling to your customer, right? They don't want you to get into a point where you guys are having an argument that didn't need to happen.

They want to get all that out there. They're doing you a bit of a favor. They're saying, I'll be the bad guy here a little bit. I will have the uncomfortable conversation. We'll get through the stuff that nobody wants to talk about so you and your client can stay best friends. So in a lot of ways, it's really about, for me, getting people to work together. It's getting them kind of aligned, especially like further down in the process. You get to the deal, there's going to be some friction just by the nature of the game. You get people talking a little bit earlier on, right? You get your legal leader, your sales leader, talking a little earlier on. You can solve a lot of those problems. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV Sales membership.

It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process. And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. So, how does that work though, right? Because, I mean, I think what I've learned about procurement and legal over the years is, yeah, if you can get them involved earlier in the process before it hits their desk.

Because I always paint this picture to the reps that you did, which is, I mean, picture this, right? What happens at the end of your quarter, right? Like you're trying to get deals signed. Well, what do you think happens at the end of their quarter? They're trying to get deals signed. And do you think they're going to prioritize something that they can make money off of or spend money on? Obviously, they're going to sign, you know, focus on the contracts that are going to make their business money. And if you get to the point where you haven't engaged them at all, and like say you've done your job and you've built your champion and that champion then comes in and legitimately just dumps a contract on the lawyer's table with almost no context, the lawyer's going to do what the lawyer does.

They're going to cross every T, dot every I, and try to protect the business against every possible solution. But if you engage them early and you give them context around why certain things or whatever it is, they can actually help expedite your deal, at least in my experience. Is that what you see? Yeah, so I think everybody, that's what we all aspire to, right? Ourselves included. It's not always practical. Your lawyers are already overstaffed and overworked. Like how do you get them looped in earlier, right? Like it takes their time, takes their attention away from other things. What we're seeing, right, is the best way to get on the same page is to start agreeing on how we're going to mark these agreements up, right?

In a lot of ways, the way to reduce friction is to get the sales guy and the lawyer on the same page as to what is the lawyer actually going to comment on and why do these comments matter? Right? That way, nobody's surprised, right? Your sales rep's not coming in at the last minute being like, oh, you know, there shouldn't be any issues in this document, right? The lawyer, like I don't even know what the lawyer's going to look for. Of course, they're going to be surprised when the lawyer comes back and says there are things we have to change. If they know from the get-go or let's say your CRO and your CLO are talking and they're on the same page like, hey, you know, our legal team is going to look for these seven things and they're important.

Let's explain to the sales rep why they're important. All of a sudden, the sales rep, when they're looking at that document that's coming back from the client, because they're not dumb, they're looking at these things and they're thinking, oh, this is going to be a problem for my lawyer. Maybe I should preview for my customer. Hey, if you guys can like soften on this a little bit, I think I can get this through a little bit faster. All of a sudden, now you're on the same page, right? Your sales rep is trying to make your lawyer's life a little bit easier. Your lawyer sees that and they're thinking, okay, well, this sales rep is really trying to help me out. I'm going to prioritize this thing so this person can get their deal done, right?

We can make some money. I like that. And I think that's the thing. It's the context, right? Is it at least having them and also understanding what's an absolute and what's not. And so, for instance, there are some absolute nots in my contract. Like if the client says we need a thing on that, sorry, that isn't going to happen. So how do you think about a contract? Because there's always wiggle room, right? And I used to like early days, I used to put stuff in my contracts that I knew I didn't care about just so they could get redlined. So the other side could feel like I was giving something. So where are you on kind of maybe doing some of those things? And like if you're a vendor, right, and you're trying to get something closed and signed, putting things in there that probably will get redlined that you don't care about so you can ultimately get to your stuff versus just putting it into your contract and saying, look, these are the non-negotiables.

Like where are you on that as far as playing that game, if you will? Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, for us and our clients, you really kind of see two poles, right? Just kind of like how you talked about. I think they're, especially the clients that we have that like have more leverage, right? They don't feel really the need to kind of play that game a lot of the time. It's really, okay, well, this is our standard. We insist on having a level risk profile. So you're going to sign it or you're not, right? For us, we try to be a little bit more commercial. And that's just by the nature, right? We're like smaller shop a little bit. We're doing something innovative. We're not like a utility.

It's not like ubiquitous, right? We're not like a known quantity in a lot of ways. And so for me, what I think about is I think about kind of what could be business ending events versus commercial events, right? If I need to reach out a little bit earlier to get a renewal, like that's fine. I can plan around that. I have a calendar. I have things that are kind of, you know, set up to help me deal with that kind of thing, right? There are things that exist on a spectrum and those to me are business points, right? Anything where you're like, is there really a difference between, you know, 30, 60, 90, right? As long as we get the notice, like I'm kind of happy, right? Whereas there are other things like the big one right now that we see a lot is around data breach, right?

Everyone's really sensitive about data breach because data breach is one of those things, even though it's not super likely to happen. If it does happen, that's a business ender, right? So for us, the way that we get around it is, hey, you know, customer, we are fine to indemnify you for data breach up to our insurance limits. Like we, like we just can't have, we can't attract investment, right? We can't grow, right? If we leave the risk to the investors that you're going to come in a data breach event, it's going to totally wipe out your recovery, right? You spent all this time negotiating your preference and now you're screwed because like there was like one big data breach thing that happened, right?

It's one of those things where like if we, if they're not going to agree to it, then a lot, like we have to walk because like we just, we can't go out and market. Like that's the way we need to get funding, right? So for us, it's about what is either going to end the company later potentially, right? Obviously we hope this stuff never happens, but like, I mean, world's crazy place, right? Things can happen. And then what's going to impact our ability to grow? That's, that's like, and I know it's not like a, like a really clear answer. Yeah, no. Right. But that's probably the biggest one for me. I can live with a lot of other stuff. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I think that's where, is it worth, and this is another disconnect that I have is, I mean, salespeople are probably up front, roll their eyes at it.

But is it worth the internal organization lawyers actually meeting with the sales teams and explaining the contract and the terms and conditions and the whys behind it so that the rep can have some ammo? Or is it better to have the lawyer just be able to handle that so that there is that line of distinction? I'm going to probably say something that's not going to be super popular in the legal community, but the forward is always better. Is it? Okay. I think it's always better. I think in a lot of ways, the attitude of like, I'm going to try to keep as much information from the sales reps on the, on the, because you don't want them to be like dangerous, like a little bit of knowledge. Right. It's also just, I don't think it's productive and I think it's kind of gatekeeping in a lot of ways.

Dirty little secret about these contracts is that they're all in English. Right. And you know, your sales reps can read, hopefully. So if they just, I mean, if they wanted to kind of sit down and just read through the contract, it might take, it might take some time. I know these things are dense, but you'd be able to get out of it the same thing that the lawyer is getting out of it. Right. Being able to spend some time and talk through, here are the things that matter. Here's why is always better because the sale, the last thing, because the sales rep knows that the lawyer is going to come back with some comments and it's in nobody's best interest for them to like make this process more difficult.

All they want is to close the deal. They want to help the company grow. They want to help their client get value out of what they're selling. Right. And they want, you know, they want everybody to be happy at the end of the day. So my view is arm them as much as you can. Better yet, arm them on the contract and arm them on your playbook. Right. Just spend a little time, understand what your organization cares about and just write it down. Just write it down. But, you know, it helps in a couple of ways. One, you write it down, you clarify for yourself. Two, all of a sudden now, you know, your legal team isn't going off script because sometimes they feel like they have to. Right. Like you're like you give them such like a broad goal, which is I need you to protect the company.

If you can write down, like, what are the things that we care about for you to protect the company around? All of a sudden they come in and they don't have to be like, oh, I need to get every little potential thing that comes across my mind. Because I have this like we're a business. Right. And like I've been talking to my CRO and like I know the things that like we care about. My CEO has been in another conversation. And like as a team, we've decided that these are like the six things we really care about. And no one's going to come down on me for not thinking about the X, Y, Z and possibility thing that's going to come up. Right. Like no one's going to no one's going to drop that on my desk, be like this is all my fault because we all agreed for the sake of like getting things done.

These are the things that we're going to care about. And that's the thing that we can all get behind. So that is probably the single biggest accelerator that we've seen of one, closing your deals faster. But two, getting your sales reps and getting your legal team to actually be, you know, productive and collaborative. Right. Because nobody's nobody's feeling like they're going to get in the lurch. And I think that's the thing. It's the same thing with pricing. When I talk to organizations, like most sales reps have no clue where their pricing comes from. And so that's why they discount because they have zero confidence that there's something behind it. And they've seen so many discounts go out the door.

So they're like they lead with discounts almost because they're like, I don't. But if you educate them on where the pricing comes from, what we're doing it from an R&D standpoint, how it goes back into the product, profitability and all that other stuff, which is business acumen stuff that reps should be learning about anyways. Well, now when the pricing conversation comes up, you can have a lot more confidence when it comes to pushing back on that. It's like, no, this is why we're priced the way we are. It's the same thing on the legal side of the house. If I'm educated on why, then I'm not just going to cave or just say whatever. And so that leads to this, which is if I'm educated on why and I know what kind of the red lines are from like an absolute must not go past.

From a communication standpoint and a collaboration with a client, is it best to let them know what those things are up front to say, hey, look, here's our contract. I'm sure you're going to have some red lines. Let me just be crystal clear where we have zero wiggle room and it's this one, this one, this one. So if those are going to be issues, just let us know up front. Don't even put in the effort of going through the red lines. And with that, should that have been brought up earlier when there are those type of things and how do you do it? So first part of the question, should you bring it up up front? Second of all, how far up front? Yeah, I think the way I think about this problem is actually a little bit different.

And it's like how many, how many truly no-go items do you have, right? If you truly have no-go items, get those things out like up front, right? You can save like a ton of time. It's the same way that we negotiate, right? Like I think for us, especially when we're negotiating on behalf of clients, because we offer like services as well in relation to our tech. And this all comes down to like a playbook. We can kind of get into this. But what we are really concerned about is making the, like keeping the negotiation as light as possible. And the way you do that is you communicate, right? So like whenever we get involved and we're negotiating on behalf of a client, we're coming in, we're saying, here are the positions, here's like where we can go.

And that's really going to be it, right? I don't want to be trading drafts. I don't want to go like back and forth and you're just like, you're like studying my edits, me studying your edits, right? I don't want that. If you have problems, let's get on the phone, let's talk it through, right? And for no-go items, I'm just going to tell you what they are. And if it's a no-go, like we can talk about why it's a no-go for us. And I'm not going to send like, you know, I'm not going to send you a manifesto, right? Let's just get on the phone and we can explain it to you. But like these are what those items are going to be. And so that's how we get the negotiation cycle down as far as we can, right?

That's how like, that's why I like, because we're basically outsourced deal desk in a lot of ways for folks. And that's how we basically take that process of, okay, you know, my lawyer is going to be like super pissed about all this stuff. And they're going to have like red lines back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and take it down to like ideally like a no more than like a two-turn process. Right? Because everything else in there should be negotiable. And if it's negotiable, let's get on the phone. Let's trade. Let's horse trade. If that's what it is, let's just do it. And that's where I think the big thing that I find is, you mentioned it multiple times, is just getting on the phone.

I mean, the amount of deals I've seen explode or blow up because we've gone back and forth over redlined edits on a Word doc or a Google doc. And then you start seeing it get nasty because there's like, but then the reason I have, for instance, my only employee at this point, she was my first hire, my best hire. She's a CFO and an accountant, an accountant and a lawyer. So she's got both, right? And holy shit, she's got a personality. And what she would always do when I worked with her at a previous company, and I witnessed this, she would have the contracts and she would, and this is my policy now, I'll send it to you and we'll get one set of red lines. And if we can't accept those red lines, there's no pushback and here's a bunch of, we get on the phone and she asked the lawyer, so what are you trying to protect against here?

Just help, just back up from the language. What are you, what's your concern with that point? And then they'll say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she'll say, well, what if we just wrote it this way then? That way. And then you'll see them, yeah, that makes sense. And so just that alone, I have the, we have this give, get scorecard where I'll give you red lines and that one, if it comes back, then my get is we got to get on the call with your lawyers, period. Like we, this is a phone conversation. We're not going to go back and forth 15 times. It's going to expedite the process and everything else. And if you want it, and then there are some non-negotiables, like us putting it on your paperwork, sometimes, you know what I mean?

Those type of things. We usually just take ours and cram it into theirs and cut and paste the whole thing and say, okay, if you want us to do it that way, but now you're going to have to red line this whole thing. So it's much better just to have the conversation of what are you trying to prevent here? What are you trying, what are you trying to protect against? And then, and then it becomes collaborative, right? Because like at the end of the day, like I'm not here to, I'm not here to try to like, as a, as a lawyer, like putting a lawyer hat on. People, people have this sense of like lawyers are trying to like, like beat you, right? Like it's, I mean, it's, you know, I blame this a lot on like courtroom dramas and like, you know, TV, like that.

Everyone's like, oh yeah, there's even in like a deal, there has to be like a winner and a loser. Like, no, no, no, no, no, we're both supposed to win, right? The whole point is that we're both going to win here. So like, if there are issues for you in the contract, like I want to help you solve them because I want you to feel good about signing this contract because I want you to be happy with not just our product, but us, right? Like there's, I'm like, as a lawyer, I have nothing to be gained from you and I having friction. Well, again, perfect example of this as negotiations, if there's a winner and a loser, like that's a terrible negotiation because even if you're the winner, so I say this on the flip side.

So say a client like beats the shit out of us, right? And we just, and it gets down to the point where the pricings, they've discount, discount, discount, we've agreed to all these terms. So, but by the time that thing signs, it's almost embarrassing, right? Low profit margin, all this other stuff. Two things happen there. One is, there's a strong likelihood that I had to take a few things away from the original proposal that made it valuable in the first place. So now you aren't going to get the best service based on that. Second of all, now transition and support, like it's no longer like, oh yeah, let's collaborate. Make sure you get transitioned really smoothly into our customer success.

Now it's like, yeah, don't call us. We'll call you. And now you're on the shitty client list. And quite frankly, talk to any customer service organization. They all have a list of customers who are the pain in the ass customers. And I promise you, you don't want to be on that list because eventually I'm going to have to find a way to make you profitable. I'm going to have to raise your rates. I'm going to have to add something. I'm going to have to cancel your con, whatever. So even you, you might've won on the, yay, I got the best price and we beat the crap out of them. You lost on the long-term value and relationship. A hundred and 10%, right? And that's like, it's just something that we just got to get out ahead of because it's just, it's, it's, that lives purely in people's minds.

Yeah. Right. And, you know, for a lot of procurement teams, that price pressure there is something that we just have to help them with because they, like they, they have this immense pressure, especially if you're dealing with large customers, they have this immense amount of organizational pressure to get their bottom line down, right? And help the, help the rest of the organization. And they're just trying to do their best. And so sometimes the best thing you can do for a customer like that is be firm on your price. Yeah. Right. The same way, the same, like the same way that like, sometimes the best thing you can do with their lawyers, sometimes it's be firm on your point. And just explain like, like what's going to happen is a, if we, if you, if we, we try to, if we give you this ask, it's going to, it's going to really compromise the way that we can serve you.

And like, you're not going to get the value that you want out of it. I don't want to, I don't want us to get there. I don't want us to get to a point where this deal is not going to make you guys happy. Right. And so like, I'm going to, I'm going to do my best to help you here. And I'm, I have to be firm. Right. And if that's what ends up being like, you know, the crust of the deal, like, you know, escalate it. We'll talk about it. We'll figure it out. Yeah. But like, give that procurement person, the person that you're talking to, your customer, give them something to be able to go back with, like on solid footing. Right. So they can articulate the point. They can be your advocate. They want to, right.

They want to bring this thing in. They want to get that value. You just have to give them what they need. So how do you, so outside of being firm, right? Like, let's talk about helping a sales rep, helping a lawyer build the case internally, right. To, to get this thing done outside of just being like, sorry, man, it is what it is. Like, that's our price and this is the reason why. How else could I, as a sales rep, help the legal team in a way that isn't cheesy, salesy, any of that stuff, but is genuinely agreeing that kind of, we should be on the same page here. We should be, we're going together and there's a relationship. So how can we make this the best for both of us? What are some other areas?

And I know you talked about the playbook, but are there certain things that I can do as a sales rep to make it easier, like documenting the process all the way through? So by the time it gets to them, like, what are some of the best practices there? So anytime you're having conversations and you start talking about like quote unquote terms, right? When the client starts asking you for stuff and you're like, yeah, we can totally do that. Just send a follow-up email, get it in writing. That's always the most helpful thing for the lawyers. Being able to go back and actually see like how it's articulated in that piece of writing and then make it at least use it as a starting point. They're not going to get the whole picture, right?

They weren't there for the conversation, but it's helpful. Another thing that you really, really want to be able to do is give some transparency into your process, right? Like people get mad at lawyers because they think that lawyers are taking a long time. But like sometimes like sometimes it's like, oh, okay, you know, our lawyers pick things up like once every they're on a two day week cycle, right? Things kind of like like we send in all the tickets and then they get allocated like Tuesdays and Thursdays. Right. And just if that's what you guys do, tell your client, right? Hey, we're going to submit this today. It'll probably get picked up tomorrow. You might, I'm like, you'll probably hear back like by the end of the week or something or by like the middle of next week.

That's what we expect. Just give them a little bit of that cover. And on that point, you're going to ask them for time anyway. Just, just manage the expectations properly. It's okay to like tell them it's going to take a couple extra days. And then your legal person looks like a hero when they get back a little bit sooner. That's super, super helpful. And no procurement person is going to be like, oh, your legal is going to take a couple extra days. That's shocking to me. Right. Like it's not like you're going to piss anybody off. Right. It's not like you're going to disappoint them. Right. Unless you're really working on like a, like a tight, tight timeline, but that's an outlier. Right. If this is just like a business as usual, you're just trying to get a deal done.

Build your legal team like a little bit of a buffer. And then they're going to look like a rock star when they get it back sooner. Right. And then, then, then everybody feels like they're rolling in the same direction. Quick break here to highlight another one of the podcasts on the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Now, this one is Success Story, hosted by Scott Clary. Success Story features Q&A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship. And I just got introduced to this podcast recently. And one of the ones that really caught my attention was the one with Ryan Blair.

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Yeah, I think that's what I'm always trying to, you know, the whole, how do I make you look good through this process, right? If I can ask that question to my champion, to the lawyers, to the procurement, to everybody, it's like, look, my job is to make, as a sales rep, my job is to make you look good like a hero. How can we do that together? Yeah, exactly. And the same way your sales rep is doing that for their champion, right, that they're selling to, they can also start doing that for their, like, for their support, right? For their legal team, for their, like, you know, you've got, you know, your IT guys or your engineering team that has to come on and do, like, the security survey or whatever, right?

Build them up, right? Help them come in and look good. The better they look, the better you look. Right. And how do you deal with the ones that, like, because I think that we're, you know, the ideal state, to your point, is, you know, lawyers don't want to be total jerks, right? They want to work with us. They want to come to a mutual agreement here. But then there's always those companies that are just hardline jackasses, right? Like, I heard a story recently where some CFO legitimately shut off all the SaaS products that they had, and they did one of two things. One, they waited to see who was going to complain internally, and if people complained, then they'd go after it. But then once they got that, they then sent a blanket email out to every vendor saying, we're canceling your contract unless you give us 30% off the top, no questions asked, you take it or leave it.

Like, what do you do in that situation? I mean, that's, in my opinion, that's not a client I want to work with. But, I mean, every deal is precious these days. Every renewal is precious these days. So, how do you even begin to approach a situation like that, where it's just, see you later? It's almost like an RFP where I can't talk to anybody. Yeah. I mean, I hope that doesn't happen to us anytime soon. I hope we don't have any of those anytime soon. But I don't know, there's no panacea for that, right? Like, some people, like, sometimes you prepare as well as you can, you get everybody on the same page, you have your plan internally, and then someone just throws a wrench in all of it. Like, maybe it's a big customer, right?

Maybe it's a cornerstone customer, and that's just someone that you're working with. Like, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that, in that case, I would 100% just stick to my guns and, like, lose the revenue. Because, like, I'm a human being, too, and I'm trying to grow this company, and I got mouths to feed over here, right, in terms of headcount. We're trying to grow, and we're trying to make the investors rich. But I do think the more you can kind of get on the same page with what matters to you as a company, the more that, like, your legal leader, your CEO, and your CRO are on the same page with how is this going to impact things, the better. And oftentimes, if you've already had a conversation around a playbook, it becomes a scaffolding for that conversation, right?

So, like, let's say your big, you know, Fortune 50 company, right, that is a huge customer of yours comes at you with, like, a super unreasonable set of demands. And you can come and you can just be like, guys, from, like, whether they're asking for reduction in revenue, so your product guys are like, we're not going to, like, we're going to be totally hamstring here for the stuff they want us to develop, right? Like, we have a playbook here in terms of, like, how much we ask for for pricing for these kinds of development things. Or maybe it's just your sales team in terms of, like, your renewal or whatever. If they can come in and be like, hey, you know, if we were dealing with this fresh, what would it look like?

And we're all on the same page? It makes it much easier to come to a consensus around what do we do when they're an existing customer. So, honestly, I think as much as possible, it's just about preparation. Yeah, and I think that's, like, you almost, that's why I always say it with objections, right? It's proactive versus reactive. Like, you've got to assume that you're going to get, you know, some kicked in the teeth. You've got to assume this stuff. So, what's your game plan for it when it happens? And the only answer I've been able to give to that blanket one is that's when your executive calls their executive. You know what I mean? That's when, then you take yourself out of the equation and your CEO, or if the deal's big enough, your CEO calls their CEO and says, hey, like, come on.

I thought we were partners here. This is a pretty hardcore, like, this is not the way that we want to create relationships. Is this genuinely what your thing is? And just elevate the conversation and get yourself out of it because the likelihood of you being able to work with that procurement person or legal person who was told to do that is zero, right? And if you try to get to them or go around them or go over their head, they're going to make it exponentially worse, right? Way worse. Way worse. And, like, that's the way it's going to end up. And the more that you can get behind your CEO, the more information you can give them and just arm them, right? Here's our playbook. Here's why we care.

Here are the things that we care about, whether it's legal, whether it's revenue, whether it's product. Here's what we care about. Arm them with that kind of stuff. He can go in and make the case, right? Here she can go in and just lay it all out on the table. So I want to get to playbook, but I do want to ask one more question before that, which is we talked about how you can work with and really be supportive and make their jobs look good. What are, like, the top two or three things that piss lawyers off that sales reps do, right? Like, what are those things that are just, like, as soon as a rep takes that tactic or whatever it is, the lawyer's like, you know what? Fuck you. The wall's going up and we're going hard on this now because you just crossed the line.

What are some of those things? Oh, okay. The first one is not really, like, a tactic. It's not, like, a considered thing. It's the sales rep gets the contract on a Monday and a lawyer doesn't see it till Wednesday. Like, the sales rep has a bunch of stuff going on. Maybe it's in their personal life. Maybe it's just they got a bunch of other deals and conversations going on and then it just doesn't get to the lawyer. And all of a sudden you give them a two-day haircut on the time they had. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Immediately to the top of the shit list, right? In terms of, like, what's happening in the agreements, right, is whenever you see, like, a recording or, like, a paper trail of, you know what?

Whatever you guys want, just get it into the contract and I'll push it through for you. Because then it's, like, you don't have my back, right? Like, be reasonable about it, right? This is not about, like, you getting, like, everything that you want. Like, I'm supposed to be on your team. We're supposed to get to, like, a good place here. And I get it. You're trying to get, you're trying to be, like, you know, an advocate for your client. But, like, it shouldn't come at, you know, the cost of the lawyer. You're just, all you're doing is you're making the lawyer look bad, right? Because they're just going to have to say no to a lot of the stuff. That's a problem. Yeah, I think that's the thing that reps don't really get is that all these, you know, that's why when people come in, oh, tips and tricks, like, give me some tips.

Don't give me any tricks, especially when it comes to procurement and legal and that type of stuff. Because they are so much more savvy than we are and they've heard it all before. They've had sales reps do all this shit to them. So, they know what's coming and they know what you're trying to look at. Like, your deal cycle is, like, it's a lot more varied. You're building relationships. You're explaining value points. You're meeting all these people. You're escalating. You're getting a buying decision. For your legal team, they're doing that. They're closing all the time. All the time. That's all they're doing. Even more than the sales reps, right? Like, the sales reps are always trying to be closing.

But, like, by the nature of the gig, the lawyers are always closing more than the sales reps. So, like, just help them be able to do that, right? They just want to, they don't want this thing to be complicated either. And so, like, we can all get on the same page with, like, what we care about in the contracts, how we're going to act. You know what the lawyer's going to push back on. You see it, maybe you can stop on the ground a little bit. Be like, ooh, like, I've seen this one be a little bit tough before. Right? Like, I'm going to try to put in a good word, but, like, just FYI, like, we may have to talk about this. That's going to be super helpful. That takes you right from the top of the shit list down onto the hit list.

Right? Like, that's when you're doing great work and people like to be working with you. When they can see you're trying to make their job, like, a little bit easier. It doesn't have to be a ton easier. You don't have to do the job for them. As long as they can see that you're trying to make it, like, a little bit easier goes a long, long way to helping people feel good about it, helping people feel like they're getting things done as a team. Love it. So, let's talk about that playbook. You mentioned it a few times. Like, what is a good playbook to work with legal and how do we collaborate on that so that we have that – we know what information we're collecting. We know how to proactively address certain things.

We know what the reason is certain things are. So, what does, like, a framework of that playbook look like? So, really, what you got to do first is you got to know what's in your contract. Right? If you're using your own contract, it's easier because, obviously, the paper's already written. Know what you care about. Know what your limits are. Right? This is not rocket science. This is, okay, what do we care about in terms of how long these contracts are? What do we care about in terms of auto-renewal? What do we care about in terms of just, like, pricing details? Right? Like, you know, is there going to be, like, you know, a limit on price increase? Right? That kind of stuff. Like, the commercial points.

Know what those are and know what the range is that's acceptable to the team. Right? If you can nail down the range, then all of a sudden your legal team's work is a lot easier because when you see something that's outside of the range, you're like, oh, hey, this might be an issue. Right? Then you can start doing that stuff that the lawyers like. Get it all written down and make sure everybody agrees. Right? Like, everybody, you should have, like, you should have a document, frankly. Just something that lives probably with your CLO or your CRO that's, here's how we negotiate sales contracts. And it sounds like it's going to, you know, it feels sometimes like it's, like, a lot of extra work, right?

It feels like an extracurricular, but it actually shortcuts so much of the conversation. You're doing a little bit of pre-work, but you're getting, like, a thousand percent return because you don't have to have that, you don't have to have that small talk conversation anymore on the contract. Everybody knows where you're starting. Right? So, like, maybe you spend a couple days on it at the start of the year, and then from then on, it's a quarterly, you revisit it. But in total, you're spending a couple hours a year, whereas before you're spending days or weeks on that kind of stuff. Yeah, write it down, know which points, and then as a team, cut it in half. Right? Write down what everybody cares about, and then as a team, let's get in there and cut it in half.

And this is what's really, really critical. It can't just be the lawyers doing that, because they're cutting stuff that impacts not them, it impacts the rest of us. Right? But you get them in that room, you get them with, like, whether it's your sales leader, whether it's your finance leader, your product leader. You get there and you start talking about, okay, we're trying to make this as friendly for our clients as possible. What's the stuff in here we can live without? And get rid of it. And then you do that in a room together, nobody's like, oh, it's just the lawyers who said we were going to get rid of it. And then when it comes back, if anything ever does come back and bite us in the butt, it's not the lawyer's fault.

Right? And that's what lawyers are the most concerned about. Because, like, everybody gets to celebrate the upside. Right? Lawyers are the only ones, typically, they're on their own, scared out their minds about the downside. Yeah. You can share that out a little bit. Yeah. Right? They are so much more comfortable. And everybody's so much happier and deals get done so much more. Got it. Yeah. I think that it's, I mean, a lot of it leads down to empathy, right? Like, put yourself in that person's shoes and what they're being held accountable for and just get a better understanding of, again, what's good and bad, what pisses them off. And this is why I just really encourage a lot of clients to, you know, business acumen, I think, is something that's sorely missing in the sales world these days because we've over-engineered the sales process.

And it's all about tactics and techniques and all these different things. But just understanding the language of business and being able to have a logical business conversation and understand where things come from goes a long way. So, if you can get your lawyer to come into your team and just explain, hey, guys, look at our contract, right? Like, here's the stuff that's non-negotiable and this is why. Let me give an explanation. When you get to this, do this. If it hits this level, reach out to us. Don't try to play around with that because we'll be the ones that go there, right? But here's, we're going to empower you to have these type of conversations and try to, to your point, expedite this process so that it's not, we're not the, the, the slow, we're not the thing that slows it down.

Yeah. 100%. 100%. It's, nobody wants to be the bottleneck, right? The more that we can just kind of have adult conversations about all this stuff, the better off we're all going to be. You talk about how you use contracts to qualify and you have a very, you have, it's funny because I've never heard anybody else have this positioning on NDAs because I have, I have the same positioning on them. But how do you use NDAs or how do you use contracts as a qualification tool before it gets to, you know, here's the contract, close it type of thing? Yeah, I think, I mean, for us, right. For, so we're, we're a little bit unique in that, like our work is really, really related to how people review their NDAs in a lot of ways and review their contracts, right?

Like that's a, that's the biggest pain point that we're trying to solve. And so it's, it's not exactly analogous for everybody, but for us, when we're sending like a contract, you know, to the counterparty and we're, we're looking at how they're redlining it. Right. And then in our response, we're going to, we're going to like, we're going to make some edits that are going to protect us in certain ways, but we're also gauging response to our response. Right. It's, it's a little bit, it's communication. It's a little bit of a dance, but you can tell a lot about the way an organization works around what they care about in terms of their edits. Right. So like, I'm looking at, I'm looking at this contract.

If I send something over and they send it back and it's just like littered with stuff, I'm thinking this is not going to be productive because there's stuff in here that isn't material that doesn't matter. Right. Which means that their legal team is probably not, it's probably way further off from where they're going to be ripe for our solution than they would be if they were like very targeted about like certain things that actually matter. Right. And so for us, it's a really, really, it's a really, really easy way of taking what they're telling you about their contract process and just cross-referencing it. And just saying like, you know what, I'm, I, you know, I, I don't think you're being entirely honest with me.

Right. Like you, that's not what you actually tell them, but you can dig into it a little bit. You see all this stuff come up. You're like, oh, well, how many people are this going through? Right. Like how, how long does it really take you to get kind of this stuff resolved? Right. Like all that kind of stuff. It's the way that an organization reviews a contract, especially if you see it going through multiple people, that's when, that's when like these documents become just rainbows. Right. Like multiple authors, multiple changes on top. You start seeing like their internal departments fighting with each other. Right. Right. Like, uh, like, what are we doing? Like, this is, this is a, this is a, that would be a scenario where even, you know, we're, we're trying to make things easy for people.

Right. But I'm not, I'm not about taking on lost causes. No. Right. Like I will deal with the lost causes later. Right. But let me, let me, let me save the saveable. Yeah. To start with. Well, I mean, it's funny because I use NDAs even to, um, test power from a business side of the house. Right. Cause my experience, you know, obviously what I sell is not too secretive or any of that stuff, but you know, Hey, we're, you're going to start to see behind the covers every once in a while. Right. And so there is a point where, you know, everybody talks about, Hey, I need to know the decision-making process. I also want to know the procurement process. Right. A lot of people skip that step. And when somebody starts to get a little bit, I think heavy, if you will, with what they're asking for, I'll actually use the NDA as a give or a get.

So sometimes they'll ask me, we are okay. And I'll try to get something in return for it as far as whatever, but sometimes I'll use it to give to them to see if they'll actually even take it and how streamlined that is. Cause if you're the, if you're the main point of contact and you're like, I'm the guy, I'm the guy, I'm the decision maker. You know, everything goes through me. Obviously I want to be like, okay, so you're the one who signs the contract, but that comes across as offensive. So what I'll do is I'll be like, you know what Charles, you know, you know, cool. I get it. You're the guy here. Why don't we do this before we start to see a little extra here? Could you do me a favor and just sign off on this little NDA for me here and, and just get it back to me.

And literally just their reaction to that tells me, because if they're like, oh dude, like come, like just to see a demo here, like a, so wait a minute. You're going to tell me that you're going to sign off on a multi, you know, a hundred thousand dollar contract for something, but you can't sign on enough. This is a little piece of shit NDA. Hmm. Okay. Or if they're just like, yeah, yeah, we'll take care of it. Okay. Now you got some influence and now I kind of believe you a little bit more. So I use it a little bit differently, but I still use it as a qualification. For sure. I mean, we do, we do a really similar thing with our trials. Right. Yeah. I mean, for us, like, I mean, could I get comfortable without an NDA for a trial?

Yeah. I mean, we're pretty locked down, right? Like pretty locked down. The risk, I mean, the risk is this, it's there, but really what I want to do, if you're going to do a trial, let's get something signed up. Right. Either give me your NDA and like, let's sign the thing. Or you, you take mine and you, you process it through your organization. And if you can't get it signed up, then we have a bit of a problem. Right. Then you, then I know you have any juice. What are the, what are the things that are always a problem that you see? Let's, let's kind of kind of finish up on like the stuff that just, if, if you're a vendor putting it in front of a lawyer that you should probably not put in front of a lawyer.

Cause it's going to be an automatic F you. Yeah. You take, if you, if you start taking out like the consequential damages limitation. Yeah. Non-starter. Right. Like this is, I mean, on the U S the reason, the reason people get worked up about it is because like, it feels like boilerplate and it feels like it doesn't matter. It matters. Right. There's so much precedent around it. It matters. It's like really important that it's in there. Um, your, your damages cap. Right. You start screwing with the damages cap. People are going to get upset. Uh, as long as it's still like reasonable, usually you'll be able to get it through. You take it out. Problem. Right. Non-starter for a lot of folks. Um, we talked about, we just, we talked a little bit about like, like data breach indemnification for data breach.

That for a lot of people is like a non-starter. Right. Um, like, let's see what else. I mean, most of the commercial stuff at the end of the day, like you can figure it out with bigger organizations. Once they're, once they're working at scale, they don't want to deal with that kind of stuff. It's just not worth it to them. Right. To spend the extra legal money, spend the extra negotiation money. They're not going to deal with it. But from like, for most like small to medium sized growing companies, like they're, they're going to want to work with you and they'll figure it out. Um, what else? I mean, like, just be like, this is something that's a little bit unavoidable, but this is more for the lawyer on the other side.

If you're dealing with a customer in a regulated industry, just like, don't overreact to the regulatory stuff. It's not there because like they're asking for something. It's there because they got to certify to the U S government that they're not going to ship to Sudan. Okay. That's it. Just, yeah. Well, it's going to be fine and it's going to be fine. Yeah. And you're not going to mess with the contractual things that they're being held contractually obligated for. So, um, last question, cause I'm always curious on this is, um, is the AI impact here. I'm looking at AI and I'm saying, I don't care what your industry is. It's going to have an impact and legal for my lack of, you know, over knowledge of this industry seems like it's going to be one that's going to have a massive impact because now I can take a 55 page MSA, throw it into chat GPT and say, where are my risks?

How should I avoid this? You know, what are this, that, the other things. So how are, how, and, but chat GPT, all these AI is the risk factor and the legal factor. I don't even know how to wrap my head around IP anymore. So how, how are you seeing AI impacting the legal process when it comes to contracts and, and what's the, where's it trending? I guess I'm just more curious than anything else. So this is a great, it's just something that I wrestle with a ton, right? Obviously. Um, the, the way I think about this actually comes down to the kind of the way that I see departments working together at companies, right? Like we talked about this at the start of the podcast a little bit. Um, but where you get into problems is when you have too many voices that are conflicting with one another.

People always, always forget that you start using AI. It's another voice it's, it's not like it's don't do, it's doing something in response. Right. But ultimately it's another voice and it's just as easy for it to come in and complicate things as it is for it to come in and simplify things. Right. Um, when you're using the way that we think about using AI is I don't ever want to use it to exacerbate friction that we already have. I want to use it to create, to streamline things, right? To create consensus. So I'm not as, I'm like, people are like super bullish about, oh, I'll use GPT to just like mark stuff up and I'll just tell it like broadly what I care about. How long a prompt would you have to give GPT for it to accurately like mark up for you what you want in a 55 page contract?

You'd have to like a 55 page contract to do it. Right. So for me, and the way that we do it here is we take AI and we're just, we're, we're trying to narrow the problem. The first thing we want to do with AI is create consistency. That's the simplest thing that we can do. Right. Well, it's not, it's not simple for everybody, but that's how we're built. That's what we're trying to do. So for us, it's about taking AI and using it to, if a new contract comes in, modify positions to get to a goal position, right? New contract comes in with some red lines, evaluate how far they are from what's acceptable. Right. And then we're not then taking that and saying, okay, well, this is what the AI thinks.

Let's toss it into the conversation. No, no, no, this is still going to go through either on the customer side, somebody to be like, to take a look through and make sure that things are going to be all right, or it's going to go through our deal desk service, right? Like we do deal desk as a service for folks. And we're going to basically take that and say, okay, well, this is, this makes sense. This doesn't make sense. We're going to scrub it or it actually gets out there right now for contract negotiation. And I'm not talking about like, like, you know, your LIBOR stuff or like, you're going through, you're doing like a, like a basically like archeology on your past contracts. Like that's a different problem, right?

A little bit less interesting to me. Very interesting as an academic exercise. For me, what I care about is what's going to help me get these contracts negotiated most quickly. And right now the AI is, it's not a self-driving car. It's at best like a good radar guided cruise control. Right. It's going to do a bunch of the stuff for you, but like, you got to be, you got to have your, you know, feet on the pedals, hands on the wheel. Right. And if you're doing that, it can make your drive a lot more enjoyable. Yeah. Right. That's, that's the way I think about it. And that's exactly right. I think that what I'm trying to scream it on the mountaintops here with AI is augmentation, not, not automation, right?

Like, please don't automate, right? So many reps are looking for the easy button of just, Hey, click, send an email, click, review this, give me the best. It's, it's, and Gary Vaynerchuk is the one who, who I talked to about this. He said, look, don't, don't be scared of the tech and it's, you're not going to beat it, um, but be the last mile, right? Let it do all the heavy lifting. Let it even read it. Let me, let it even script out what the draft should look like. But before you hit send, please, for God's sake, make sure you read that sucker and put the human element behind it. Make sure that there's some logic that, that you know, that it probably doesn't. And because if you look to automate it, then you're automating yourself out of a job.

If you look to augment, you can accelerate pretty, pretty, you know, pretty significantly out there. A hundred percent. And like what the AI is super, super good at that people aren't, that people don't want to be doing anyway is a stuff that's like super repetitive, right? Nobody wants to do like the mind numbing. Okay. Let me, let me compare this to our positions. Let me just like, just make some changes to like make the two line up. Let the AI do it. Let the software do it. Right. And then what you'll, what you find is you can achieve a level of consistency that people just can't, people are not consistent. People are creative. We're problem solvers. It's what makes our, it makes our jobs interesting.

It's what makes life interesting. Right. Asking someone to literally come down and just do the same thing all the time, every day. Like, let's not do that as people are. Let's have the software help. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it takes the mundane things out of all the admin stuff that is again, repeatable process that somebody else could probably do. I look at a lot of stuff like, you know, if I use an outsourced admin, what I'll do is I'll record what I want them to do and send it over to them. Now it's like, I can just do that to AI. It's like, if I can record this and this is the way I want it, then I can create a little version of AI that'll do that thing for me and that's it. But I still need the human element.

I still need to be connected at that last mile so that that human interaction is still there. And there's still that empathy. There's still that understanding. There's still that subjectivity to a certain degree that AI just doesn't have right now. Yeah, and it's difficult. I don't want to pretend that that's easy. Yeah, I know. Learning to use the software, becoming empathetic with the way that it's going to change the work. There's so much change management that goes into that. And it's like, it's not easy for folks. And I don't want people to think that like, you know, oh, we just expect everybody to like get it. Like, it's going to take a little bit of time. And like, the more familiar you get with it, the more that you do it, the better it's going to be.

And you see organizations like, especially like the leaders in terms of innovation, they're always experimenting with this kind of stuff. They have it in their DNA. And that's why they can deploy these things. You're not going to be able to do it the way that they do. They literally, they have entire line items in their like multi-billion dollar budgets where their money is just going to change management, right? It's just happening that way. But for the rest of us, like, you don't have, I mean, there are providers out there like us who are just taking that technology and making it consumable because we do the last mile, right? Like, we get it. We're the experts in our tool. You know, screw it.

We don't have to sell you the tool. We'll just dog food it ourselves. You can get the output, you get all the benefits, but you don't have to deal with it. It's just take a look around, right? I think for anybody listening to this, just like, take a look around. There's more than one way that's going to get here, right? There's more than one way to get the benefit of all this like really interesting stuff that's happening. Very cool. All right, Charles, let's wrap it up here on the hour. Anything you want to leave the audience with and then where do you want them to go to find out more information about what you're working on and how you can help other people? Yeah, sure. I mean, anybody listening to this who's interested in kind of what we do in terms of the software or helping people out with like our deal to us as a service, just go to lexcheck.com, L-E-X-C-H-E-C-K.com.

All the info is there. A couple of different pages. You can go in and kind of just take a look at what we're doing. The announcements are going to come through there as well. You know, anybody who has like questions, right? Around kind of like how we help our clients or how we use our software internally, just reach out to me, right? It's lexcheck.com. My email address is literally just C-L-U. It's like the shortest email address I've ever had. That's awesome. Lexcheck.com. Just ping me a note. Just tell me you were listening to the Make It Happen podcast. Yeah. And just like we'll get together and we can have a little conversation. But yeah, really, really appreciate the opportunity to be on.

Really appreciate the conversation. That was fantastic. Learned a ton as well. So those are always the best, I think. Those are fun. Yeah. But yeah, it's been really great. Awesome, Charles. Well, thanks, man, for coming on. I appreciate it. And everybody else, thanks for listening. And hopefully this got you to think a little bit different. Hopefully you'll be a little bit friendlier to your legal counterpart on your side and their side. And we can make some friends these days. But look, like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day went or how bad you think it's going, you make somebody smile today and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, check out my new website, jbarrows.com. Well, you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day just like you are.

And I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and make it happen together.