Introduction: The “Legal Blocker” Myth
When deals slow down during contracting, it’s almost always the processes, not the people, that cause the delay.
Sales teams focus on closing great deals that grow revenue and delight customers.
Legal teams focus on making sure those deals are sound, compliant, and protect the company from unnecessary risk. Both priorities are essential for the business. But without a clear, shared process, these priorities can unintentionally pull in different directions. That can lead to longer approvals, reactive communication, and stalled revenue.
Research from World Commerce & Contracting (WorldCC) shows that companies lose around 9% of contract value due to poor contracting causing delays, rework, and missed obligations. That is a measurable hit to growth.
The opportunity is to create a process where most deals flow smoothly by default, where Legal’s expertise is applied exactly when and where it adds the most value, and where Sales and Legal work in sync to keep revenue moving.
Why This Matters for Revenue Leaders
Contracting is not just a Legal concern; it has a direct impact on revenue, forecast predictability, and profitability.
- Forecast Quality: When forecasted deals slip out of the quarter, predictability disappears. Your revenue plan becomes shaky and leadership loses confidence.
Integrating your CRM with your CLM gives both Sales and Legal real-time visibility into contract status, making forecasts far more reliable. - Time-to-Cash: Every extra day a contract waits for review is another day before revenue can be booked. WorldCC benchmarks show that reducing contract cycle time is one of the most effective levers to pull revenue forward.
- Value Capture: Leakage does not stop at signature. Missed obligations, manual handoffs, and forgotten renewals erode margin post-sale. CLM captures key terms, automates reminders, and ensures the value you negotiated is the value you keep.
How Sales Can Partner with Legal
A smarter contracting process does more than speed things up, it helps Sales understand the why behind the contract.
With clear templates and rules, sellers start to see how risk is allocated, which clauses affect price, and where Legal needs to step in to protect the business. This shared understanding makes customer conversations smoother and reduces friction long before Legal ever has to review.
1. Use Structured, Conditional Workflows
No more writing contracts from scratch. Business-friendly templates reflect your pricing, risk appetite, and data requirements.
Conditional blocks and formulas adjust automatically based on deal details like region, value, product, and liability thresholds. Legal no longer needs to re-read entire agreements to understand context; the right language is applied instantly. This cuts down on setup time, reduces extra customer meetings, and shortens the path to signature.
2. Cut Out Manual Drafting
Manual editing eats up time and creates inconsistency. Seven lawyers will write seven slightly different versions of the same clause.
Templates standardize language and automate the first draft so Legal can focus on areas where their expertise is most valuable: reviewing exceptions, negotiating material risk, and guiding complex deals – not retyping boilerplate.
3. Focus Legal’s Time Where It Counts
With pre-set rules, standard deals can move straight to signature without Legal review.
If risk is triggered, the system routes the deal to the right approver with full context of what changed and why. This allows Legal to focus on the highest-risk matters while managing multiple parallel cases efficiently.
Make Escalation Predictable
Escalation should feel clear and fair, not political or personal. When everyone knows the process, approvals move faster and deals keep their momentum.
Here is a simple framework you can publish internally:
- Tier 1 (Same Day): Standard deals with no risk flags go straight to signature.
- Tier 2 (24 to 48 Hours): Controlled deviations like modest liability changes, standard DPAs or non-material commercial tweaks route to the assigned Legal reviewer with clear context.
- Tier 3 (48 to 72 Hours): Material risk or policy exceptions go to senior Legal, with Finance or InfoSec involved if needed.
By setting clear thresholds and service levels, you remove the guesswork and make escalation predictable for both Sales and Legal.
Metrics Sales and Legal Should Track Together
The power of CLM is that it gives both Sales and Legal a shared, data-driven view of the contracting process. Instead of guessing where deals get stuck, you can see exactly which steps create friction and fix them.
These are the metrics that show the real impact of CLM:
Deal Slip Rate
The percentage of forecasted deals that miss their close window. A high slip rate usually points to late stage surprises or slow reviews. Reducing this number makes revenue forecasts more accurate and builds leadership confidence.
Legal Touch Rate
The percentage of contracts that require human Legal review. The goal is not to cut Legal out but to make sure their time is spent on real risk, not routine agreements. When templates and rules are solid this number should go down and Legal can focus on strategic deals.
Approval Latency
The average time contracts wait for approvals broken down by function. This is where most friction hides. Tracking it helps you tune SLAs, rebalance workloads and remove unnecessary steps.
Together these metrics show if your process is getting faster, safer and more predictable, which is exactly what a CLM is designed to deliver. Track them weekly and review top blockers monthly. WorldCC benchmarks highlight contract cycle time as one of the most powerful levers for improving contracting health.
How We Do This at Precisely
At Precisely, we believe contracting should never slow down growth. Our approach is to remove unnecessary friction while keeping the right controls in place. We make it possible for Sales to generate and manage most contracts themselves, safely and within the rules, while Legal places focus where they are needed most.
We built Precisely so Sales can close faster without losing guardrails:
- Templates with pre-set rules: Guided Q&A produces clean drafts and removes irrelevant language automatically, helping sellers understand risk logic and price drivers.
- Conditional approvals only when needed: Standard deals skip review entirely, exceptions route with clear context and owners so Legal can prioritize.
- CRM-first workflow: Generate, track, and forecast from your CRM with statuses and blockers syncing both ways.
- Automatic registration, archiving and data extraction: Never manually file a contract again. Key terms are captured for search, alerts, renewals, and reporting, closing the value leakage gap.
- Negotiation that feels familiar: Browser-based redlining with track changes, with Word in/out when counterparties insist.
These practices reflect what independent analysts describe as the modern CLM pattern: automate creation and negotiation, integrate with adjacent apps, and capture contract data for portfolio-level reporting (Forrester).
The result is a process where deals move smoothly by default, Legal is engaged where they create the most value, and revenue keeps flowing without compromising compliance or risk management.
Checklist: Empower Sales, Protect the Business
1. Make the rules visible
Publish a clear escalation ladder in your CRM with thresholds, owners and response times so everyone knows exactly what happens next.
2. Standardize your top contracts
Create structured templates with pre-set rules for your five most common agreements – MSA, Order Form, DPA, NDA and SOW – so first drafts are consistent and fast.
3. Automate the approval path
Use conditional approvals to let standard deals go straight to signature and only trigger Legal review when risk or policy thresholds are met.
4. Capture contract data automatically
Register and index agreements the moment they are signed and extract key terms like renewals, caps and notices to eliminate manual handoffs.
5. Track and improve continuously
Monitor slip rate, legal touch rate and approval latency every week so you can spot friction early and keep improving cycle time.
TL;DR
Contracting is not a blocker but a poor process is.
With structured templates, conditional approvals, CRM-first workflows and automated post-sign handling, Sales and Legal can close faster, capture more value and protect the business. Independent research shows poor contracting leaks around 9% of value and reducing cycle time is the most powerful lever to fix it.
