Procurement professionals are responsible for ensuring that the right products, materials, and services reach the business on time and at the right cost. They are also expected to protect margins, maintain supplier trust, and keep operations How Procurement Can Use Legal Leverage to Strengthen Supplier Relationshipsrunning smoothly. Achieving all three goals requires more than price negotiation. It requires strategic use of contracts as business tools. When procurement teams

Your team hits demo targets. Proposals go out. Opportunities stack up. But if your deals are getting stuck in negotiation or worse, slipping into silence. You don’t have a pipeline problem. You have a control problem. Why Deals Stagnate and Die For most growth-stage companies, the biggest revenue risk isn’t a lack of leads. It’s a lack of discipline. Deals don’t die in discovery. They die because: Reps have one champion but zero multi-threading. Verbal yeses become dead end

The shift to remote work created a sales skills gap in negotiation, collaboration, and contract execution. Learn how deal execution coaching improves close rates and accelerates enterprise sales cycles as teams return to the office. Sales teams that once learned by listening to colleagues on calls, receiving hallway feedback, or collaborating beside senior performers lost that development pathway during pandemic-era remote work.

Raw materials, packaging, transportation, labor, and energy pricing have all experienced unprecedented fluctuation in recent years. For manufacturers, volatility is not theoretical. It hits the balance sheet. Yet in many supply agreements and co-packing relationships, pricing is fixed without any mechanism to adjust based on real-world cost increases. When contracts do not address inflation and commodity variability, manufacturers find themselves absorbing expenses that can t

Sales teams thrive on momentum. The faster a deal moves through the pipeline, the more likely it is to close. Yet in many organizations, momentum is lost the moment a contract lands on the table. Redlines, legal reviews, and slow approvals can stretch sales cycles and frustrate both the customer and the sales rep. The solution is not to bypass legal. The solution is to integrate legal strategy into the sales process so that every deal moves quickly, confidently, and on terms

Selling into major retailers can unlock significant volume and brand visibility. It can also introduce financial risk if chargebacks, deductions, and compliance penalties are not clearly managed in your contracts. Manufacturers often accept penalties as a cost of doing business with large customers. In reality, many chargebacks are avoidable and arise from unclear contract terms, evolving retailer requirements, or responsibilities that are silently shifted onto manufacturers.

In the manufacturing and distribution world, the lines between who controls the customer relationship and who owns the intellectual property can become blurred. This becomes especially important as companies scale, enter large retail networks, or launch private-label and co-packing relationships. Many manufacturers believe that producing the product means retaining control. Many distributors assume that bringing the customer means they command the relationship. Without clear

Rebate and promotional programs are powerful commercial tools for food manufacturers and distributors. They are used to reward loyalty, encourage growth, and align suppliers and customers around shared performance goals. However, when these programs are not clearly defined in the underlying contracts, they can become one of the most contentious areas in supplier relationships. Without legal precision, rebate programs and promotional discounts often lead to accounting discrepa

Margins are the lifeblood of every manufacturing business. Equipment, labor, packaging, logistics, and raw materials all carry rising and variable costs. Yet many manufacturers sign commercial agreements that ignore these realities and unintentionally lock themselves into terms that erode profit, restrict pricing flexibility, and expose the business to ongoing financial risk. Well-structured manufacturing contracts do more than establish supply terms. They preserve pricing po