Contracts killed your last five deals — and you’re still using the same templates
Your 30-page sales contract is a customer repellent. That’s the truth.
When a prospect is ready to buy, why scare them off with pages of legalese, threats and archaic language?
If you think you’ve got a sales funnel problem, I’ve got news for you: It’s very possible that you may have a contract problem instead.
“But we need legal protection!” I can already hear you saying.
Here’s the truth, though: More than 90% of contracts never get redlined, or negotiated, or edited in any way.
They just get signed. Or not.
So when you send a 30-page contract to a lead you’re about to close, what you’re telling them is… “We care more about 1% edge cases than we care about you.”
Because the reality is:
- Nobody reads your force majeure clause
- Your indemnification section is copy-pasted from 2007
- Your “industry standard terms” are just roadblocks
- None of this is ever going to matter in an actual court of law
So why are you shocked when a deal dies in the contract review phase?
With the language most companies try to drown us in, it’s a miracle any contracts get signed at all!
The solution isn’t better legal boilerplate. It’s a radical rethink of your contracts.
When we redesigned our contract templates at Concord, we:
- Reduced page count by 70%
- Simplified language to 9th-grade reading level
- Created visual term sheets instead of text walls
- Used AI to flag only the clauses that needed human review
And what do you think happened? Did we get destroyed by a litigious customer?
Not at all. Our close rates skyrocketed, while contract review times plummeted from weeks to hours.
The takeaway: Your templates should help close deals, not kill them.
If your best salespeople are apologizing for the contracts they send, it’s time for a revolution on the template front.
Because at the end of the day, what matters more — your legal team’s comfort or your revenue targets?
Matt Lhoumeau is the CEO and co-founder of Concord, a leading provider of Agreement Intelligence solutions. Concord empowers growing businesses to make smarter operational decisions by unlocking actionable insights from contracts, and is trusted by over 1,500 companies worldwide.
