We have a critical Contract Compliance and Price Escalation seat on our Accountability Chart that is responsible for auditing legacy client contracts and applying annual inflation adjustments. This seat is vacant because our account managers hate having tough pricing conversations and claim they are too busy. How do we get this seat owned?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic case of an unpopular but highly lucrative seat being neglected. Failing to apply contractually permitted price increases directly hurts your profitability and your ultimate exit valuation. To resolve this, you must first stop letting the team use busyness as an excuse to dodge accountability. Look at the Accountability Chart™ and determine where this seat logically lives. It typically sits under Finance or Sales Operations, not general Account Management, because it requires detail-oriented auditing rather than relationship building. Once the seat is properly placed, you must assign it to one specific person on your leadership team. If your current department heads truly lack the capacity to own it, you must restructure their existing roles or hire a dedicated specialist to fill the seat. Remember the rule: one name accountable per seat. If everyone is responsible for contract compliance, nobody is. Define the roles of this seat clearly, such as auditing contracts, calculating escalations, and issuing renewal notices. Track the progress on your Scorecard. When the person accountable for this seat realizes that capturing this missed revenue directly boosts EBITDA and their own potential exit bonuses, the resistance will evaporate.