I am not a legal professional - however, before my retirement and during the course of my career, I worked as a Sales Engineer, Sales Manager, and Independent Contractor (sales rep) in an industry when the time between first call and closing an order was very similar to what the poster described. Some products I sold had one year delivery on product ARO and it may have been five to seven years developing the lead into the order!

What WE did, and seemed to work fine during that time anyway, and this was written into our "employment agreement" contracts, particularly between the "principal" and the "sales rep" or "distributor" was, in a nutshell:

The exiting independent contractor (rep or distributor) was entitled to commissions on orders placed within 90 days of the date of termination (payment of course was deferred until it was received by the principal in full and then the principal basically paid out commissions net 30). In some cases, the rep or distributor was required to provide a list of orders pending and the principal would agree to "protect" the rep or distributor's commission on those specific accounts during the 90-day period; but with other products and, depending on the relationship and the reasons for parting company, the "list" would not be required.

Since the new incoming salesperson would typically have contact with the customers whose orders are pending with a commission earned by the departing rep, we always left that to the two field guys to work something out between them and, wow, how things have changed! I say that because I cannot remember a single instance where a situation arose that was not beneficial to everybody involved. Alas, those must have been the good old days!

I hope I've contributed some useful information. I'm the newbie on all the forums I visit these days and it was nice to encounter a topic I know well enough to provide some expert insight.