How to Scale Sales and Partnership Contracts Using Automation

More than 70% of businesses around the globe are taking on digital transformation initiatives. Organizations have realized the importance of going digital and fully recognize the benefits that digital transformation provides ranging from higher efficiency, reduced cost, and streamlined processes to seamless scaling options, improved resource utilization, and optimized stakeholder experience.

Contracts are the backbone of businesses. They pop up when it comes to dealing with customers and even partners. Contract management for scaling businesses can, however, become cumbersome if done manually. When it comes to sales and partnership contracts, there are countless documents and reminders that are repetitive. The time spent on such manual tasks can be utilized in other productive places via contract automation. Automated sales and partnership contracts tailored to the requirements are a successful step towards the growth of a scaling company. 

ToC

• What is contract automation?
• Common problems in sales and partnership contracts
• Sales automation
• Partnership automation
• Scale sales and partnership contracts using automation
  

Before we jump to the ways that can help scale sales and partnership contracts using automation, let’s recap a bit regarding the basics.

What is contract automation?

Contract Automation is the process of using software in order to automate the contract lifecycle management through workflows that ensure both legal and non-legal teams are able to self-serve on business-related legal documents without involving lawyers at every stage. An effective and efficient automated contract workflow includes the generation, management, and storage of contracts without compromising on important matters such as negotiation, e-signatures, and tracking.  

Common problems in sales and partnership contracts

Some of the common problems found in sales and partnership contracts are: 

1. Repetition: Duplication of efforts in copy-pasting the data from one tool to another
2. Time wastage: Manual process of contract management involves a lot of time in scanning and sending, sometimes printing, contracts which is a slow and inefficient method.  
3. Terrible experience: Imagine being a scaling SaaS company that claims to be working on cutting-edge tech but at the same time provides a bad contract experience to their customers and partners. Manual contract processes are bad for all parties involved.
4. Non-transparent work: There is no way to ensure version control of the contracts and if the storage is not consolidated then even finding a document can become a bane of one’s existence. 
5. Standardization and data integrity: Standardization of your contracts leaves the counterparty with a sense of security. Automated contract management allows data integrity for all parties.
   

Sales automation

Imagine a world where sales representatives aren’t stuck in tedious manual tasks and instead are busy closing deals, building relationships, and hitting gongs. Sounds like corporate heaven, right? 

Sales automation has the ability to do so by freeing up the time spent by your reps on tedious recurring tasks which in turn takes down the cost of sales and allows your sales team to explore additional revenue areas. 

Contract automation in sales reduces the time-to-signature leading to faster closing of deals. Workflows for self-executing contracts with pro-active negotiations remove the hassle of manual work by 50% for the sales team which results in substantial ROI.

Partnership automation

Management has evolved dramatically over time. The new age comes with new strategies one of which is partnership marketing. These strategic partnerships have a lifecycle of their own that goes beyond the last click leading to conversion rewards. Metrics that cater to the awareness, influence, and persuasion of a customer and various touchpoints that lead to successful conversions require specific contracts offering different bonuses. 

Implementation and management of such partnership contracts can be a beast to deal with if done manually especially if you are a business that is scaling. This can easily be automated with smart contracts with different triggers measuring success through the touchpoints or metrics facilitating the conversions.

Scale sales and partnership contracts 

Here is the checklist you need to scale your sales and partnership contract:

1. Simplicity: More than 90% of the contracts are standard except for a few variables terms related to discounts, etc. Keep it as easy as possible as it is more important to have a good relationship with the customers and partners by establishing trust. Don’t leave things for interpretation!! 
2. Separate your terms: By adding a divide between your terms, you will be able to rework your contracts easily without going through heavy lifting each time, for example, the pricing changes.
3. Make it counterparty-friendly: Make it easy for your customers and partners. There is no point in creating unnecessary friction with unreadable contracts although your legal department might not agree with you.
4. Evaluate thoroughly: Go through all the possible risks and evaluate whether your exposure expresses itself in price. Consider what is the critical infrastructure and what is your product?
5. Commercial approach: Let your commercial teams be the driving force behind your contract setup instead of the legal ones. Try to understand how the contract process fits in your commercial teams and what place it has in your product. Legal is a support function that can help during the consultation but once the process has been implemented they are not the ones dealing with the partners or customers so prioritize the commercial aspect. 
6. Integrate everything: Connect as much as you can by automating wherever possible. From CRM to Slack, get everything integrated as soon as possible. It will not only remove the chances of errors but also get rid of any friction left.
   

Drive Sales and Partnership Contract Automation with Contractbook

As a company entering into the digital transformation stage, you need to consider a contract automation software that not only helps you end the points of friction in your sales contracts but also in your partnership ones as well.

Contractbook’s automation workflows for both sales and partnership allow you to have contracts on autopilot. The self-executing contracts are fully data-enabled which eliminates the chances of errors that manual tasks are prone to.