How to improve your sales team’s efficiency through contract automation

‍Sales efficiency is a problem that’s often ignored, even though fixing it massively benefits your business growth. So why is it ignored? Part of the reason probably lies in the fact that you can go about sales efficiency in many different ways.

In this article, you'll learn how to improve your sales team’s efficiency by 30% through contract automation. But first, let’s talk about sales efficiency in general.

Why does sales efficiency pose such a problem?

Companies direct most of their focus on the bottom line. They want results and they want them fast. That’s completely understandable, except when it messes with efficiency.

Being effective means getting the results you want, but it doesn’t necessarily imply being efficient. The difference between an inefficient and efficient process is effort. The more effort you need to put into achieving a goal, the less efficient you are. 

Of course, every company, yours included, wants their sales team to close deals easier and faster. Sadly, not a lot of them are willing to do the work, that is, invest in sales efficiency. Why is this so?

More often than not, it’s because improving sales efficiency is seen as:

• Optional
• Problematic
• Time-consuming
  

Let’s talk about sales automation to see if any of that is actually true. 

What is sales automation?

Sales automation refers to any use of technology aimed at improving your business’ sales efficiency. In other words, whenever you switch from manual to automated sales processes, you’re practicing sales automation. 

Is sales automation really optional? 

It all depends on your goals. If you’re hitting all your targets and aren’t planning on raising them, why would you want to change anything? But let’s be real. There’s no business that’s not aiming to be even more successful. That’s exactly where sales automation comes in. 

Is sales automation really problematic?

Sales automation is all about using software to eliminate the need to do things manually. It’s the type of dedicated software that already exists and can be provided to you as a business service. There’s nothing problematic about it, especially if you go with the type of service that comes with easy integration with existing organizational structure.

Is sales automation really time consuming? 

Switching to automated sales processes will definitely take up some of your time. However, this only applies to the initial stage in the process. Once everything’s set up, you’ll be saving your company numerous hours of valuable time.

Are you wondering what this process would entail? A great way to automate a lot of your sales processes is to start with contract administration. Here’s how to improve your sales team’s efficiency by 30% through contract automation.

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How to improve sales team’s efficiency by 30% through contract automation

According to McKinsey, more than 30% of all sales-related tasks can be automated. This is an easy 30% increase in your sales team’s efficiency.

One area that’s usually not as optimized as it could be is contract administration. Just imagine how much time salespeople waste drafting new contracts, locating paperwork, organizing their contractual obligations, etc.

Automating these processes increases efficiency, which in turn has a positive effect on your company’s overall performance. This is done by switching to dedicated contract automation software. Let’s see what steps this process entails.

1. Sync with your CRM 

When you integrate contract automation software with your customer relationship management system, your salespeople reap many benefits.

• Increased consistency. Thanks to real-time data flow, there’s a single source of truth and much less room for errors.
• Improved visibility. Your data is no longer scattered across multiple systems, so you don’t have to wonder where to find the thing you need.
• Increased productivity. Your salespeople stop wasting time tracking down information and start spending it doing what they were hired to do: sell.
  

2. Sync with your collaboration tools

Contract automation software can be synced with your collaboration tools as well. This improves the way your sales team functions in general.

• Efficient collaboration. When all systems are connected and function as a whole, working with others on shared tasks becomes much more streamlined.
• Reduced risk of losing track of tasks. Imagine working on a contract and being able to click a button to invite team members to help you.  
• Increased transparency. There’s no more confusion around who, what or where. Everything is recorded and all the data is as reliable as can be.
  

3. Automate contract creation

When you make it possible for salespeople to stop wasting time on contract creation, you improve their overall efficiency. More specifically, you help your sales team and yourself in at least three different ways.  

• Less admin work. Your salespeople don’t have to create each new contract from scratch. This saves quite a bit more time than you’d think.
• Greater consistency. When you use standardized templates, you don’t fill out the information yourself. The software does it for you, which means uniform results. 
• Reduced costs. Saving time means saving money. However, there’s also the element of reducing risk, which again translates into concrete savings in the long run.
  

4. Automate contract approval

Getting a contract approved and signed by all the relevant parties is normally very time consuming. Automating this process with the help of eSign functionalities has many benefits. 

• Increased speed. A contract doesn’t become effective until it’s been signed. Getting it approved faster means a shorter sales cycle as well.
• Less admin work. Instead of printing, signing, and scanning, you only need to do the signing part. 
• Fewer errors. With contract automation software, it’s much harder to make the mistake of leaving one of the signing parties out of the loop.
  

5. Track contract status

When all the data is flowing into a single streamlined repository, it becomes a lot easier for your sales team to track their work.

• Improved ability to stay organized. You don’t have to track down information all the time. This makes it easier for you to stay on top of things.
• Increased productivity. When organization is improved, you free up a lot of your time for doing the work you’ve been hired to do. 
• Better strategizing. Less confusion means more mental energy that you can dedicate to working on the big-picture stuff.‍
  

6. Automate tasks and reminders

Contract administration involves a lot of important but spaced-out tasks, such as contract renewal. Setting reminders and automated workflows results in:

• Fewer errors. As long as you set a reminder, you won’t be able to forget any of the important deadlines.
• Increased productivity. Not having to worry about missing deadlines makes you more focused on doing actual sales work.
• Shorter time-to-revenue. When no deadlines are missed, your sales cycle automatically becomes shorter, resulting in a revenue increase.

Improve sales team’s efficiency with Contractbook

If you want to increase sales efficiency with contract management, we at Contractbook are here for you. Our contract automation software features:

• Seamless integration with your CRM and collaboration tools
• Standardized template libraries for automated contract creation
• eSign functionality for automated contract approval
• Streamlined platform for easy contract status tracking
• Self-executing contract functionalities, automated tasks and reminders
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Does this sound like just the thing your business needs? To get maximum value out of your sales team, get in touch.