Be it a startup or large enterprise; it’s imperative for every business to close as many sales in order to improve overall profitability. Even though you are providing innovative products or services, the business won’t achieve success if your sales teams fail to convince customers to utilize your products or services. As per research conducted by HubSpot, sales reps spend only one-third of their time selling during the day, while the rest of their time they are performing various manual administrative tasks such as writing emails, scheduling meetings, or other types of data entry.
Over the past two decades, many businesses have invested in multiple technology advancements such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Document Management System (DMS) and other technologies to accelerate all sales-related processes, while reducing manual and time-consuming tasks.
A study by Regalix’s revealed that more than 49% of businesses have already invested in some type of marketing automation. Around 55% of those B2B companies have employed automation for email marketing, lead nurturing, and other software integrations; including CRM, mobile, and social media. Research reports reveal that automation technologies are helping businesses productivity drive up sales by more than 14.5% while reducing marketing overhead costs by 12.2%.
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Until today, many enterprises handled contract creation and signing with manual processes, which results in delayed processes and could lead to deal cancellation. Many salespeople revealed the paperwork involved in the print-fill-sign-scan routine is the most challenging tasks, which restricts them from achieving their sales targets. However, utilization of eSignature verification software eliminates the inefficient paper-based workflows and helps the business automate the entire contract approval process. Typically, electronic signatures come into the picture only in the final stage of the sales cycle when you need to get the customers’ signature.
Here we discuss how eSignature solutions can improve your bottom line if only you use them throughout the whole sales pipeline.
Table of Contents
Automate Contract Authentication Process
In the paper-based contract management and approval process, the contract documents which need to be sent to all parties involved through a courier or faxes to be approved. The process of printing, scanning, signing, and again scanning the document in order to send it back, and the whole process continues until all parties have signed and approved the document. For receiving the final approval, it will take more time and consume more enterprise resources. In the worst scenario, the process being delayed may result in deal cancellation.
Fortunately, the automated solution helps the enterprises in these scenarios to authenticate each document and/or contract digitally and allow it to minimize the time lags in the contract approval process.
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Improve Stakeholder Management
Businesspeople need to improve their business strategies and result-driven decisions to enhance business processes and enhanced productivity. When multiple stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process, analyzing every participant’s opinions can be difficult. The signature verification software enables you to understand the feedback of each stakeholder by providing key metrics like a participant’s signature; the time spent viewing the document, and so much more. It’s even easier to collect signatures of stakeholders with the right software. Once the document is signed electronically, the software stores all documents on a cloud platform and keeps track of them to ensure security.
Secured Access to Document
Even though you’ve created a contract agreement for a project it’s been approved, there might still be some cases which require you to modify the agreement terms. For this, you must rework on the document again, usually from scratch. On the other hand, if you are using a cloud-based solution, you can easily access and edit a softcopy of the agreement and re-send it for an approval, all from a single interface. As all the crucial documents are stored within the secured cloud platform, you no longer need to worry about losing any documents.
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Automated Proposals for Enhanced Sales
It’s imperative for businesses to convert leads into customers. Enterprises must maintain a healthy relationship with their customers from the initial communications, through project discussions to the final delivery. Even after the sale is complete further communication is necessary for the potential of enhanced sales. When you handle the process manually, you may forget to send reminders to your customers, which could lead to possible deal cancellations. Some of the most advanced solutions allow you to send automatic proposals, reminders, prompts, and/or personalized messages and notifications to your customers, notifying them on the status of the project.
Increase Team Productivity
Rekeying in data, filling out documents, and tracking down lost documents manually can be tedious. The software automates most of these complicated and time-consuming tasks, allowing your sales departments to save time. With traditional processes, based on how near or far the parties are from one another, means the contract approval process could take weeks or even months to be completed. With the right solution, regardless of where the parties are located, they can easily communicate, collaborate, and sign documents digitally with the eSignature verification software. It streamlines the entire approval process and enables you to concentrate on more productive tasks which can enhance productivity.
Eliminates Legal Risks
Whether it’s an inaccurate data or outdated version of the document, if any critical issues go undetected, it could lead to complicated and costly legal issue. Plus, missing or incomplete documentation can lead to unnecessary penalties and fines, which will drain the company’s resources. The eSignature software provides you with a complete history of the contract’s documents. It also helps you to locate potential issues the moment they occur and lowers the risk of legal disputes. Some of the advanced solutions also identify and flag which documents have incomplete details or fields and notifies the user, and helps you reduce the amount of incomplete documents.
Mobile Workforce
Smart phones have become a huge part of our daily lives. Salespeople are no longer carrying bundles of papers, such as marketing collaterals or sales proposals. The eSignature platform with an integrated mobile application allows employees to carry all required documents electronically, minimizing the physical burden on them. Using the software correctly, sales representatives can gather each client’s signatures hassle-free.
Enhanced Security
Paper documents are prone to be tampered with, stolen, or misplaced, which could lead to more complicated situations. The software is integrated with superior security protocols to offer higher safety and security for the company and all its documents. Managers with privileges can securely access and edit documents from anywhere, any time. The advanced tracking feature of the software provides managers with a complete history of the document whenever needed, ensuring extra credibility and authenticity.
The Conclusion
In the manual, wet-ink approval process, the same document must be sent to all parties involved in the agreement. It needs to be printed, signed, and scanned securely in order to close a deal. As this process takes more time, there is always the possibility for a deal to be canceled. However, the whole process can be streamlined by using effective eSignature software. Choosing the best software among the various available options with different features and functionalities can be difficult.
Research your specific needs and requirements and purchase a solution which can help you in achieving your business objectives. While deciding on software, consider various crucial factors such as unique requirements of your business, software cost, flexibility, scalability & accessibility, ease of use, vendor’s reputation, user reviews, and so much more. Finally, invest in a solution that improves your business processes and helps you enhance the overall productivity and profitability of the organization.
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Author Bio:
Kevin Peterson is a content marketing enthusiast, freelance writer at SutiSoft, specializing in Business, ERP, Technology and Cloud/SaaS trends.
