Boosting Sales with Digital Signatures as a Catalyst

Sales, as we know, is an entirely different ecosystem in itself with most of its aspects automated. With applications like CRM, ERP, chatbots, and email marketing tools among many other have changed the paradigm. But when it comes to signing documents, contracts, and sales agreements, things have been moving at a rather slow pace. Without digital signatures sales representatives, managers, and directors cannot reach their full potential. In many ways, technologically restricting your sales team is pretty much like blocking your company’s growth and revenue funnel.

Modernizing sales contracts using digital signatures

For product-based and service-based companies, the smooth execution of sales or service contracts proves to be the distinguishing factor between getting a legacy client and a devastating lawsuit. The execution phase is the most vital part of the Contract Management Lifecycle (CLM). After properly negotiating and carefully drafting the contract, it’s time to execute it by signing it. In today’s date, whether B2B or B2C, sales happen all over the globe while transcending geographical boundaries. The key is to get a legally binding electronic signature solution so that sales happen uninterrupted. But before you go ahead and modernize your workflow, here’s a list of the top five things you should consider.

Technological aspects

Initially, the prospect of digital transformation seems like a leap of faith. But we are not diving headfirst. We first immerse our toes by doing our due diligence. The best place to start would be checking exactly how digital signatures will benefit multiple departments and facets of your business operations. If the solution is good enough strictly for specific aspects of your business, it would take slightly longer for your company to reap the ROI. But with digital signatures, your sales team along with your admin teams can benefit by getting rid of the clutter and other nuances associated with the paper-based workflow.

Once you have the answer to that question, you might want to check just how scalable the solution is. A growing company needs a growing sales team. As your team grows, you have to make sure that the performance and yield of your E-signature solution remain rock solid. The primary objective of going for digital transformation is to save time, effort, and funds. If the implementation is costing your business, you might want to reconsider the product.

These are dynamic times. Your company and your tech arsenal cannot afford to miss out on the constant innovation that is going on. Before finalizing the product, it is vital to have a look at the roadmap of the product to get a clear glimpse of what you can expect. A product may be good today, but may not stay that way in days to come. Enabling your sales team with digital signatures that are constantly updated to comply with the latest norms and with a foresight of the next big thing gives your representatives the edge needed to stay ahead in this competitive market.

Understanding the pain points of the sales process

After the contract is generated, it is highly likely to go back & forth in the negotiation phase. Once the common grounds are established, the contract has to go through a meticulous approval workflow. Once all the stakeholders have approved the final draft the execution phase begins where the signing parties come together and sign the contracts and the supporting paperwork. Once the agreement is signed, it has to be carefully stored for retrieval when needed. It does not end here. Chances are, after a contract is signed, a certain set of circumstances might need the contract to be updated. In such cases, all the previous stages of the contract lifecycle are repeated. A contract after its successful execution can either be renewed or terminated. In case of a renewal, a similar workflow comes into the picture. Even if the contract is terminated, it still holds a lot of value in an audit. Failure to provide terminated contracts and agreements during audits can result in penalties.

Based on the number of iterations the process goes through, the archaic paper-based manual workflow requires the company to schedule an in-person meeting, print, scan, store, and preserve the contract. This is not only costing your business but also exposes it to the possibility of the contract getting damaged or manipulated. But with a robust digital signature solution, not only do you stand to streamline and speed up the process, you also save the infrastructural and operational costs required to store, preserve, and retrieve contracts by offering online document storage.

Assessing your company’s sales cycle

The health of your sales team is directly proportional to your company’s revenue. With that in mind, the first step towards modernizing is knowing what to change, how to change, and if to change at all. In order to find answers to these questions, we will take a step-by-step approach and work our way towards establishing the foundation of digital transformation of the sales process using digital signatures.

Let’s begin the introspection by setting up the priorities and goals. Here are five major goals your sales team should consider working around.

• Good customer experience.
• Process innovation.
• Increasing revenue and profitability.
• Efficiency.
• Sustainability.

Once you have set these goals the next step would be to figure out if your sales team needs a digital signature solution. If any of the below cases apply to your company, you need an E-sign solution.

• A large volume of contracts.
• Complicated contracts.
• Multiple vendors and negotiations.
• Constantly growing customer/client base.

In most cases when you end up opting for digital signatures for your sales team, you have to monitor a set of metrics to measure the impact of your efforts. Following is a list of metrics you should keep your eye on.

• The difference in customer experience.
• Increase in efficiency.
• Increase in profitability.
• Savings.
• Better compliance with laws & regulations.

Guide to creating a paperless sales team with electronic signatures

Every opportunity to get rid of the clutter caused by paperwork is another avenue for a business to save funds and boost productivity. When it comes to modernizing the sales department using digital signatures, going paperless means significantly reduced time to address the flood of paperwork and more time for clients/customers. Here are some pointers to do just that.

Digital signatures – myths vs facts

The path to paperless operations is paved with digital transformative technology. And in this day & age, any replacement for physical contact is booming. But chances are, you might come across some skeptics. Now there is healthy skepticism that is backed by actual evidence, and then there is an opinion disguised as a fact-based on either technophobia or some circumstantial evidence. If you want to go paperless, it is important to debunk the myths surrounding digital signatures. Some of the most common myths associated with going paperless are:

1. Digital signatures are expensive and difficult to implement.
2. Using them needs a great deal of tech expertise.
3. Digital signatures are not admissible in court.
4. You need a Digital Signature Certificate to use them.

Facts –

1. You can get started with a digital signature solution for a fraction of the cost of what your business spends on manual paper based processes.
2. Platforms like DrySign are user-friendly and are designed in such a way that they can be used by every department of your business.
3. Thanks to various laws and regulations, E-signatures carry the same legitimacy as ink-based signatures.
4. You don’t need to apply and pay for DSCs in order to legally sign. Just look for an application that does it for you.

Sales over administrative tasks

Most of the sales representatives spend a significant amount of time doing administrative tasks. Redirecting their efforts from managing paperwork to connecting with the client and giving them a more personalized experience so that your business has the upper hand. Contracts and agreements take up most of the bandwidth and leave little space for sales reps to do what they do best. Your sales department has to deal with contracts in sales operations, core sales processes, internal operations, and partnerships but with digital transformation, you will be at looking at significantly reduced TATs.

How to use digital signatures to streamline sales administration?

“Anything that can be digitized will be digitized” – A spinoff of Murphy’s Law.

1. Implementing digital signatures to speed the core sales process by signing sales agreements, Non-disclosure Agreements (NDAs), Terms & Conditions along with revisions when applicable, and warranty agreements among other contracts online.
2. Sales operations can be tedious without the right tech. Signing paperwork like special events registrations, authorizations of bulk sale orders, purchase orders, and policy documents online can shave off a significant amount of time.
3. Digital signature solutions enable sales reps to go an extra mile in providing a smoother customer experience by electronically signing contract renewals, account change applications, and benefits reviews.
4. Executing partnering contracts electronically has its own perks like increased transparency, accountability, and security. That is why signing contracts like channel partner agreements, reseller contracts, distributor and supply chain management vendor agreements online makes sense.

Increasing transparency and accountability

Analytics play a pivotal role in sales forecasting. Every ounce of data acts as a cog in the grand scheme of things. With digital signature solutions, sales teams can record all sorts of useful data like the time required to sign contracts, the success rate of contracts, and help maintain the integrity of the contract by eliminating the possibilities of document forgery and manipulation. With digital signature applications like DrySign, teams can get features like audit trails and real-time status tracking. This helps keep all the signing parties up to speed while keeping an eye out on the sales funnel. Based on this data your elite leadership team will always have your sales and revenue forecast at hand.

Also read: What You Should Be Looking for in a Digital Signature Provider

Why execute sales contracts using digital signatures?

The biggest flaw of paper-based manual workflow is that it exposes the business to a myriad of the highest possible and dire scenarios that might cost a small fortune to get out of. When it comes to executing sales contracts, there is a lot that can go wrong when left to the traditional workflow. Here’s a list of clauses that if manipulated or forged, could result in a breach of the sales contract and significantly damage the company’s finances and brand.

1. Non-Payment

This is one of the most highly likely scenarios among other sales contract breach cases. If a contract is manipulated or forged in such a way that the Non-Payment clause is removed, then the seller might end up selling the product or service at a loss.

2. Non-Acceptance

When under a contract, the seller can sue the buyer for not accepting the product. If the product is perishable with a short shelf life, this could prove to be a colossal loss if this part of the contract has been tampered with.

3. Non-Delivery

If the contract is forged or altered in such a way that the “Non-Delivery” clause is removed, the buyer can end up paying for something that he/she hasn’t received.

4. Violation of Conditions

This is the very premise of buying the product upon which the contract is based. If the product fails to fulfill this condition, then the buyer is at a colossal loss.

If either of these among many other clauses are altered unethically, the company stands to lose a small fortune to either amending the situation or a long-lasting lawsuit. All of these can be simply avoided by opting for a digital signature solution like DrySign and get online document storage and cutting-edge security features like multifactor authentication and password protection. If you’re wondering how to get started, it’s as easy as checking your emails.

How to start signing contracts online?

The key to maximizing your revenue funnel is to equip your sales team with the best paperless technology out there. Because in the end, the truth of the matter is that less paperwork means more core functionality. It’s time to arm your sales team with DrySign – a smart and user-friendly digital signature platform in three simple steps.

1. Step 1 – Have a chat with one of our experts.
2. Step 2 – Start DrySigning.
3. Step 3 – There is no step 3.

GET DRYSIGN

Sources:

• https://www.upcounsel.com/contract-execution-phase
• https://www.altavi.com/post/contract-management-stages-for-sales-and-marketing-a-big-picture-guide
• https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/contract-types.html
• https://www.revv.so/blog/sales-contracts-types-and-parts-of-a-contract/
• https://www.villanovau.com/resources/contract-management/what-is-statement-of-work/
• https://www.concordnow.com/blog/7-stages-of-contract-management/
• https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-4043-breach-of-contract-under-sale-of-goods-act-1930.html