4 Ways to Help Sales Teams Spend More Time Selling
As an account executive (AE) at Docusign, I regularly chat with global enterprise leaders about their biggest challenges. Without fail, these discussions have a central theme: how to use technology to replace manual processes and keep their sellers actually selling.
I know that without automation and well-integrated tech, my job would be much harder. And because I use Docusign solutions daily, I’m able to offer a first-hand perspective on building a modern, digital sales contracting process.
Sales cycles are often long, and you can’t afford unnecessary delays jeopardizing the deal when you finally get to the contract-signing step. So prospects naturally seek us out for our leading eSignature solution to ensure quick and convenient signing.
Because signing a contract is just one step in a much larger agreement preparation, negotiation and execution process, there’s real value in digitizing and streamlining it end to end.
It’s so important to step back and examine the entire flow of contracts to remove manual steps and address unnecessary, unintegrated tools and processes. And while there’s still something to be said for starting small—that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an overall plan to reach your contract management goals.
That’s where I come in. I’ve seen how our contract signature and management tools bring true value to my work and my customers. I’d like to share how I use our solutions so they can help you too.
How Docusign solutions help me improve the sales contracting process
1. I close expansion deals more often and more thoughtfully
For me, a difficult part of being in sales—especially enterprise sales—is wrapping my head around the different departments, functions and subsidiaries of my larger accounts. For example, half a dozen of my multi-million dollar businesses fall under large conglomerate corporations.
In Docusign CLM for Salesforce, I can review all past and current executed agreements across all subsidiaries of my larger customers in a central contract repository. No more digging through physical file cabinets or pinging my teammates, who may or may not know how past deal cycles went within each business unit.
By spending just a few minutes in CLM for Salesforce I can see the status of current contracts in detail, the type of licenses each subsidiary is on, and the level of interaction we’ve had.
It’s such an easier conversation when I’m on a first call with a subsidiary business. I can simply say, “Hi, I'm the Docusign account executive for another division of your parent company. Since that business unit is already thriving with our product, I thought you might be interested in learning more about it, too.” There’s nothing cold about this cold outreach.
Complete visibility across larger accounts
Docusign CLM for Salesforce allows my teammates and me to see all use cases and pricing terms across the same parent company. This makes it so much easier to have productive conversations with new business units and ultimately expansion deals within the account.
Candidly, I don't know how I'd be strategic in my enterprise expansions without access to that repository of past executed agreements. The collection of sales documents kept in Docusign CLM—our contract lifecycle management tool—has become a source of truth for me as I prepare to speak with prospects.
2. I automate the generation of sales documents with smart templates
Docusign Gen for Salesforce saves me from the tedious act of generating high-pressure, court-admissible documents. Every moment counts when my prospects are considering conversion, and the automation capabilities in Gen for Salesforce let me quickly customize templates. Plus, I have more time to work on other deals and relationships.
Here are the five easy steps I take to generate a sales quote:
- Create a quote in Salesforce using all of the information I have in my opportunity, namely the SKUs my prospect wants.
- Hit “Generate,” and immediately get a ready-made custom quote for my prospect.
- Submit it for approval internally (more on that later).
- Use Docusign eSignature to drop in signature blocks for my prospect’s signature and our eventual countersignature.
- Click “Send,” and that’s it. My lead has a professional, error-free quote ready and waiting in their inbox.
But Gen creates more than quotes. My pre- and post-sales teammates and I use this automation tech frequently to customize templates for:
- Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)
- Master service agreements (MSAs)
- Statements of work (SOWs)
- Proposals
- Invoices
- Transaction receipts
- Account statements
With today’s technology, there’s no need to waste precious brain power creating near-identical documents. Docusign Gen generates quotes, NDAs and MSAs faster than I ever did manually—and it does a better job.
3. I keep closer tabs on agreements while they’re circulating internally
“Have they signed yet?” Without eSignature, sales teams repeat this question constantly, especially at month or quarter end. With eSignature though, everyone involved—sales, legal, executives, professional services, customer success managers—already knows the answer.
But before anyone signs, we need approvals. As I teased in the section above, for larger deals that might involve six or seven layers of approval, Gen helps me navigate the quote-approval process with ease.
I’ve submitted quotes with complicated discounts and special terms to my RVP for approval first, then their VP, and sometimes even up one more level. After that, revenue ops also takes a peek to confirm everything looks good. Managing this via email would be chaos. Thankfully, I press “Submit” in eSignature, and then I can focus on other things until my prospect’s quote is ready. This is what modern selling should feel like.
If a client has questions or concerns about our standard terms and conditions, I can send their requests (after approvals) using our CLM tool. The MSA lets our legal department at Docusign work with my prospect’s legal team to read the fine print and work through redlines together. It removes me as a seller and my prospect as a buyer from that “caught in the middle” feeling.
4. I stay organized and efficient no matter where I am
Between my active deals and the closed-won relationships I manage, I have dozens of people to keep up with.
It would be impossible to know everyone’s answers to these questions off the top of my head:
- Which product and version do they use?
- How many seats do they have in their install base?
- Which departments send the most and least documents?
- How many envelopes (prepaid documents) do they have left?
- Is their contract coming up for renewal?
Thank goodness the answers to these questions live in CLM. I rely on these easily accessible insights to capitalize on growth opportunities and seek additional recurring revenue. In this economy, leaders prioritize customer-led growth—as they should. Docusign CLM lets me keep my closed-won customers top-of-mind for renewals.
Organization yields freedom and efficiency
Whether I’m working with net-new clients or existing ones, I can review and send critical sales documents anywhere, anytime. I can be boarding a plane in Chicago, get notified that a sales document is ready and send it off to my customer in San Francisco from my phone. By the time I land, they'll probably have signed it.
I can get work done away from my office and inbox. As someone who’s at my desk for calls much of the day, this freedom is glorious.
An enterprise sales team’s saving grace
Docusign equips sales teams to fully automate their agreement processes—from custom contract generation and signatures to business workflows and document analysis.
It’s finally possible for sales professionals like me to close deals with just a few clicks right inside the customer relationship management (CRM) system. This makes for a seamless, frictionless and fast process for everyone involved. 83% faster than usual, according to a commissioned study by Forrester.
If you want more ease, efficiency and peace of mind in your agreement processes, request a demo of Docusign CLM today, or get started with Docusign eSignature for free.