LinkedIn accelerates sales workflows and adds to its bottom line with DocuSign eSignature for Salesforce

With more than 675 million users, LinkedIn is one of the most effective ways for working professionals to broaden their network. But LinkedIn offers more than just a platform for employees and their career paths—the company also offers LinkedIn Talent Solutions, a suite of tools developed to help companies acquire top talent at a faster rate. With LinkedIn Talent Solutions, HR teams and recruiters can more easily sift through the content-rich profiles of job candidates to find the right people to fill their open roles. 

“If you’re looking for that hard to find person, that salesperson who’s a superstar, the person who’s already employed as the top performer at his or her company, LinkedIn Talent Solutions helps you find better talent faster,” says Brian Frank, director of Global Enterprise Operations for LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions is used by over 40% of today’s Fortune 100 companies. It’s an especially effective tool for large, well-known companies that receive hundreds, if not thousands, of applications for every new job posting. However, internally, LinkedIn was struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for the product. They knew it was time to fix the disjointed contract signing process overcomplicating the sales process for LinkedIn’s salespeople and their customers. 

After conducting a thorough search, Frank and his team chose DocuSign and its seamless Salesforce integration to create a more logical and efficient sales workflow. The results were clear: faster delivery for contracts, fewer errors, improved customer satisfaction and overall growth for the company.  

Adding agility to a disconnected agreement process 

Prior to DocuSign, the sales teams for LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions were struggling to collect all of the customer data necessary for contracts. Important details about a customer and their purchase were regularly being left off these documents. “When the contracts were being done, salespeople were not filling in the purchase order number, billing and shipping information, user information and so on,” says Frank. “They filled in the name of the person and maybe one of the addresses. Then they’d shoot it out electronically to the customer, the customer signed it and they considered it done.” 

As a result, employees from other departments—like LinkedIn’s invoicing and accounts receivable staff—had to track down the missing customer information later on. On average, this extra step was adding an extra 25 days onto the billing cycle, thereby slowing the company’s contract completion rate and payment processes. 

Frank and his team integrated DocuSign eSignature for Salesforce with its existing document generation software within Salesforce to create a new, more automated workflow for salespeople to use. In this new process, salespeople can populate a DocuSign contract template with specific words or clauses, then LinkedIn’s document generation software pulls any missing product or customer data from Salesforce into the contract automatically. The result? A clean and complete PDF that’s customised for each sale. 

This simplified workflow made it easier for LinkedIn’s sales teams to collect all of the necessary customer information on contracts. As a result, the time it took to invoice customers decreased from 25 days to five—an 80% reduction. “With the click of a button, the system creates a contract for you to send to a customer,” Frank says. “There’s no uploading into DocuSign. You just hit send and then it goes to the customer.” 

Improved storage and security with DocuSign

Not only did DocuSign bring convenience to the content creation process, but it gave LinkedIn the ability to collect customer data in an organised and helpful way. After customer information is added to a contract, the DocuSign for Salesforce integration captures and saves it internally. This way, it’s harder to lose customer data. It’s tracked within the system, and can even be used later for measurement or reporting purposes. 

“DocuSign removed the hassle of getting a copy back to the customer, tracking data and knowing who approves what,” Frank says. “But what made it really special was its ability to capture easily forgotten terms, like PO number and billing address, that come up in the contract cycle. These terms are very important to a variety of different internal stakeholders at LinkedIn.” 

The integration improved security as well, delivering contracts in non-modifiable, locked PDF formats. “This prevents anyone from creating their own documents and adding it into the system,” Frank explains.  

With the DocuSign for Salesforce integration, LinkedIn streamlined the workflows of its Talent Solution sales team, considerably reduced DSO (days sales outstanding) and improved cash flow. “The introduction of DocuSign into our collections process significantly reduced DSO contributing to over £750K in additional working capital on an annualised basis,” Frank says.