If your company’s sales organization is like most high-performance sales teams, the priority will be to optimize customer face time and minimize administrative activities and paperwork. Yet there are several documents that are critical to building relationships, meeting compliance requirements, and closing deals:
- Non-disclosure agreements
- Master service agreements
- Quotes and formal proposals
- Contracts like partner or joint venture agreements
- Credit applications
- Vacation or leave request forms
Considering the steps involved in any of these processes, getting documents reviewed and signed on time can be challenging. Getting paper from sales reps to managers, and through legal, finance, executive, and third-party review is a slow process.
Email moves faster than physical mail, but attachments can get lost, corrupted, or missed entirely. Companies are increasingly turning to this type of digital transaction management to help them expedite workflows, collect necessary signatures, and meet legal and regulatory requirements.
Here are five ways you can increase your sales revenues by adopting a document workflow automation solution.
1. Quotes, Proposals, and Service Agreements
If your business has ever missed a request for proposal due date because of a late submission, you’ll appreciate how a paper-and-ink process could be detrimental to your revenue attainment. You may have customers contacting you to start a project or asking about shipments. Without a signed agreement or approved proposals, you are likely unable to assign the contractor resources or deliver a product until you secure an agreement with all of the required signatures. In addition to speeding up the process, automation also ensures your organization can review proposals before sending them to customers.
Transform your master service agreement workflow process from a time-consuming, paper-and-ink review process that can get stuck in your client’s email inbox or delayed while a key signing authority is out of the office. Instead of having your customers print digital proposals and sign them with ink—only to scan them before emailing them back—simplify the process with a digital proposal that can be signed, countersigned, and stored by both parties for compliance reasons. By expediting proposals and service agreement sign-offs, you can increase your resource use, speed up product delivery, and receive payments faster.
2. Credit Applications
There are many cases where sales professionals need to get a credit application processed and approved before the end of a quarter to recognize sales revenue. Further, when you start a relationship with a new customer, a slow credit approval process jeopardizes the sales process momentum. A digital credit application form can be:
- Issued to a customer without delay as an electronic fill-and-sign form
- Populated and electronically signed by the client’s finance or management representative with ease
- Processed by accounting immediately, allowing you to start your new relationship and pave the way for additional sales transactions
3. Non-Disclosure Agreements
Your intellectual capital is valuable and important, as is customer and partner confidentiality. NDAs have standardized terms and are often a necessary formality that delays starting a productive and profitable business relationship. Document automation enables you to create a web form, facilitate digital signatures, and address the necessary legalities of the NDA process with minimal complexity and delay.
4. Partner or Joint Venture Agreements
Does your business have an indirect sales channel, work with prime or subcontractors, or rely on strategic alliances to pursue and deliver on lucrative service contracts? Partner agreements and joint venture agreements are processes that you’re better off handling electronically.
Your business might be expanding into new global markets, or aligning your business with a strategic partner to meet contract requirements. Automating your partner agreement process can build credibility and ensure potential clients don’t pass you over for a competitor due to inefficient paper contract shuffling.
5. Vacation Request Form Processing
Even high-performing sales reps need to recharge their batteries from time to time. If a sales rep has to send an email to multiple approvers, or find the time talk to their manager (and their manager’s manager) about getting time off, they might wait until the last minute to get vacation approval. Even worse, they may not take a vacation at all and get burnt out. Make the process of requesting vacation time, and approving it a simple process. Put document automation to work at enabling your sales team to get their needed rest. When your sales reps return refreshed, they’re better equipped to generate more sales and bring in more revenue.
Electronic forms, prescriptive workflows, and digital signatures are fundamental elements of a document automation strategy that can help you grow your business. Make it easier for customers to do business and partner with you. Increased sales revenues are sure to follow.
Want to see how document automation can help your sales team to generate revenue and create efficiencies? Contact the Docubee team to schedule a demo.
