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Why you need to accelerate your contract experienceEmpowering sales and legal teams to collaborate

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Table of contents

Introduction 2

Status quo 3

Pain 4

Solution 5

Vision 6

Results 7

Benefits 8

The key to accelerating the contract experience 9

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IntroductionEvery day, all over the world, businesses are using contracts to lock in business. Whether it’s for services or product, an MSA or a quote, contracts make it legal.

No matter the size of the business and no matter what type of business you’re in, you want to save money and increase revenue. And you want to make it all easy. Contracts are a key process that often get bogged down in the “last mile” of the agreement, when all parties would like nothing more than to get through to the “done” side, when signatures are inked and you can get on to providing the services, goods or anything else you just committed to.

You may have experienced in the past the frustration of hunting for the latest version of the contract, or worse, sending redlines that you added to an out-of-date version. If you’re in sales, you’ve spent time tapping your foot waiting on feedback and approval from the legal team, fingers crossed that you can close this deal before end of quarter.

Let’s take a closer look at the contract piece of your sales team’s experience.

“A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

— Sam Goldwyn

“The first principle of contract negotiations is don’t remind them

of what you did in the past. Tell them what you’re going to

do in the future.” — Stan Musial

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Status quoContracts are commonly used in sales for:

• Quotes• Work Orders• Statements of Work (SOW)• Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA)• Master Service Agreements (MSA)• Terms and Conditions• Payment Terms• Service License Agreements (SLA)

Common pain points in the sales cycle

• Slow document sharing. Email, opening attachments, saving and re-emailing• Dispersed power. Legal reviews mean delays, especially at end of month/quarter• Poor tracking and visibility. Unknown status: who is viewing and updating the document• Tracking. Ensuring the right version is under discussion at all times• Multiple, disparate tools. Shifting among CRM, email, Word, eSignature (or printing/faxing)• Lack of visibility for improvements. Not knowing who, when, why and how contracts stall

85%of companies are using

manual processes to manage sales contracts.

(Aberdeen)

3.4The average number of weeks it takes to approve

a contract is 3.4. (Forrester)

60-80%of B2B deals are

managed by contracts (Gartner)

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PainThe challenges of contractsContracts have a long history of documenting a mutual commitment, and understandably the process of creating them is fraught with delays as terms are checked and double checked to ensure clarity of needs and expectations.

A manual paper-based contract process is expensive, with all that paper, faxing, and overnight shipping. The delays are understandable as legal teams want to ensure total clarity, but repeated legal reviews take time. Then there’s the problem of accuracy of data—because errors are generated from retyping form information back into a computer after the form is signed.

45%of sales teams say

“excessive administrative tasks” are a major internal

challenge to selling —Salesforce Research

33%of sales teams rate “improve

customer and sales data quality/accuracy” as one of their most important objectives over the

next 12–18 months —Salesforce Research

33%of sales teams rate “improve

use of sales technology” as one of their most important objectives

over the next 12–18 months —Salesforce Research

2/3Nearly 2/3rds of a salesperson’s

day is spent on non-selling tasks—25% of that on

administrative tasks and 16% on service tasks

—Salesforce Research

#2Sales process (including lead-to-

cash time) is ranked #2 as a top KPI, second only to

customer experience/success —Salesforce Research

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SolutionAddressing the challengesSales teams want to close deals, and are understandably frustrated with barriers to closing the deal. As you might expect, those companies that have empowered their sales teams are seeing better results.

How can a company accelerate sales?

• Empowering sales teams—Although it is a truth universallyacknowledged that sales teams today must provide anexceptional customer experience, they can only providethat (and keep up with their quota across many, manycustomers) if they are empowered to move the salesprocess forward.

• Automation of manual processes—With sales teamsspending so much time on non-selling activities, automationis critical to enable sales to achieve and surpass quota. Thismeans using solutions that are simple, fast, and increaseefficiency over the old way, making it worth the effort forsales teams to learn and adopt them.

• Keeping it all in your CRM—Many sales teams don’t needcomplex contract management features, nor do they need ahighly engineered Contract Lifecycle Management solutionthat keeps contract data outside of their CRM. In addition,there are numerous advantages to keeping contracts withinSalesforce, including improved efficiency and visibility intothe contract process.

79%Salespeople see great value in Salesforce—79% think it

makes their jobs easier. —Bluewolf

89%of high-performing sales

professionals say that empowerment of sales has increased over the past five years—2.1x more so than

underperformers. —Salesforce Research

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VisionThe future is now What if I told you… there’s a better way than the slow manual processes? The back-and-forth with legal? The editing the wrong version, hunting through email, and time-consuming CRM manual data entry?

Picture this:

2:00 p.m. Salesperson gets a verbal yes.

2:03 p.m. Salesperson opens record in Salesforce and clicks the “Generate Contract” button and selects the appropriate bundle of terms.

2:06 p.m. Contract is automatically generated with the appropriate terms.

2:10 p.m. Contract is emailed as a Word attachment to the buyer.

8:00 a.m. the next day. Salesperson checks status of contract in CRM. Contract has been returned by the buyer directly into the CRM with redlines. The company’s HQ address has been updated in the document and has already updated the record in Salesforce.

8:02 a.m. The salesperson reviews the redlines in CRM and sees payment terms and start date have been modified, within the parameters set by the legal team. She accepts them, then clicks the “Send for Signature” button, generating the document for eSignature.

9:17 a.m. The contract is signed and returned to Salesforce CRM, already associated with the appropriate record, and the sales person picks up the phone to make her next sales call.

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ResultsThe proof is in the moneyHigh performing sales teams (defined by Salesforce Research as those who make significant year over year revenue growth) benefit from an environment that facilitates their success.

“The new blueprint of sales replaces product pitches with tailored customer solutions,

reshapes traditional success metrics to prioritize customer experience, and

overhauls business-as-usual processes with innovative

technology adoption.”

– Salesforce Research

30%larger renewals

(Goldman Sachs)

11%Improved delivery time

(Aberdeen)

60%Faster contract cycles

(Microsoft)

50%Faster negotiations(Goldman Sachs)

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BenefitsThe Return on a Contract Solution Investment The benefits of leveraging automation within your contracting process are compelling.

• Lower cost—Save time rekeying in data, save time waiting fordocuments to return, on storage costs. Maybe you could even getrid of that fax machine and separate phone line altogether.

• Better customer relationships—No matter who you’re negotiatingwith, a speedy response and negotiation leads to increasedsatisfaction with you and your business. And satisfied customersare all too happy to send you referral business.

• Increased efficiency—A contract system has been proven toshorten contract negotiations by as much as 50%.

• Version control—Automated version tracking means no moretime lost to manual versioning, reduced versioning errors, andfaster negotiation cycles.

• Accelerated revenue—Faster negotiation means less timeto payment, and you can capture from the excitement of acustomer’s decision to move forward with your product or service.Integrations with your CRM and eSignature solution furtherstreamline the experience and bring in revenue more quickly.

• Status tracking – Managing contracts directly in your CRMgives visibility in one spot, showing the status of each ofyour sales documents as they are negotiated. A quick visualreminder helps sales teams stay on track and easily identifywhich contracts need immediate attention for shorter salescycles.

• Optimization and learning – With automation comes thedata you need to deepen your understanding of processes,finally giving you visibility into what types of deals, prospectsor clauses are most prone to revisions—so you can addressthose needs promptly. Discover who, when, why and howcontracts stall.

• Compliance – While empowering sales teams, you can gaincontrol over the legal experience by ensuring that clausesand terms meet the criteria set by your legal teams. Itensures that your sales team cannot “go rogue” – and legalonly gets involved when there’s a substantial need for themto do so.

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The key to accelerating the contract experienceSales teams are constantly evolving to keep up with competitive demands—and the contract process is one that’s rife with opportunity for improvement. Technology is capable of dramatically accelerating and streamlining the process, finally enabling sales teams to focus on their core strengths of building relationships, educating the buyer and making the sale. Increasingly businesses are implementing solutions that integrate with their CRM to ensure that sales is able to work more effectively than ever before. Leveraging technology, companies can reduce risk while ensuring legal teams are not a burden but rather empower sales to close more business.

Conga Contracts for Salesforce is a native Salesforce application that

gives companies complete visibility and control over the contract

negotiation process. Conga Contracts for Salesforce is a fast and easy way for your team to stay on track so you can negotiate deals faster, increase

contract insight, and ensure Salesforce is always up-to-date with

accurate information. TRY IT NOW

TRY IT NOW

Conga Americas Global Headquarters390 Interlocken CrescentSuite 500Broomfield, Colorado 80021+1.303.465.1616

© Copyright 2017 Conga

For more information on solutions for sales teams to accelerate the contract negotiation process and close deals faster, call us at 303.465.1616.

About CongaConga helps businesses get more value from their technology by transforming processes through AI-powered digital transformation. Conga delivers digital transformation by helping create, manage, collaborate on, negotiate, and eSign business documents and contracts, all via visual process automation. The Conga Suite of products helps to simplify user experiences and increase productivity. As a Salesforce Platinum Partner, Conga has built a base of more than 700,000 users, in 85+ countries, across all industries. Thousands of organizations rely on Conga daily to manage and streamline critical business processes. The company is based in Colorado with global operations in the UK and Australia. Learn more at www.getconga.com or follow Conga on Twitter: @getconga.