How to Accelerate Deals and Revenue with Contract Processes

October 15, 2020 • Contract Management Software • 4 minutes

This is the third in a series of four posts on how to accelerate deals and win more revenue with contracts.

Read Part One and Part Two in our series.

How to accelerate deals and revenue with contract processes 

One surefire way to edge closer to a more predictable close is to keep momentum on your side. Chasing the green at breakneck speeds will never be a reality with inefficient contract processes. And that’s just frustrating. A contract lifecycle management platform (CLM) will change that, accelerating sales, resulting in larger deals, shorter sales cycles, and faster close rates. Here’s how. 

Templates

Relying on PDFs from the Legal department drains their resources and slows down the sales process. Using a contract management platform Legal can create templates with all the necessary information. And, if company policies, terms, or clauses change they can update the information and push that information out in seconds. Sales always has contracts that contain the correct information, meaning less redlining and stalls from the Legal department and smoother deals. 

Some contract management platforms enable sales to generate contracts from templates directly from their CRM, accelerating and simplifying contracting processes even further (more on that later). 

Online Redlining

Currently getting a contract signed probably takes weeks, maybe even months, because each party has to download, make edits in Word, get internal approvals, and then email each version. Aside from the long process this creates and stalled revenue, you end up with version control issues that can leave money on the table, buyer confusion, and damaged relationships from frustrated parties. Online in-document negotiation—redlining, that tracks all changes made, allows all parties to work on the same document at the same time, enabling teams to move at a lightning pace, accelerating the time-to-signature and moving deals from opportunity to close faster than ever. 

Online redlining, through collaboration, makes for a more successful negotiation, resulting in both a good contract and improved business relationship. However, legacy negotiation processes (emails and faxes) create frustration that can stymie a mutually beneficial relationship. Making this process seamless—by going in-platform and online—lets companies enter into more successful relationships, more quickly. 

The negotiation process now

Multiple documents, from multiple departments, from each company. Version control, compliance issues, that stall deals and keep your commission from your pocket. 

The process with a contract management platform

All parties collaborate in real time. Changes, redlines, and comments are seen, reviewed, and accepted in minutes, not weeks. 

Approval Workflows 

Stop chasing Legal down for approvals, or worse, circumventing Legal and creating rogue contracts that can not only cost the company exorbitant amounts in fines and fees later, but cause signature delays as redlining ensues and corrections are made. Approval workflows quickly move contracts from one step to the next by ensuring the right signatures are secured at the right time. 

Deadline Alerts

There’s a good chance renewals are under sales’ purview. A large number of sales organizations rely on customer success or even an annual calendar reminder to kick them into gear when it comes time to lock in a renewal. This leaves too much to chance. 

A full-lifecycle contract management platform offers built-in reminders and notifications. Need forty-five or ninety days to secure a renewal? Set that as a standard renewal notification time. Every time a new contract is initiated and a renewal is set automatic alerts will be sent out as reminders, directly to your email. An easy step to add in will reap big rewards. 

Automating manual processes with a contract management platform accelerates the sales cycle, while maintaining compliance, and helps sales teams capture more revenue by quickly closing new deals, and generate more revenue from existing business. What’s not to love about that? 

In the final part of our series, we’ll cover sales enablement at scale.

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Concord’s mission is to help companies achieve scalability and efficiency by automating their most central process, contracts. The cloud-based solution enables over 300,000 users around the globe to create, collaborate, sign, store, and manage their agreements all in one place. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Concord is built by business for business. 

Create, collaborate, negotiate, e-sign, manage, and analyze all agreements on one platform.

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