As sales department management, you know there’s no time to waste. Every minute counts, which is why your focus should be on minimizing mundane and tedious tasks.
Productivity rates go down whenever your salespeople have to create, sign, send, and have documents approved. So why not eliminate some of these steps without messing up the workflow?
With eSignatures, you can do that.
Automating your document processes can shave years off waiting time. Yes, even in the email era, businesses are still twiddling their thumbs waiting for signed papers.
But this doesn’t have to be you and your salespeople.
Electronic signatures are already growing in popularity all across the world. Between 2012 and 2017, it rose from 89 million transactions to 754 million transactions.
Pretty soon, we’re going to reach and surpass the 1 billion mark.
Not sure how eSignatures can improve your business processes? Then here are some of the ways they can help your sales team.
Stop Playing the Waiting Game
One of the top reasons for using eSignatures in sales is to help to speed up processing. Your sales team works hard to secure leads and convert them into sales.
Why should they wait on their commission because a customer misplaced the document that was faxed or mailed to them?
Even if your business is using email – without eSignatures, customers still have to print out and sign the documents. This issue is easily eliminated with the use of electronic signatures.
And it’s the same for higher-ups in the food chain – submitting these forms to management for approval can also take seemingly forever. This occurs due to documents being lost in a sea of emails and desktop paperwork.
When you’re using an eSignature platform, you don’t have to worry about losing documents. For instance, with eversign, you can upload documents and have them emailed to recipients.
This includes a link to the document where recipients can sign the document within the platform securely. Once it’s signed, the senders are notified immediately via email so the process can continue downstream.
The turnaround time for completing documents significantly decreases. One report even shows that eSignatures can reduce document turnaround time by 80%.
It also helps that you can create, send, and manage all of the sales documents in one dashboard. If multiple people must sign the document, you can email everyone at once to increase the chances of it being returned and completed quickly.
It cuts out unnecessary back and forth communication about the delivery of sales contracts. Not only will this improve productivity for sales teams, but it’ll also impress eager customers.
Monitor Sales Contracts in Real Time
There’s nothing like being able to see what’s happening in your company in real-time. Unfortunately, transparency isn’t always possible, which can cause all sorts of delays and miscommunications.
By automating some of your processes, you can create platforms that make it easier to see what’s been completed and what’s still pending. With eSignature platforms, you can keep an eye on which documents have been viewed.
This will allow you to keep an eye on the progress of contracts within your sales funnel. Then if a document ends up delayed somewhere along the process, you can see where and why.
At this point, you can respond immediately to ensure the document doesn’t stay in limbo forever. In other words, you can reduce and destroy those irritating bottlenecks.
Ensure All Signatures Are “Inked”
A contract or other important sales document that requires multiple signatures isn’t official until they’ve all been “inked.” This is a problem when you have recipients all over the state, country, or world.
Trying to mail, fax, or even send email attachments can make it difficult to manage sales processes and deals. You can’t see who’s received and opened their document or whether or not it was signed and returned.
So you have to sit around, playing the waiting game. Then what if when you finally receive the document via fax, mail, or email – you find there are one or more signatures missing?
This completely halts the process and requires you to hunt down the folks who forgot to sign key areas of the contract.
With eSignature platforms, you can highlight the areas that require signing so no one misses them. And then, you can make it so they’re unable to submit the document unless all of the fields are complete.
Give Your Sales Team a Boost in Productivity
The number of hours salespeople must put in just to close a deal can be overwhelming. This can lead to burnout and a lack of productivity.
So as a team manager, you need to ensure you empower your salespeople with the tools they need to cut down the hours they spend on mundane tasks.
This includes chasing down prospects and clients when it comes time to sign off on the contract. They have enough on their plate as is – with all the calls, emails, and meetings they must endure.
In fact, stats show they only spend 1/3 of their day talking to prospects. That doesn’t sound very productive – does it?
So to help cut back on the administrative side of things, you can implement eSignatures into the sales process. This way, there’s a digital trail they can follow for all of their semi-closed deals.
There will be no need for them to waste precious hours tracking down these documents and the clients they belong to. Typically, this would require numerous emails and calls trying to make contact.
Since they won’t have to, they can boost their daily productivity by focusing on nurturing leads and building strong relationships.
Close Deals Quickly
Now, if you have a superb product or service and an exceptional sales team, then there will be moments when a prospect is ready to close on the spot. You need to be ready when this does occur.
Rather than having to draw up a contract, print it out, and have it signed – your sales team can have it all done digitally. With eSignatures, salespeople are able to make contract templates and quickly access them for everyone to sign.
This can be done using a computer or mobile device. Imagine how quickly your sales team can close a deal!
Not to mention, your seamless process will rub clients the right way.
Ensure the Security of Your Communications
Some businesses have top-secret meetings, partnerships, and acquisitions. This requires a high level of security to ensure everything’s kept confidential.
However, this is harder when you have paper documents that can be easily lost or stolen. You don’t have this issue when you’re using an eSignature platform.
Everything is kept securely inside of your dashboard so no one without the credentials can access critical documents. Also, it helps to ensure the document reaches the right people and are signed by those individuals.
Better Manage Stakeholders
There is an average of seven stakeholders involved in B2B deals. That’s more than enough to turn what could be a seamless situation into a nightmare.
Each contract and proposal must be viewed and signed off by each stakeholder. As you can imagine, eSignature platforms can greatly reduce the strain on these processes.
Everything is easily managed in the platform where all stakeholders are tagged to key documents. You’re able to quickly see who hasn’t viewed or signed the document in the event the process stalls.
Seamlessly Adjust the Document
As deals progress, it’s not uncommon for clients to request changes to the contract. The need may also as your sales team learns more about the project requirements and client needs.
There’s no need to wait until you’re back in the office to make the edits. Instead, you can access your document from wherever you are (like in the middle of a meeting with the client).
You can use your laptop or mobile device to view the document and update it. Then right after, everyone can sign it – how simple is that?
Boost Conversion Rates
This alone should capture your attention. After all, the top goal of every sales team is to convert.
Think of it like this – if you’re demonstrating your product or service to prospects and they’re ready to close, you can quickly pull up your contract template (or pre-made contract) you have on your eSignature platform.
Then you can quickly close the deal. This makes the sales process easier for both sides. The simpler you can make the conversion, the more likely it’ll happen.
Upgrade to an eSignature Platform
It’s difficult to deny the many benefits that come along with eSignature platforms. So why not give one a whirl to see how it works for your sales process?
As a team leader, it’s your prerogative to find unique ways to boost the productivity of your salespeople.
So try implementing eSignatures into your processes to see if they help to boost production, conversions, and customer satisfaction!