Importance of Contract Lifecycle for Sales
Each stage of the contract lifecycle takes time, contributing to the total contract lifecycle time. For sales contracts, time can be crucial as delays produce lower sales numbers. That’s why it is vital to improve your contract lifecycle management process and use contract lifecycle management tools to maximize its efficiency.
Why is Contract Lifecycle Time Crucial for Sales Contracts?
A speedy contract lifecycle will create a domino effect in your sales process, allowing you to close deals faster and with a higher success rate. Businesses should ensure that their CLM process is optimized and allows for quick agreement closures if they want to increase their profits and sales margins.
When your contract lifecycle takes longer than necessary, your business will suffer due to lost profits, poor customer relationships, and wasted time. Therefore, a short contract lifecycle time is crucial for the success of sales contracts.
What risks for increased contract cycle times do sales teams face?
Contract cycle times are at risk for delays during each stage, meaning it’s vital to ensure that all of your agreement stages are as efficient as possible. Steps such as drafting terms, negotiation, and acquiring agreement signatures all pose a risk to delaying the contract life cycle process. Additionally, if you still rely on a manual contract management process, you are at increased risk for delays in your sales agreement closures.
Why are delays dangerous for sales contracts?
Delays are dangerous for sales contracts because they result in lost profits and even failed deal closures. Businesses that experience a significant number of agreement hold-ups limit their company’s growth and cannot maximize their sale’s success. If you want to expand your business and boost your profits, contract lifecycle automation is a worthwhile investment that will pay for itself over time.
Delays that Contribute to a Longer Contract Lifecycle
Contract Request
The contract request stage often involves playing a waiting game with the other party. Maybe they take a few days to review your request or are simply missing in action. Whatever the case may be, contract lifecycle management tools can mitigate delays in the request stage through advanced notification systems. When using a CLM System, the other party will be promptly notified of your request, allowing you to advance to the next step in the agreement process quickly.
Review, Redlining, and Approval
Most individuals in sales are busy people with unpredictable schedules. Things like last-minute meetings and unscheduled sales calls make it hard to coordinate a time to review, redline, and approve contractual terms with the other party. Luckily, contract lifecycle automation software features advanced real-time collaboration tools to expedite reviewing, redlining, and approval stages.
Signature and Onboarding
Communication is key during the signature and onboarding stages of an agreement. Without clear communication, confusion and disorganization will cause delays in the contract life cycle process. A CLM system helps prevent delays in these stages by providing a clear line of communication between you, your team, and your clients, allowing you to complete onboarding and obtain signatures quickly.
Additionally, eSignature integration further speeds up the process by eliminating the time it takes to meet with the parties in person for signatures.
Using Contract Lifecycle Management Tools to Improve Contract Cycle Time
The importance of contract lifecycle management is plain to see when analyzing all of the delays that occur with mismanagement. Without contract lifecycle automation, your business will fall behind its competitors, limit productivity, and reduce profits, all because of delays in various agreement stages.
This means that contract lifecycle management tools are equipped with advanced automation features that help you to expedite your sales contract stages. Therefore, contract lifecycle automation is essential to any business looking to optimize its practices through an efficient CLM process.
If your sales team has hit a roadblock in its contract process and manual management no longer makes the cut, automation will be your best friend. A manual process may no longer be feasible for your company if you close lots of sales contacts, and you must look to improve your management strategy as your client base grows.
Investing in a CLM system will help you shorten your sales contract lifecycle stages through real-time collaboration, advanced notification systems, and more, leading to more successful sales, better customer relationships, and, most importantly, maximized efficiency.
