Membership Overview
Learn what being a member does for you
The Seller Styles
NASP Programs
Catalog
See a summary of all our programs and certifications
Online Certifications
Certified Professional Sales Person(CPSP®)
Develop your potential as a certified sales professional
Certified Professional Sales Leader(CPSL®)
Grow your impact as a certified sales leader
Certified Master Sales Professional (CMSP®)
Join the elite group of sales professionals and leaders
Certified Master Sales Trainer (CMST®)
Online Programs
Advanced Sales Influence (ASI)
Take your influence and leadership to the next level.
Certified Professional Sales Associate (CPSA®)
Learn foundational sales behaviors, strategies, and skills
Power of Contact Marketing
Learn from marketing expert and author Stu Heinecke
ProSeries Programs
Join the top 1% of sales professionals in the world.
Next Level Virtual Coaching
Sales Mastery
Join our ongoing dynamic virtual coaching community
Career Center
Explore job postings from some of the best companies in the country looking for sales professionals
Training Resources
Daily Dose of Influence!
Enjoy our video series of influence tips and strategies
Leads To Growth
Dig into our podcast featuring industry leaders and experts
Coaches Corner
Learn from our high-level sales coaching video series
Women of Sales & Influence – Facebook Live Series
Be inspired by our Facebook Live series spotlighting top women influencers
Women of Sales & Influence – Video Blog
Enjoy valuable, high-level sales strategies to empower your sales goals
Sales Resources
The Growth Quotient
You’ve heard about IQ, but what is your GQ?
Our Commitment to You
We are here to help your approach to sales, how you interact with others, and how you perform and execute
Articles
NASP Sales Blog
Learn from our member-submitted articles for sales professionals
About Our CEO
Standards of Conduct
Testimonials
Common Questions and Answers
Contact
by Qurat-ul-Ain Ghazali
The process of completing and settling all components of a contract is the mainstay of hitting sales targets. When sales contracts are signed more quickly, sales cycles become shorter, and sales teams have more time to focus on bigger, better deals. It helps organizations reach all their revenue goals more quickly.
Simply put, the effectiveness of the process for managing sales contracts impacts the functions and workflow of your company. In this article, we will provide insights into what you need to implement to improve your company handles sales contracts.
Much like all other business agreements, a sales contract lays out all the terms of a business transaction between the buyer and the seller. It also elucidates any legal obligations that may stem due to the relationship.
However, unlike regular contracts, a sales contract has a narrower scope in that it only ensures a customer gets the product or service on the agreed-upon terms and that the customer has paid for the product or service in full.
Check these to understand what you can expect to see in a standard sales contract:
But, this is not all included in a typical sales agreement. The terms and conditions of a software license will be very different from those of a real estate lease agreement.
A SaaS contract, for instance, may have additional provisions such as:
In a business with a manual contract workflow, the legal department looks into drafting and managing sales contracts. The sales team only provides minimal input to achieve the desired business goal.
While this may work just fine for firms closing a limited number of deals each month, it can cause delays and inefficiency when your company begins to generate, negotiate, and sign more sales contracts.
Because of this, more and more companies are using automated contract management to get rid of manual, repetitive tasks and make contract workflows more efficient. And why not?
Using a contract management software like Contractbook does a lot more than take pressure off the already overworked legal team. It allows all contracting teams (sales, procurement, finance, etc.) and other stakeholders to self-serve on pre-sale legal documents and sale contracts.
The first step in making a good system for managing sales contracts is to automate workflows and cut down on the amount of help required from in-house legal. This usually involves three things:
It is not enough to merely automate the sales contract process. The sales team must also get real-time visibility into the status of all ongoing and completed contracts.
And the most efficient way to do that is to integrate it with their customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Salesforce and Hubspot are widely used CRMs for sales cycle management. Like IT teams, legal departments also use contract lifecycle management (CLM) software to automate the contract workflow.
Cross-functional collaboration becomes so much more difficult if these two systems aren’t fully integrated. For this reason, it’s imperative that your CLM is fully compatible with the CRM your sales team uses. Because if it is, they’ll be able to:
An ideal contract management software provides a dashboard with metrics and KPIs such as:
In short, efficient sales contract management streamlines and automates tedious contract-related tasks integrates with your existing tools seamlessly, and provides actionable BI insights to further refine the process and reduce roadblocks.
About the author