3 Steps To Empower Your Sales Staff

Follow these simple backend techniques to streamline contracts and close more sales

I wrote a blog post about the role of the account manager in this digital era, and one key point covered was on “winging it” which is not a good sales technique. Let me take that a step beyond, “winging it” is not a sales technique at all. As an MBA graduate from the University of Hawaii (go Warriors!) and seasoned account manager, I found the word “sale” akin to four-letter word in the field of  marketing. Yes, freshly minted MBAs want to crunch spreadsheets for budgeting, manage e-commerce platforms and spearhead committees to meet regulatory policies. But sales? No so much. Aa a result when they encounter a sales situation, guess what they do? Yup, you guessed it, they wing it. Unfortunately, the problem does not just lie with indifference toward sales from new MBAs; it’s much deeper than that. Many companies and organizations have not knowingly baked impediments into processes which make it challenging for their sales staff to close a sale because because they can’t readily execute a contract.

That is why I will focus on three specific ways you can empower your sales staff below:

1. Centralize Access to Your Contract Templates

I worked for an organization that has been around for a long time. Like any successful marketing company with some longevity, there were several name changes, mergers and acquisitions. On top of that, we’d conduct go a creative redesign of every single document template every couple of years. As you can imagine, whenever anybody on the team was looking for a specific document template, we were not really sure which was the latest version. Having a letter going out to the client with the wrong logo or slogan in one instance may not be more than an awkward faux pas moment. It is a much different story however, when your client just signed a two-year contract which included all of the potentially harmful clauses your legal team eliminated during its last audit. Playing the “where’s the latest contract template” game is nobody’s favorite pastime. Takeaway: Make sure it is clear to everybody on your team where they can find your most up-to-date contract templates and clauses.

2. Liberate Access to Your Contract Templates

At another company, I was required to attend several client meetings throughout the day. By a chance of fate, one of my clients lived in the northernmost point in the city, another one in the southernmost point and the last one in the easternmost point. By now you should be able to guess where the offices of my company where. Located. You likely guessed the westernmost point your were right. The end result was three to four hours just driving around the city. To make matters worse, I had to drive back to the office to begin drafting the new contracts, because of a strict policy in place. Simply stated no on access to contract documents from any remote location. Valuable time could have been saved, if I had “anywhere” access to the contracts through a cloud-based solution. Even if the company was highly concerned about security and privacy, it could have implemented a virtual private network (VPN) solution. A perfect example of the benefits of anywhere access is the time we lost a sale because we had to wait a day to update the contract. Not surprisingly the client couldn’t quite understand why it would take a whole day to update a single clause. After the pain of three clause changes, the client decided to go with another vendor. Time is money and we were truly wasting his. An alternative solution worth considering is the implementation an enterprise-level contract management system. Ask your IT manager to evaluate whether an on-premise, cloud-based or hybrid model would be the right solution for you. It is a good idea to go beyond just Word and Excel to keep track of your contract management processes. These programs will enforce better accountability from your salespeople. Takeaway: Empower your traveling sales staff to always have the latest, pre-approved contract templates available from “anywhere”. Evaluate whether you need a cloud-based, on-premise or hybrid software solution.

3. Take Advantage of Electronic Signatures

One of the time honored favorite client techniques to stall any sale is to request a “snail mail” contract then claim that it was lost in the mail and ask for another—even if you sent the package with a tracking number. Companies unaccustomed to electronic signatures are actually locked in a pre 1999 business era. First enacted in June 2000, the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act supports the notion that e-signatures not only facilitate commerce but also enhance consumer confidence. Takeaway: If your line of business permits the use e-signatures, take advantage of this technology. The benefits are two fold: minimize contract management costs and close sales more quickly.

Take Action Today

While closing sales will continue to be a challenge, there is no reason to make the entire process more difficult. Take these three specific steps today and simplify the lives of your sales staff. Still not convinced?  Just ask them what they think.

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