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

This July, 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 more than 15 years. 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.