Alright! Your sales team has identified a lead with a lot of potential—closing this deal could have a big impact on the company. The only downside? With this opportunity comes bundles of paperwork. From quotes to invoices and sales agreements, signature workflows are constant in the sales contract lifecycle. But that's where Zoho Sign comes in. It helps you automate, accelerate, and manage your signature workflows with secure, legally compliant digital signatures.
What are electronic signatures?
Simply put, electronic signatures are the digital substitute to traditional wet signatures. Businesses can use them to send, sign, and manage documents anywhere, anytime. Electronic signatures are simpler, more cost-effective, and more efficient than standard signatures.
What does a sales contract lifecycle look like?
Typically, the contract lifecycle in a sales vertical looks something like this:
- The sales team drafts various agreements.
- A representative sends a non-disclosure agreement to a lead.
- The lead signs and returns it. Any approval signatures are added.
- The representative sends a sales agreement or sales order to the lead.
- All parties sign the sales agreement.
- The representative closes the sale and sends a signed invoice to the new customer.
- The customer signs and returns the invoice.
- The signed documents are securely stored.
Challenges in manual sales contract management
A single sales contract lifecycle involves many contracts that require multiple signatures. Conducting this paperwork without a proper system in place opens the company to risks and proves cumbersome when done repeatedly. Here's a closer look at these challenges:
Security risks
Paperwork done without a well-organized digital system opens the organization to risks like document tampering, signature forgery, data loss or mishandling, misplaced documents, and data entry errors. These can expose and cause damage to sensitive customer and organizational information.
Repetitive work
Physical paperwork involves repetitive documentation processes, such as drafting, editing, signing, scanning, mailing, negotiating, redrafting, and storing. As the organization scales and the volume of paperwork correspondingly increases, it becomes overwhelming to rely on physical documentation and agreement management.
Increased costs
Steps in a manual agreement lifecycle cost additionally to the company. Drafting, printing, scanning, dispatching, storing, and managing sales-related agreements requires companies to invest extra in personnel, time, and money. Companies save up to $30 per agreement when switching to a digital paperwork alternative like Zoho Sign.
Deals deferred or lost
Time is of the essence in sales; deals are won or lost in a matter of minutes. Sales paperwork preparation, negotiations, and dispatch can be lengthy processes, and during this time, customers could rethink their choices. They may defer the deal or reevaluate and opt for other alternatives if the paperwork process takes too long.
Delayed turnarounds
Collecting wet ink signatures on sales agreements often involves long turnaround times. Customers may need regular reminders to sign the agreements, and any documentation error from either party leads to the entire process restarting. Digital paperwork alternatives like Zoho Sign mitigate errors and accelerate this process by almost 80% for companies, even if they scale to larger operations.
Difficulties in tracking document status
With physical sales documentation, tracking real-time operations is tedious (and sometimes nearly impossible) because it's difficult to pinpoint the exact stage of the signature workflow a document is in. Though the organization may know that a sales agreement has been sent for negotiation or signing to a customer, they cannot zero in on what the customer is doing after that point or when the document is in transit. Without correct tracking information, it's challenging to narrow down causes for delays. There's also no timeline for reminders or any indication of potential threats.
Lack of recipient identity verification
Without traceability, it's hard to be sure that the intended recipient is accessing and signing your sales agreements. There's no secure way to confirm their identity and ensure non-repudiation with physical signature workflows unless the signing happens in the presence of the sender. This leaves room for tampering and forging risks.
How Zoho Sign helps manage your sales contracts efficiently
Accelerated sales cycle with AI-assisted features
Digitizing your paperwork transforms the signature workflow into a hands-free process. Bulk send documents for signatures, automatically back up signed documents to the cloud, and reuse templates and SignForms—every step of the sales contract lifecycle is accelerated with Zoho Sign. What's more, with the help of our AI assistant Zia, you can quickly detect and auto-fill fields in sales agreements, as well as summarize lengthy documents.
Mitigate risks
Zoho Sign ensures that your sales contracts are accurate, confidential, and protected at all times. Sales agreements signed with Zoho Sign are protected with AES encryption at rest and follow the TSL/SSL protocol in transit. Plus, you can predefine details like your name, the organization's name and stamp, your signature, and email address so that they're auto-populated each time you insert those fields. This reduces room for manual errors and guarantees a tamper-proof, forgery-free signing experience.
Reduce costs and time
Costs involved in the print-scan-mail method and document turnaround delays can be reduced drastically by switching to a digital alternative like Zoho Sign. Automated reminders and quick signature workflows allow organizations to save significantly on money, time, and labor. Companies that opt for Zoho Sign save up to $30 per envelope and 50 hours per employee every year, and they expedite their sales lifecycle by up to 80%.
Legal compliance
Zoho Sign is legally compliant with global e-signature laws, such as the ESIGN Act, eIDAS, ITA-2000, KICA, ETA, and ETL. This legislation helps ensure secure signing standards that are verifiable across regions and valid for long periods of time. Digitizing your paperwork with Zoho Sign is a one-click solution to secure and compliant signing.
Traceability and non-repudiability
Track the status and details of digitally signed sales contracts in real time. Get total transparency with detailed audit trails—available for free—to track the entire signing process and see crucial information, such as the recipient's email address and IP address, the sign time, and the digital signature certificate used. Digital signed documents are non-repudiable, meaning a signer's identity is indisputably linked to the signed document. This way, every document's status and the signer's identity can be easily tracked and verified.
Automate through integrations
Zoho Sign integrates with a range of workplace applications to enable seamless digital signing as part of your sales lifecycle. Apart from the Zoho suite of apps, Zoho Sign integrates with Google Workspace apps, Microsoft apps, cloud storage apps, and CRM platforms like Zoho CRM, Bigin by Zoho CRM, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Vtiger. You can also automate paperwork by integrating Zoho Sign's functionalities with workflow automation platforms like Zoho Flow, Zapier, Integrately, and Make. Zoho Sign's APIs, webhooks, and SDKs further allow developers to build custom integrations within their existing apps.
Commonly used contracts in sales
- Sales agreements
- Sales orders
- Purchase orders
- Invoices
- Non-disclosure agreements
- Licensing agreements
- Proposals and bids
- Quotes and estimates
- Compliance agreements
Zoho Sign integrates with popular CRM systems to accelerate your sales CLM
Collect signatures from customers, map customer data onto merged templates, customize email templates with your branding for your leads, and manage all your signed documents from your Zoho CRM dashboard.
Send documents out for signatures from the Pipelines, Contacts, or Companies module and track their status from the comfort of your Bigin account.
Upload templates or documents from your device and collect signatures from your leads stored in HubSpot CRM in seconds.
Send documents or Zoho Sign templates straight from your Pipedrive records without app switching.
Send and track documents via Zoho Sign from the Esign documents module in Vtiger CRM.
Customer success stories
FAQs
Electronic signatures are Zoho Sign's digital signatures are tamper-proof and non-repudiable, making them a quick and secure option for sales teams looking to boost their deal velocity. You can upload documents from your device or from your cloud storage apps to sign them or send them out for signatures with Zoho Sign. You can also customize the recipient experience with signer actions, authentication options, private notes, vernacular signing options, and many other customizations.
Every step of your sales contract lifecycle can be automated using Zoho Sign's features. For instance, you can create reusable templates to set fields and signer roles in place for repeated future use. Templates can also be converted into SignForms for easy, secure sharing. You can also integrate Zoho Sign with your CRM platform to fetch customer data and merge it with fields in sales agreements. Other features like bulk send, in-person signing, and witness signing, along with integrations with payment gateways and native applications in all popular desktop and mobile operating systems, let sales teams expedite documents and automate their sales CLM.
Yes! Zoho Sign integrates with popular CRM platforms like Zoho CRM, Bigin by CRM, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Vtiger. You can configure integrations under Settings > Integrations in your Zoho Sign account. Plus, custom integrate other CRM platforms with Zoho Sign using our developer tools or by connecting them on integration platforms like Zoho Flow, Zapier, Make, and Integrately.
You can send an email to support@zohosign.com with any questions or for technical assistance. Our team will assist you as soon as possible!
The signature choice of high-velocity sales teams
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