As a sales manager, what if you were told that your sales team spends only 35% of their time selling. Have you wondered where the rest of their productive time actually goes? In fact, sales reps waste their time on non-customer facing activities, like admin tasks and searching for account information. If you want to have a highly-performing sales team, you have to help manage their time and optimise sales processes. Using document collaboration and management solution can help maximize your sales team’s selling time by moving unnecessary tasks away from them and ensuring they are focused on closing more deals. Here’s how to use a document management software for your business advantage.
1. Automate sales document lifecycle
It’s challenging enough to track all the orders and proposals which often results in documents getting lost and delayed. Automating your sales processes means that you have a full visibility and traceability of your documents: you can follow the full cycle of a document development, from its initial draft to the finalized version and see where it gets delayed or how much time it takes to complete it. Plus, document management software reduces the risk of errors in sales proposals as you can overlook any changes being made to make sure the proposal has the correct information and complies with the latest regulations.
2. Avoid unnecessary emails
One of the things that kills your sales team’s productivity is email overload. In fact, sales reps spend 21% of their time writing and replying to emails instead of using their productive time to speak to prospects and turning them into leads. When sending emails, you sacrifice the security and accessibility of your document – especially when it has sensitive client’s data in it or contains an important attachment. The problems with emails are – they are not secure, they fill your inbox so a document can easily get lost or can be sent to a wrong person. All of it causes unnecessary delays which sucks up your productive time. With a document management software like DocuCollab, it’s very easy to get rid of the habit to send endless amounts of emails and trace back its origin or the changes being made as you can use the software to send and receive emails, get contracts signed in few minutes from any device.
3. Use pre-made templates
Did you know that 70% of documents are copied or re-created?
It means that whenever a sales rep is looking for a document to send to a client, they have to make sure they are looking for a right document and the RIGHT version of it. Having several versions of the same document creates a disorganized document management environment which is not the best practice when it comes to maximizing sales. This is where a document management solution can help your sales team be more organized and efficient – they can create a sales proposal by putting pre-made sections into a document or use pre-approved templates. Not only this shortens the negotiation cycle but also ensures smooth and positive customer experience. DocuCollab offers “Intelligent templates” that allow sales reps easily generate legal approved and compliant documents in just few clicks by simply answering few questions. These templates are usually managed by sales operations and/or legal department and are available to the entire sales staff in a “self-service” model.
4. Make documents easier to find
There’s nothing more important than getting an instant access to critical information. As a sales rep, you have to be professional and prepare client’s information beforehand to ensure you have it in front of you whenever you need any details. The tricky part is – paper documents can get easily misplaced or lost; emails are hard to find and trace so you are faced with a real quest of finding the latest version of a document or re-writing a contract (again) before the call starts. You can save a lot of time with a document management software – find a file by searching for a phrase in the document; all documents can be indexed and categorized, meaning you can store and retrieve them later at any time. What’s more, you can access a document from any device so you’re always in the loop of what’s happening.
5. Import and auto-merge CRM data in your documents
Sales reps work with huge amounts of data so it’s crucial to have correct information about the client. With a document management software, your sales team will get up and running quickly by importing existing clients data. DocuCollab, for example, seamlessly integrates with enterprise data sources such as CRM, ERP, HRMS to ensure the data is correct and up-to-date. It helps to finalize a proposal quicker and instantly send it to a prospect – DocuCollab solutions will boost your productivity by 70% which means you are closing more deals with less effort.
6. Bring all related documents in your CRM opportunity detail page
Sales reps spend their day inside CRM. You should make sure that they are able to manage their sales documents from inside the opportunity record. This means, if they are working on the opportunity for “ACME Corporation”, they should be able to create, manage and track all ACME Corp documents (i.e. NDA, MSA, Contracts, Quotes etc) while they are on the opportunity detail page of the CRM system.
DocuCollab’s native integration with leading CRM products such as Salesforce, SugarCRM and others ensure that sales reps only have to look at one place to find any document related to a particular opportunity. With an easy access to all of their documents, sales reps can better track and speed up the deal cycle.
To increase your business efficiency and maximise sales, you have to ensure your sales team is equipped with right tools and procedures that help them simplify their daily tasks. Businesses that integrate a document management software into their processes find it easier to create, collaborate and finish a document, automate workflows and be in control of overall document management.
Micro-collaboration tool like DocuCollab is saving you time and money – having a central place to share and manage documents means your sales team have all the information available, can instantly send and receive contracts thus making the negotiation cycle shorter. If you’re ready to change the way you run your business, contact our sales team or book a demo to see how DocuCollab can help you accelerate your company.