Streamline sales contract management | Zoho CRM and Zoho Contracts integration

Contracts are at the core of all business transactions, governing every dollar that enters or leaves a company.

Every time a salesperson closes a deal, a sales contract turns that handshake into a solid agreement defining agreed-upon terms and capturing critical details. These contracts lay the groundwork for successful business relationships, setting clear expectations for payment, delivery, and other responsibilities for both parties.

In this blog post, you'll learn everything about sales contract management, from challenges in the traditional approaches to what modern businesses are doing to eliminate them. We'll also cover the Zoho CRM and Zoho Contracts integration in detail.  

Sales contract management, a bottleneck: Here's why 

Most organizations lack a streamlined approach to creating, executing, and managing sales contracts. While contracts are crucial for closing deals, inefficiencies in this area—such as delays in drafting, prolonged reviews, late signatures, and cumbersome onboarding processes—can significantly hinder overall sales performance.

More than 50% of business development leaders report that the inefficiencies in their sales contracting process slow revenue recognition. 

Here are some key questions to help you quickly assess the health of your sales contracting process:

• Are your sales contracts easily accessible and organized?

• Do you have a go-to contract template repository to choose the latest templates from?

• Do your critical sales contracts undergo a mandatory review process before execution?

• Does your team know how many contracts are up for renewal this month?

• If contracts expire without renewal, is your sales manager notified?

• Can you say how many contracts are currently awaiting approval from your legal team? How many review cycles have those contracts gone through?

• Do you have the means to track all contract changes and revisions in a contract at one centralized place?

Sales contract management: The traditional approach 

Traditionally, sales teams switch between multiple applications to manage contracts across various stages in their lifecycle. This involves sharing deal-related information from the CRM and collaborating with stakeholders from various departments for contract creation, reviews, and approvals. Without a streamlined process that establishes transparency and enables easy collaboration with stakeholders, sales contract management is often a bottleneck for sales teams.

Challenges in traditional sales contract management processes 

Human errors 

One of the primary challenges in the conventional sales contract management process is sharing accurate contract-related information. Salespeople typically have all account or deal information stored in the CRM. In the absence of a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system, they often send the required information to relevant stakeholders via emails or chat tools. This manual exchange of information across various tools increases the risk of human errors, overlooked details, and data inconsistencies.

Unanticipated risks 

Sales teams generally have a set of contract templates for commonly used contract types. When these templates are managed across disparate systems, such as shared drives and spreadsheets, it introduces the following challenges:

- Latest contract templates are hard to locate.

- Periodically updating clause languages becomes a cumbersome task, risking the use of obsolete templates.

- Lack of granular access control can lead to multiple versions of templates.

These inefficiencies increase the chances of errors, exposing the contracts to unanticipated risks and performance degradation.

Long sales cycles 

When sales teams and other departments work in silos to manage sales contracts, it leads to several inefficiencies that contribute to extended sales cycles.

Some examples:

- Back-and-forth emails with multiple stakeholders for contract reviews.

- Delays due to a lack of automated reminders and activity tracking during approvals, negotiation, and signature stages.

These delays can sometimes lead to missed sales opportunities and slower revenue recognition.

Poor compliance

The primary risk is the use of outdated templates with obsolete contract languages. Without a CLM tool, sales teams also often struggle to ensure that all involved stakeholders fulfill their contractual obligations. Important deadlines for payments, renewals, or deliverables can easily be missed without automated reminders or a centralized tracking system. Unfulfilled obligations can lead to significant consequences, including revenue leakage, costly litigation, broken relationships, and reputational damage.

How modern businesses address their sales contract management challenges  

Modern businesses are addressing these contract management challenges by integrating a digital contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool into their sales tech stack. This integration helps businesses with better information flow across departments, smooth collaboration, reduced contract cycle times, and seamless client onboarding.

Zoho Contracts and Zoho CRM integration

At Zoho, we offer a comprehensive CLM solution, Zoho Contracts, that can improve efficiency across all aspects of contract management. By integrating Zoho Contracts with Zoho CRM, you can automate contract requests and manage the entire contract lifecycle directly within the CRM interface.

Here's how your sales contract management looks with the Zoho CRM and Zoho Contracts integration:

• Salespeople can initiate new contract requests directly from a deal or potential record in Zoho CRM.

• The account and contact details in Zoho CRM will be automatically mapped into Zoho Contracts, and a contract document will be created with all details auto-populated based on the predefined templates.

• The contract will be auto-assigned to a contract owner in Zoho Contracts based on the assignment rule set when installing the extension.

• A copy of the contract document will also be available under the attachments section in the deal record in Zoho CRM.

• Salespeople can email contract documents directly to counterparties.

• Salespeople can track contract statuses directly from the related list of the deal record in Zoho CRM under the Zoho Contracts section.

• Salespeople can request contract owners to proceed with approvals, negotiations, and signatures based on a contract's current stage from within Zoho CRM.

• The built-in eSignature capability in Zoho Contracts empowers teams to sign and secure contract signatures in minutes.

• Salespeople can also initiate post-execution management requests for contract amendments, extensions, and renewals directly from Zoho CRM.

 Why should you integrate Zoho Contracts with Zoho CRM?

• Accelerated contract creation with self-service contract requests.

• Seamless communication and collaboration between sales and other teams with standardized workflows throughout the sales contract cycle.

• Enhanced visibility and transparency of sales contracts' statuses and CLM processes.

• Better accessibility to critical contract information with centralized storage of all contracts and related data.

• Faster contract execution and effortless customer onboarding with integrated eSignature capability.

• Reduced business risks with a central template library, automated approval workflows, and holistic obligation management.

• No renewal misses due to automated reminders.

• Improved compliance with industry standards and government regulations.

Ready to redefine the contracting process for your sales teams? Our help guide provides detailed step-by-step instructions for setting up your Zoho Contracts and Zoho CRM integration.

For any questions or support, feel free to reach us at support@zohocontracts.com. We're here to ensure your journey to streamlined contract management is easy!