Streamline Contract Workflow and Accelerate Sales Deals

In-house legal teams are often accused of being "blockers" or "bottlenecks" in the sales cycle. Streamlining your contract workflow without abdicating your duty of risk mitigation can be challenging, but the right tools and techniques can actually square this circle. Here are practical tips for in-house legal teams looking to accelerate sales deals through improved contract management.

Establish standardized contract templates

Creating pre-approved contract templates with standardized terms and clauses helps reduce the time spent drafting agreements from scratch. Sales teams can use these templates confidently, knowing they align with legal and regulatory standards, reducing the need for frequent legal intervention.

Even better, a contract lifecycle management tool that integrates with standard sales workflows can make templates easy to use, and prevent sales representatives from "routing around" legal to get potentially risky deals signed.

Implement a centralized contract repository

A centralized contract repository ensures that sales reps have easy access to the contracts, templates, and documentation they need, but gives legal a level of access control that prevents anyone from "re-purposing" historical contract language without legal approval.

Automate approval workflows

Manual contract approval processes often slow down deal cycles. Implementing automated approval workflows allows contracts to move seamlessly through necessary reviews, while ensuring compliance. Automated notifications keep key stakeholders informed and engaged, preventing unnecessary delays.

Leverage integrated eSignature solutions

Most legal teams long ago abandoned "wet" signatures in favor of eSignature tools, but just having an eSign app isn't enough. Nothing screws up getting the right eSignature on the right document more than a sales rep having to download a contract and then upload it to DocuSign (not least because that same rep often has 38 copies of "SalesDeal1.docx" saved to their desktop, and occasionally sends the wrong one out for signature). Integrating eSignature solutions into your workflow apps ensures documents can be signed by the right parties as quickly as possible, but also prevents errors and keeps compliance tracking in place.

Utilize AI-powered contract review tools

AI-driven contract analysis tools can identify risks, inconsistencies, and deviations from standard clauses, enabling legal teams to focus on contract "problems" rather than reread contract boilerplate. More simply, you can use AI to do a first-pass annotation of your redlines, so you focus on what matters in a negotiation and don't waste time on what doesn't.

Foster cross-functional collaboration

Sales, finance, and legal teams must work together seamlessly to avoid bottlenecks. It's great to have a culture of collaboration, but having the right tools makes that culture achievable and effective. Everyone should be automatically notified when their input on a deal is required, and it should be easy to leave feedback and approve contract language without resorting to tangled email threads or Microsoft Teams conversations.

Do it all with LinkSquares

Everyone knows what they should do to unblock sales deals, but having the right tools to accelerate the deal cycle is how you can actually achieve the goal. With LinkSquares, you get cutting-edge contract workflow with built-in, super-flexible contract templates, the best AI-enhanced contract repository on the market, natively integrated e-signature, and a sophisticated approval engine to keep everyone on task and in compliance. And all of it integrates with best-of-breed tools like Salesforce, Microsoft Word, and Slack.

If you want to adopt the best and most effective tools to help legal accelerate sales cycles, contact LinkSquares today.