The Contract Template Playbook That Actually Gets Adopted

Sales teams should spend their time selling, not creating contracts and herding them through approvals. But without a standardized and automated process to create agreements, sellers waste time searching for the right template (or worse, using an outdated one), manually entering data, and emailing redlines back and forth to different parties. That old way of managing the end-to-end contract workflow is disconnected, frustrating, and inefficient.

Broken workflows slow down deals, leading sellers to complain, blame, and even go rogue. Workarounds create risk and extra work for everyone involved:

• Sellers ping legal for the most up-to-date template and then manually update their agreements

• A sales rep sends a contract that contains unauthorized discounting language

• The deal desk lacks both visibility into the most recent version of the agreement and context behind redlined terms

• In a rush to hit quota, the sales rep bypasses approval altogether and sends the customer an agreement with outdated terms 

• Finance flags errors after the deal is closed, triggering a clawback

There’s a better way. The Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform helps teams create sales contracts faster using templates with preapproved language. And when templates are easier to create, customizable, and accurate, sales teams won’t hesitate to adopt them. 

Supercharge sales efficiency by streamlining in-CRM contract creation

Docusign IAM simplifies contract creation with templates that use preapproved language and include contact-specific details from a CRM, such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, or Oracle NetSuite. Best of all, sellers can create and send agreements from within the CRM, without having to switch tools. Seamless integration with popular CRMs enables sales team members to generate agreements without process bottlenecks and administrative burdens. It also minimizes the errors that occur when patching together disparate systems and manually entering information. 

Here’s  how simple it is to create a template using the IAM platform: 

• Upload an existing file or create a new document for your template. 

• Add the recipients. 

• Add or update text, insert an image, or add a dynamic table that automatically adjusts to the number of columns or rows required. 

• Create conditional rules based on deal size, pricing discounts, and other factors for truly customized documents, with no need to create a separate template for each variable..

• Insert fillable fields that senders can populate with their specific data, generating personalized agreements every time..

• Add inline signer fields like signature lines and checkboxes for recipients to complete.

• Preview your template and make changes as needed. Your template is now ready to use. 

Less swivel, more selling 

With Docusign IAM and a solid contract template playbook, teams can intuitively build and maintain accurate, data-connected templates for contracts, proposals, and other sales agreements.

Instead of managing manual agreement work, sellers can devote more time to developing their pipeline and closing more deals. And when sellers speed up deals, they capture more value. In fact, organizations with mature contract-creation capabilities outperform productivity metrics nearly twice as frequently as competitors that lack them.

Take Checkr, who saw a 99% reduction in templates, which accelerated the sales cycle: “With Docusign, we were able to consolidate 400 templates down to three, which has made everything faster and more manageable,” said Travis Lee, head of revenue systems.

Or Vestwell, who saw 200 hours of manual labor saved monthly and over 90% faster contract completion. Now they’re well-positioned to expand. “By integrating Docusign CLM and eSignature with our RevOps tech stack, we were able to consolidate work happening in a lot of different places to create a unified experience that positioned us for scale and revenue expansion,” said Jon Mark, SVP of business ops and strategy. 

What’s next

Once teams commit to improving their contract template process, they’re on their way to fewer headaches and greater efficiency gains. However, while contract templates may exist within organizations, they are often underused—not because they lack value, but because teams lack the training or enablement to use them effectively. The solution is to implement existing templates and ensure that each team member receives the thoughtful training they need to be set up for success. By equipping teams with the knowledge and tools to access and apply standardized, preapproved templates, companies can scale agreements quickly and confidently. 

Learn more about creating agreements with Docusign.