Solving your document problem

Transcription

1 1 Solving your document problem

2 Contents The new face of sales 1 What sales reps are really doing with their time 2 Sales documents and the problems they cause 3 Solution: Document generation 5 How document generation addresses pain points in the sales process 6 Dimelo case study 7 Removing the flaws in the sales process 8 2

3 Solving your document problem The new face of sales The sales landscape has changed. Technology has enabled and empowered today s customer, who is now firmly in control of the sales process unlike ever before. As a result, the quality of the customer s experience is a determining factor in whether a sales organization succeeds or fails. 54% of customers are likely to switch brands if a company doesn t make an effort to personalize communications with them; 50% if a company doesn t anticipate their needs (Salesforce Research) The connected, educated customer expects sales people to be available at any time to provide an immediate, direct and tailored response. Spending valuable hours on anything other than core selling activities is no longer an option for sales teams striving to meet this demand. Instead, they must be enabled with tools and processes that maximize efficiency and productivity, and empowered to focus on the customer, or they risk falling behind their competitors. Sales tools are among the most important services provided to enable sales teams, second only to sales training (CSO Insights, 2016 Sales Optimization Survey) The more time sales teams spend focused on their customers, the more they can provide each customer with relevant solutions Bluewolf, State of Salesforce Report 1

4 Solving your document problem What sales reps are really doing with their time 50 It s no secret that sales people spend a lot of their time doing things other than selling. According to CSO Insights, they spend only 35.9% of their time engaged in their primary function. That means that 64.1% of the time, more than 5 hours out of an 8-hour work day, sales people are engaged in non-revenue-generating activities. A large number of these hours 25% of them are spent on manual and administrative tasks. These trivial activities need to be minimized in order for sales teams to become high functioning and highly successful, opening up more time in the day to provide the customer-centric experience that is increasingly required. The average sales rep spends over 50 full days away from core selling activities each year. (Domo) For sales teams that see ineffective internal processes as their top challenge: 22% identify lack of time for face-to-face selling as the reason. (Salesforce Research) 2 45% identify excessive administrative tasks as the reason. (Salesforce Research)

5 Sales documents and the problems they cause Solving your document problem Make no mistake, a good part of this manual work comes from the processes required to generate documents. Sales people have to produce numerous documents throughout the sales cycle, from proposals to quotes to contracts. If they are creating documents manually, it causes some problems: PROBLEM 1 # COPYING AND PASTING. Copying and pasting to create document content wastes valuable employee time and introduces errors. Most often this is done when there is an existing document template or an old version of a document that sales is copying and pasting into to create a new document. This process is slow and laborious, and any time a sales person creates a document manually, or transfers information into a template by hand, there is a chance for error. Document formatting can be lost or altered, text/characters might be omitted, or peripheral text might be missed. Errors cause delays in the sales process, which is frustrating for sales and prospective customers alike. 3 Our contracts can range in length from 15 to 30 pages, and before on boarding Conga Composer we were manually populating and filing them. Since implementing Composer we save between 30 minutes to an hour per contract that s a saving of $25.00 $50.00 each! Adam Wiggins Head of Marketing, SalesITV

6 Solving your document problem PROBLEM #2Inconsistent document formatting and branding. When documents sent to prospects and customers are inconsistent in look and branding, it erodes a company s brand integrity. When a company has a consistent public image, as conveyed through the customer-facing documents that it generates and its sales force distributes, it creates a sense of professionalism. And professionalism inspires customer confidence. When sales people generate and distribute documents themselves, it s virtually impossible to ensure that the documents will have a consistent look and feel in line with a company s branding. It s a common occurrence for individuals to use outdated templates or forget which document version is the appropriate one for a given situation. This inconsistency detracts from a company s image and reputation. We needed to select merge templates from a user s PC, not Salesforce. I called Conga, and the next day it was in the product. That s when I knew we d partnered with the right company. Brandon Gage SVP Information Technology, United Capital PROBLEM #3 Poor visibility into document status. Documents that are not stored in a central repository cannot be tracked, and visibility is compromised. Imagine this scenario: an individual sales rep keeps what he thinks is the latest price book on his laptop, and uses that information to generate quotes manually. Then he drops his laptop while running for an Uber, leaves the company, or just goes to Tahiti for a few days. During that time, a question from a customer comes up regarding a recent proposal. Was a proposal sent one week ago? Or was it two weeks? Did it contain the new pricing structure? Sales teams often need to answer questions like these quickly, and finding the answer can be challenging. Searching through sent s and local computer drives is time-consuming and can have unreliable results. 4

7 Solving your document problem Solution: Document generation Document generation is the process of automatically producing a document, whether that s a Word doc, Excel spreadsheet, HTML you name it. Information in the document is populated into a template, without any user interaction. Typically, the document created contains a mixture of static and dynamic information. These documents can be fairly simple, like a mail merge, or elaborate, with if then statements, added images and more. Document generation is synonymous with document automation, document creation or document assembly. A CRM holds a wealth of information, but printing a web screen or taking screen shots of a record is not ideal. That information can be put into a useable format quickly and easily without manual effort with a document generation solution. This allows reps to take CRM information and create documents with both visual appeal and function almost instantaneously. Document generation tools help sales teams solve for the problems that manual processes cause. Conga Composer and EchoSign helped us streamline our entire sales process. The integrated solution was easy to configure and provides a seamless, highly professional front-end experience for our reps and customers. Cynthia Wittig Technical Product Specialist, Northstar Travel Media 5

8 Solving your document problem How document generation addresses pain points in the sales process What document generation solves for in the sales process: 1. Eliminates manual copying and pasting of information into a new document. A template or templates are created beforehand and used when a document is created. This eliminates the need to copy and paste, preventing the errors that inevitably occur when done by hand. There is also a considerable time savings, as generating a document takes a single click of the mouse. 2. Creates brand consistency. Irregular documents with inconsistent branding become a thing of the past. With a document generation solution, template versions can be managed and often pre-defined, ensuring the correct and current version is distributed to customers. 3. Lack of visibility into documents. Many document generation solutions simultaneously save a copy of the document directly in the organization s CRM, enabling everyone on the team to see the date and time the document was created and sent, as well as reference the document contents. 2.2X Companies that effectively streamline sales processes increase company revenue at 2.2x the rate of all others, year-over-year. These companies shorten the length of their sales cycles 5.6% year-over-year, while all others lengthen their sales cycles by 2.6%. (Aberdeen Group) 4. Sales process optimization. Document generation technology is a key piece in creating a steamlined sales workflow, or one requiring minimal manual and administrative interventions from sales reps. 6

9 CASE STUDY Company Dimelo is a B2B software and services company that provides SaaS applications focused on client interaction management to large companies in the EU. Business challenge A complex quote production process. The sales team needs to generate quotes with varying terms and conditions for software versus services, or a combination of the two in multiple languages, depending on where the client is located. Individual sales reps were generating quotes as Word documents, which was labor intensive, error prone, and lead to branding discrepancies. Inconsistencies in pricing information. Keeping intricate price books up to date in different languages, while maintaining partner pricing structures, was a challenge. Prices were updated in Salesforce, but there was no system for distributing price information to sales. Individual reps sent whatever version of the price book they had on their laptops. This created inconsistencies in pricing and branding, as well as uncertainty after the fact about which version the client had received. Solution Dimelo employees implemented Conga Composer for document generation, adding and modifying templates and buttons as they went to meet their evolving needs. The templates included price books as well as templates for quote generation in multiple languages. Results and benefits Using Conga Composer, Dimelo automated its complex quote production process. The sales team can now generate quotes quickly and automatically in the target language with the correct set of terms and conditions. Using Conga to print price books directly from Salesforce, management ensured sales personnel were sending out the most up-to-date pricing information in a template, guaranteeing brand consistency. Accelerated quote production process, using automation to eliminate complex Word document creation that sales representatives had to do manually. Ensured accuracy in price book data distributed to the sales reps. Made brand experience consistent by leveraging templates across all quotes. What I like about Conga Composer, as a CEO, is the fact that it enables me to increase control over what is being sent out by my sales reps. Since we control the templates, then we know what is being sent. Stéphane Lee, CEO, Dimelo 7

10 Solving your document problem Removing the flaws in the sales process An element of many business processes, document generation plays a central role in the sales cycle. Document generation has to be taken into account when planning how sales enablement can empower sales teams, leading to sales process optimization and efficiency. While solving the document problem won t guarantee every rep uses every moment of his or her day wisely, it is a key piece of the puzzle when creating end-toend sales fluency where any activities that are not core selling activities are either automated or delegated to other departments. Automating manual processes will put time back in the sales team s pocket, and allow them to focus on the things they do best engaging directly with customers and prospects. GET A FREE TRIAL Conga Composer has helped us transform our entire enterprise ordering process. The seamless integration with our quote-to-cash and esignature apps enables us to create and deliver order forms that automatically merge the correct data with just a click. Lior Pinelli, Senior Technical Project Manager, Magento 8

11 To get a free trial and for more information on how document generation can streamline your sales process, making your Salesforce users more efficient, visit or call us at GET A FREE TRIAL Conga Americas Global Headquarters 390 Interlocken Crescent Suite 500 Broomfield, Colorado Copyright 2017 Conga