From billion dollar deals to your internet service agreement, contracts govern our world.
So why is contract creation still a struggle for many businesses? Most of the time, it results from a lack of enforceable process. No standard templates, no easy way to fill in the details, clauses stored in haphazard places...the list goes on.
Whatever the pain point, S-Docs is here to help end your agreement obstacles. As a 100% native document generation and e-signature solution, we’ve been perfecting Salesforce contract generation for over 10 years - and now we’d like to share our wisdom.
Check out these curated contract creation tips and find out why Salesforce document automation for contracts benefits your team - and your customers.
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Create Contract Templates in Salesforce
Dusting off your contract creation workflows starts with improving your template/clause library, whether you’re using Salesforce document automation or not.
Leverage Your Branding
Like other touchpoints, contracts are a channel for value-creation. They should add to the experience your customer/partner is familiar with up to this point. Receiving a contract that looks and feels in-line with other interactions provides evidence of trustworthiness.
Of course, it’s important to use discretion - certain industries/businesses may be more or less receptive to contracts with a bit of flair.
Include A Preamble with Key Terms/Details
Contracts don’t make deals happen - the people reading them do, so you should design them to be easily understood by those people.
One way to make this easier is including a preamble section listing the parties involved, key terms & definitions, and key details that summarize the contract’s purpose or call attention to important provisions.
This helps identify any issues quickly and ensures everyone starts out on the same page.
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Include All Valid Contract Elements
Your contract templates will vary based on their purpose, but they’ll all need the same essential elements. In general, these include an offer (a deal with terms and conditions), consideration (goods/services/currency exchanged), and acceptance (willingness by both parties to abide by the offer’s terms).
These components are the meat of your contract.
After building out a few templates with all of the basic components, contract creation should become much smoother - it’s just a matter of filling in custom details.
But what if your contracts require lots of custom details - or different clauses based on factors like the customer’s location or industry? That’s where S-Docs document generation can turn a long copy-paste process into a few button clicks. Let’s take a look.
Salesforce Document Automation for Contracts
Salesforce document generation solutions like S-Docs allow you to build contract templates inside Salesforce that automatically pull in key Salesforce data points from any object. This saves time and ensures your contract data is complete and error-free, since it’s coming from your source of truth.
Insert Salesforce Fields and Related Lists
Notice those tags in the contracts above (they look like true)? Those are placeholders for Salesforce data. When a contract template is generated, dynamic data from Salesforce replaces each tag (highlighted in green below).
You can also insert placeholders for Salesforce related lists, which are replaced with related list record data in dynamic tables. This can be useful for a list of products being purchased, or including the account team members involved in a deal.
Create & Reference A Clause Library
If you’ve got clauses that go in multiple different contract templates - a standard severability clause, for example - editing one can turn into an all-day affair. You’ll need to make the same edit in every template that includes the clause - every time an edit is required.
Alternatively, you can use Salesforce document generation tools to create a library of clause templates that can be referenced across your contracts with a tag. Anytime an edit to a clause is required, all you’ll need to do is update the master clause template, and those edits will be reflected across all of your contract templates.
Take a look at this quick overview on how S-Docs clause templates (components) work here:
Use Conditional Logic to Auto-Customize Your Contracts
Auto-filling data from Salesforce is great, but Salesforce document automation gets even smarter. Conditional logic allows you to customize what content gets included or excluded based on your business rules.
For example, if your contract contains a non-compete clause, you can automatically omit that clause when the recipient’s billing address is in California. Conditional logic lets you include or exclude any content - even whole pages - based on any business rules in Salesforce.
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Allow Users To Choose Predefined Content Blocks
Contracts are highly-regulated documents in most organizations; legal doesn’t want anyone making changes to their standard templates without approval.
With document automation, however, it’s possible to give users leeway without relinquishing control. By setting up pre-approved content blocks that users can choose before generating a contract, legal can ensure only authorized changes are being made - while users get the agency they need to complete contracts quicker.
Take a look at this quick overview on how this works here:
Automate Contract Creation in Salesforce
Up to this point, we’ve mainly discussed the document in document automation - but that second word is just as important. With S-Docs, you can trigger your contracts to generate and email themselves based on any event in Salesforce - like when an Opportunity moves to “Closed Won,” or a Contract moves to “Draft.”
Automating your contract creation workflows can increase your team’s efficiency, give them more time to do what they do best - and get deals closed faster.
Contract Acceptance: Get It In (Electronic) Writing
One of the core requirements of a valid contract is acceptance: an expressed willingness to be bound by the terms of the contract.
Technically, a handshake or verbal “Yes” work - but for best results, requiring all parties to sign the document is the way to go. If you’re already using document automation, there’s no better way to request signatures than with a proprietary e-signature solution for one seamless transaction.
With the help of S-Docs and S-Sign, you can automatically generate and send your contracts for signature using one smooth user interface - and even write any data input by the signer directly back to Salesforce.
The best part - both S-Docs and S-Sign are 100% native to Salesforce. That means they execute faster, are easier to use, and never send your data outside the protections of your org.
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Create Contracts in Salesforce Faster with S-Docs & S-Sign
Contract creation is more efficient and scalable with document automation for Salesforce. Implementing S-Docs and S-Sign for contracts gives you:
- Consistency - the same style/language/components pulled in every time
- Reduced Errors - data pulled from Salesforce, not input manually
- Speed - 100% native document generation creates & sends contracts quicker
- Security - your data never leaves Salesforce
- Happy Clients - a faster contract process leads to happier teams all around
If you’re ready to see how 100% native document generation and e-signature for Salesforce can improve your contract creation workflows, give us a shout - request a demo here or contact sales@sdocs.com. Happy contracting!
