Gone are the days when a contract had to be sent through the mail and signed in wet ink to be valid. Today, businesses can close deals and finalize transactions from anywhere in the world, using any device - and it’s all thanks to eSignatures. 

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool, and it is the dominant choice for businesses and sales teams seeking to connect with and nurture their relationships with both potential and existing clients.

Since many of these relationships involve transactions and finalising deals, it's common for Salesforce users to process contracts or other documents in the platform. This is where Salesforce integrations with electronic signature solutions come in handy.

Can you sign a contract in Salesforce?

Businesses can sign contracts securely in Salesforce using an eSignature integration, or an integration. Or, you can integrate Salesforce with a contract management solution like Juro where users can prepare, edit, negotiate, manage and even sign contracts electronically through the platform.

These integrations can be accessed through Salesforce’s marketplace, AppExchange, where you will find a wide range of customized eSignature applications designed to seamlessly integrate with their CRM.

Let’s look at what the process of signing and managing a contract looks like when you integrate Salesforce with a tool like Juro. 

Which documents do sales teams sign in Salesforce

1. Sales contracts

Sales contracts are among the most common use cases for eSignature in Salesforce, and this is true in businesses of all sizes. 

With an increasing number of business transactions happening across borders, the opportunity to sign and process documents electronically and remotely as opposed to in person is a game-changer, particularly if your business processes and signs sales contracts at a high velocity.

By integrating a native eSignature solution like Juro, sales teams can quickly generate documents in Salesforce and securely sign contracts across any device.

2. Client onboarding

Client onboarding is a critical moment for any business since it is the period where a relationship is formalized and a contract is signed - that is, if the customer actually approves of and signs the contract. Unfortunately, even the smallest delays or inefficiencies at this stage can lead a new client relationship to fall through, which is why businesses need to have the paperwork ready to sign and in the hands of a customer at the earliest convenience.

That’s why client onboarding contracts and forms are a popular eSignature use case in Salesforce. By using eSignatures in Salesforce, you can prevent onboarding delays typically caused by missed or bounced emails and inconvenient signing processes, enabling you to make the onboarding process less of a pain point for both you and your client.  

3. Service requests

According to Zendesk, 65% of consumers expect customer service responses to be faster now than 5 years ago. Meanwhile, Google has reported a growth of 120% in mobile searches for “wait times”. Clearly, customers are becoming less patient.

It shouldn’t surprise you, therefore, that service requests are moving away from slow and inaccurate paper-based processes and towards digital transactions with the help of eSignature.

Today, customers want convenient access to their documents, and to be able to make decisions on the go. What they don’t want is to spend hours trailing through old emails for important information. By pairing Salesforce with eSignature software, users can swiftly access and sign documents with an electronic in a more mobile way.

How to sign and manage contracts in Salesforce

1. Sales reps are able to self-serve by generating contracts in Salesforce using templates prepared by their legal team in Juro. This pre-signature stage of a contract lifecycle typically resides with the sales team.
   
   
2. Once a contract has been shipped, the sales team can remain focused on monitoring the customer status, pipeline and potential leads. Simultaneously, the legal team can assess risk, negotiate friction points and monitor legal terms within the contracts. This can all happen in real time, within a single system.
   
   
3. Sign electronically! Using an eSignature integration on Salesforce, parties can quickly and easily sign contracts no matter where they are.
   
   
4. Post-signature, departments like finance, sales, legal and procurement will be able to track renewals, analytics and other contract data, which can inform future strategy and improve visibility using one single source of truth.

Benefits of using eSignatures in Salesforce

There are numerous benefits of using electronic signature solutions like Juro to sign contracts in Salesforce. Let’s run through these now. 

1. Sales teams can stay in their CRM 

As any salesperson will tell you, the ability to work from a single platform to perform various different functions is invaluable. 

By integrating an eSignature tool like Juro with a major CRM platform like Salesforce, business teams are empowered to stay within the systems they love, rather than switching platforms to perform different tasks. 

2. Shorter sales cycles 

One of the biggest advantages of using eSignature with Salesforce is that you can dramatically reduce the amount of time spent finalizing a contract. 

Compared to traditional signature processes that typically involve an awful lot of emailing, printing, redlining, scanning, using an electronic signature integration will cut out the need for manual labor when it comes to closing deals and allow you to focus on what matters most - closing.

3. Better customer experience 

Delivering a great customer experience ought to be a priority, even at the end of a transaction. By integrating Juro’s eSignature app with Salesforce, you can make every prospect’s signing experience a positive one. Clients can sign in quickly and securely from anywhere in the world to access and sign documents in real-time, using any device.

4. Cost-effectiveness

Research reveals that companies that adopt an electronic signature solution can reduce the costs associated with document handling by an impressive 85%. Meanwhile, Forbes estimates that businesses can become 70-80% more efficient after removing manual processes and adopting digital technologies like eSignatures.

Preparing, sharing, printing and storing physical documents can become costly as your business scales. By digitizing your signature process and breaking free from your paper trail, you could be preserving precious business resources.

5. Single source of truth

By using eSignature in Salesforce, you can benefit from increased data integrity. Contracts signed through Juro, for example, are time stamped and made immutable using secure hash algorithms. This means that they are immune from tampering, and almost impossible to manipulate.

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Ready to get started?

Ready to say goodbye to lengthy, cross-platform processes when signing your contracts? Fed up of email trails and wet ink signatures slowing you down? It might be time to move towards eSignature - a secure, efficient and mobile way to get to yes.

Electronic signing is offered as standard as part of Juro’s end-to-end contract automation platform. We help you capture signatures through intuitive, mobile responsive signing flows, making contracts legally binding and delivering a great user experience for your most trusted stakeholders.

To find out more and see Salesforce eSignatures in action, hit the button below for a personalized demo.

Frequently asked questions 

Does Salesforce have electronic signature functionality?

Salesforce does not offer native electronic signing functionality. However, it does integrate with a variety of eSigning solutions, including Juro. 

Are eSignatures in Salesforce legally binding?

eSignatures are recognized across the globe, and at the highest level, an electronic signature will carry the same weight as a wet ink signature, meaning that eSignatures used in the Salesforce platform will typically be legally binding.

For example, the US ESIGN Act declares that electronic signatures are valid and enforceable despite being electronic, and the European Union eIDAS regulation says that Standard Electronic Signatures are valid in most business transactions.

That said, there are some exceptions to this rule, as a select few countries perceive eSignatures differently, so we recommend consulting with your legal team or local laws before moving forward with eSignatures in Salesforce and other platforms.

Can you manage contracts in Salesforce?

You can manage contracts in Salesforce. However, you’ll only be able to manage contracts in Salesforce if you integrate the CRM with an end-to-end contract tool like Juro. Integrating Salesforce with a basic eSigning solution won’t enable you to generate contracts within the CRM, for example.