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Sales teams live in CRM platforms like HubSpot. But when it comes to creating contracts, they find themselves venturing into multiple different tools to get a deal over the line.
Fortunately, there’s a way to create and manage contracts using the tools you know and love, including HubSpot! To find out how you can master managing contracts in HubSpot while keeping harmony between legal and sales, read on.
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a CRM platform that empowers scaling businesses to manage their marketing, sales, operations, and customer service projects in one unified workspace.
More specifically, sales teams often use HubSpot to streamline sales cycles and track the lifecycle of certain deals, from when a lead enters the pipeline right through to when the deal gets closed.
But to close a deal, you’ll need a contract, the problem is, this can become a painful process without the right tools in place.
Why is managing contracts painful?
As we just mentioned, sales contracts are critical to the growth of scaling businesses. The faster the company scales, the more contracts it’ll need to manage. However, just as increasing contract volumes is a sign of success, it also poses a risk to the business as an inefficient contract process holds companies back.
Yet, most scaling businesses will rely on lean legal teams for their contract management. That’s why delays in the contract lifecycle are common in scaling businesses, particularly where commercial teams aren’t empowered to self-serve on contracts yet.
These bottlenecks can result in fewer contracts signed, fewer deals closed, and less revenue captured.
Let’s take a quick look at the typical contract lifecycle in businesses without a contract management solution and understand exactly where these bottlenecks lie.
Firstly, if a sales team member wants to create a contract, they’ll usually need to request one. This can be done through a contract request form, or by reaching out directly to the legal team.
Often, the in-house lawyers legal team creates this in Microsoft Word using a pre-existing template. This template is then populated manually by pasting the deal information found in sales databases like HubSpot.
This process is repetitive and unscalable, meaning it becomes a drain on your legal team’s time.
But the hard work doesn’t end there. Once drafted, the contract is shared with colleagues via email to be reviewed. After they’ve made their changes, the contract is then shared with the counterparty for contract negotiation.
During this time, the contract is typically saved, sent back and forth via email. It is often redlined in Word or redlined in Google Docs, with these edits saved and shared in new versions. This back and forth will continue until all parties have agreed to the terms of the contract and approved their contractual obligations.
Post-negotiation, it’s then time for the sales contract to be signed. In traditional workflows, this would happen using a wet signature. Today, sales teams are more likely to move their sales contract into yet another platform to create an electronic signature instead. This usually happens in a tool like DocuSign or Adobe Sign.
Once signed, the contract is saved as a PDF in a shared drive, where it usually sits collecting dust. If you’re lucky, the contract’s data is extracted from the contract manually and tracked in a contract management spreadsheet, or added to HubSpot where the deal originated.
If you’re thinking that this sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is! Sales teams could be losing up to half an hour minutes to get back on track with a task after context switching and when it comes to contracts, they could be doing this multiple times a day.
Sales teams should be focusing on working their deals instead of switching between tools constantly to get a contract sent and signed.
“We wanted to give the sales team independence to create and send their own contracts, so that legal was no longer a bottleneck” - Dave Cooper, Program Manager for Client Support, Telmar
Fortunately, there’s a better way to manage your contracts. HubSpot users can now create and manage contracts without leaving the popular CRM tool. Let’s find out more about that now.
Can you manage contracts in HubSpot?
As we just mentioned, it's possible to manage contracts in HubSpot.
All you need to do is integrate the CRM with a contract management software like Juro. This enables you to create and manage contracts for your deals in HubSpot without ever needing to leave the platform. Let’s take a quick look at what this looks like using Juro’s HubSpot integration.
How to create contracts in HubSpot
To create a contract in HubSpot, Simply start by opening the deal you’d like to create a contract for. From there, select ‘new document’’.
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This will open up a simple Q&A workflow that asks users to either insert or confirm the data within the contract. This Q&A workflow will consist of a few questions, the answers to which will be used to fill in and customize the contract using a contract template.
Unlike if you were to copy and paste sections of a contract template in an editor like Word, this process enables you to generate contracts and populate them in just a few clicks.
The first question asked will be about which workspace they’d like to create the contract in. If you’re a member of multiple teams (aka workspaces), you’ll get to choose which one to work from. However, if you’re only part of one team, this question will be skipped automatically.
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Next, the Q&A workflow will ask you which type of contract you’d like to create. This is where you will select which template you would like to use for the contract.
All of the templates available for your team will be displayed in a list, and all you need to do is select your chosen template and press ‘continue’.
Again, if you only have one template available in your workspace, this question will be skipped and that template will be chosen automatically.
Next, the Q&A workflow will ask you to select a contact from the deal you’ve chosen in HubSpot. This is useful if you’ve had several points of contact in a deal, but you only need to receive sign-off from one particular stakeholder.
Like the template types, there will be a list of the different contacts available in each deal, and you simply select the contact you’d like to be a party to the contract before continuing.
Once you’ve done this, there will also be a series of questions about the details of the counterparty, like their name, email address, and so on.
This data is pulled in automatically from the details stored in HubSpot, however, this is a great chance to reduce contract risk and check that the HubSpot data is correct.
To do this, just confirm that the details shown are correct. If they aren’t, simply edit them in the text field shown and select ‘continue’ to correct them.
The Q&A workflow may also ask you what the contract value is, and so on. These are details that aren’t captured in HubSpot so can’t be pulled into the contract automatically.
Fortunately, this is still quicker and easier than authoring contracts manually, as the workflow can collect the necessary data and populate the contract in just a few seconds.
Once you’ve finished the Q&A workflow, the contract will automatically be created. To view it, select ‘Open the document’.
This will open the contract for you. As we mentioned before, the contract’s smartfields will be automatically populated for you using the data you shared in the quick Q&A workflow and the data already stored in HubSpot.
This data will also be collected in Juro and displayed in Juro’s customizable contract dashboard, making it simple to access contract data and query contracts post-signature.
However, to get it to this stage, you’ll need to send the contract out for signing first. This is also easy thanks to Juro’s HubSpot integration. All you need to do is check that the signatory information is correct and select ‘Prepare signing request’.
From here, the contract will be automatically sent out to your chosen contact, where they can eSign it and send it back using Juro.
Benefits of HubSpot contract management
Arguably the biggest benefit of HubSpot document management workflows is that they reduce contract admin work and enable sales teams to self-serve on contracts with ease.
But there are also a few, more specific benefits of HubSpot contract management compared to a traditional contract workflow.
1. No more switching between tools
Let’s think back to the workflow we described at the beginning of this post. In a manual workflow, contracts are passed back and forth between Microsoft Word, email, shared drives, eSigning tools, and HubSpot, which creates friction for contract owners.
Juro’s HubSpot integration removes this back and forth, enabling HubSpot users to generate contracts without needing to leave the platform. This means less context-switching and more time saved during the sales cycle.
2. Reduced contract admin
By automatically populating your contracts, Juro’s HubSpot integration eliminates the need for contract data to be entered and recorded manually. The integration also removes the need for manual contract drafting for standard contracts, as these can be generated in HubSpot in just a few clicks thanks to Juro’s automated contract templates.
3. Sales teams can stay in the platforms they love
Unfamiliarity is one of the biggest challenges for commercial teams when it comes to drafting contracts. Contracts are typically crammed with legal jargon, making it difficult for sales teams to confidently draft them without oversight from legal teams.
Even if they are plain language contracts, the process of creating contracts can still be intimidating for commercial teams with no legal experience. As the quote below from our customer Funnel demonstrates, sales teams appreciate tools that enable them to self-serve on contracts, with ease.
Our teams love Juro because it’s easy to use. Sales rank it as one of their top tools they can’t work without - Victoria Sörving, Chief Legal Officer, Funnel
As Funnel discovered, HubSpot contract management resolves this problem by providing a quick and easy way for sales teams to generate contracts using pre-approved language and terms. What’s more, thanks to Juro’s HubSpot integration, sales teams can complete the entire contract creation process in a platform they know and love.
Not only does this result in a faster sales cycle and less contract admin for sales teams, but it also means that legal has more time to focus on higher-value tasks.
Find out more about how to manage contracts in HubSpot
To find out more about how Juro’s integration with HubSpot could help your sales team to agree contracts faster, fill in the form below to speak to a specialist.
Alternatively, check out the resources below:
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