How to manage contracts in Zoho CRM

Want to manage your sales contracts in Zoho CRM? Find out everything you need to know about Zoho CRM contract management in this guide.

Sales teams live in CRM platforms like Zoho CRM. It’s where their deals are kept and their leads are nurtured. But when it comes to closing deals and creating contracts, they find themselves pushed into different tools to get a deal over the line. 

But there’s a way for sales teams to create and manage contracts from Zoho CRM in just a few clicks. Let’s find out how.

What is Zoho CRM?

Zoho CRM is a customer relationship management platform designed to streamline sales and marketing processes. The software offers a variety of features that help teams to acquire leads, set up nurture workflows, and push communications post-transaction. 

But can Zoho CRM be used to manage customer contracts too? 

Well, Zoho CRM can be used to manage contracts if you integrate the CRM with a contract management solution like Juro. But before we look at how this works, let’s look at what the process looks like without this integration. 

How do Zoho CRM users typically manage contracts?

Zoho CRM is a great tool for managing customer relationships. But sales teams that use it typically rely on several other tools to manage the contracting side of these relationships. This is because the tool doesn’t have native contract management functionality. 

This is what the contract workflow typically looks like for Zoho CRM users: 

1. Sales teams request a new contract from the legal department, either via email or using a contract request form. 

2. The legal team picks up this request and drafts a contract when they have availability. They typically use Microsoft Word to draft the contract, along with various contract templates. 

3. The legal team will then use Zoho CRM to find the relevant deal, and manually populate the contract template with the counterparty’s details and the deal data.

4. Next, the contract is reviewed internally. At this point, the contract will be shared via email with other departments for their approval. 

5. Once approved, the contract will be sent out to a counterparty for negotiation. The counterparty will usually redline the contract in Word, send it back, and wait for their suggestions to be approved. More often than not, the legal or sales team will propose additional changes and this back and forth will continue until all parties agree.

6. Eventually, the contract will be ready to sign. This is usually done using an electronic signature tool like DocuSign or Adobe Sign. 

7. Post-signature, the contract owner will save the contract and upload a copy of it to the deal workspace in Zoho CRM. The contract data will usually be entered into a contract management spreadsheet of some sort too. 

This is an inefficient way to manage contracts. Legal and sales teams are forced to jump back and forth between different tools which creates friction.

It also involves a lot of manual data entry and extraction - both of which can be avoided when you automate your contract workflow. 

Is it possible to manage contracts in Zoho CRM? 

If you integrate Zoho CRM with the right contract management software, it’s certainly possible to create and manage contracts within the popular CRM tool.

Take a contract tool like Juro, for example. Juro and Zoho CRM can be integrated in minutes with no code required. This is achieved through Zapier, which connects the two tools seamlessly. 

Let’s explore what this integration looks like and how it works in a bit more detail now.

How to manage contracts in Zoho CRM 

Firstly, sales teams can use Zoho CRM’s integration with Juro to automate the creation of contracts when the status of leads and deals are updated in Zoho CRM. 

This can be achieved by setting up a simple trigger in Zapier. This trigger will create a contract in Juro using an automated template when a deal reaches a certain stage. 

Not only does this eliminate the need to draft a contract from scratch every time a deal progresses, but it also means that sales teams can create contracts in just a couple of clicks. Plus, they can do so using a template pre-approved by legal.

Juro will then pull all of the deal data from Zoho CRM into the designated smartfields in the contract.

This means that all of the important information, like deal value, discount percentages, and party details, will appear in the contract automatically using the data stored in Zoho CRM. This removes the need to manually extract this data from Zoho CRM and populate the contracts. 

But that’s not all. Integrating Juro and Zoho CRM also enables sales teams to automatically update the records within Zoho CRM to reflect the contract and its status.

Users can also set up a trigger to update information within the deal profile when a contract reaches a certain stage.

For example, they can set the integration up so that the status of a deal changes when a contract is signed.

They can also use the integration to convert a lead to a customer in Zoho CRM when a contract is signed. 

This is great for ensuring that the information in Zoho CRM is kept up to date and reflects the current status of a deal. This information would otherwise need to be updated manually by legal or sales teams.

By connecting Zoho CRM with a contract management solution like Juro, commercial teams can create contracts in Zoho CRM in just a few clicks. 

This reduces the need for back and forth between legal and sales about which data needs to be captured and which clauses need to be included. It also eliminates the need to draft contracts manually, which can quickly create bottlenecks in the sales process as volumes increase.

But there are also a few, more specific benefits of integrating Zoho CRM with a tool like Juro. Let’s run through these now. 

The benefits of managing contracts in Zoho CRM

Managing your contracts in Zoho CRM (and Juro) is a great way to make your contract workflow more efficient. But there are other benefits too:

• More accurate contract data. Contracts are populated more accurately since  Juro’s integration with Zoho CRM pulls all of the deal and party data directly from Zoho CRM into the contract.

• Faster sales cycles. Less switching between tools means less friction. Removing this friction helps sales teams get contracts signed faster and speed up their sales cycles. 

• No more delays from legal. Juro’s integration with Zoho CRM makes it quick and easy to automate contracts using templates pre-approved by legal. This removes the need for sales to wait on legal to create and manage their contracts. Instead, commercial teams can self-serve on contracts. 

• Reduced contract admin. By integrating Zoho CRM with Juro, sales teams can automate manual contract admin and free up their time for higher-value work. 

• Platform familiarity. Since Juro makes it possible to create contracts without leaving Zoho CRM, sales teams can work from the platforms they know and love. 

Find out more about using Zoho CRM for contracts 

To find out more about Juro's integration with Zoho CRM, fill in the form below to speak to a specialist.