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Sales teams around the world use Salesforce to organize prospect information, communicate with customers, and otherwise streamline the sales process.
Some might even say that Salesforce is the “secret weapon” in their selling arsenal. This statement really rings true when you consider the Salesforce document generation capabilities.
Put simply, Salesforce will allow you and/or your employees to create a variety of important documents, from binding contracts to sales reports. Doing so will increase team productivity levels, improve document accuracy, and allow you to personalize documents with ease.
Keep reading this article on document generation to learn:
- How Salesforce Document Generation Can Help Your Business
- Business Documents You Can Create Inside of the Salesforce Platform
- Salesforce Document Generation vs. Other Document Generation Tools
- Must-Have Features for Your Document Generation Tool
How Salesforce Document Generation Can Help Your Business
There are many benefits of document generation that you should be aware of—especially for sales reps who already use the Salesforce platform. Here’s what you need to know:
Increase Rep Productivity
When reps can generate documents inside of Salesforce they won’t have to switch to a different tool to create proposals, contracts, and other forms of paperwork. This will save your reps time. But it will also reduce mental fatigue, which can do serious damage to team productivity levels.
The automatic document generation features inside Salesforce will also boost rep efficiency.
Imagine how much more your team will get done when they can create documents—entire documents, not partial ones that still need plenty of admin work—with the click of a button. Salesforce data will then be used to populate said documents with accurate information.
Improve Document Accuracy
Because Salesforce uses internal data to generate documents, the quotes, reports, etc. you create with this tool will be more accurate. After all, they won’t be subject to human error.
Your employees may work hard, but they aren’t perfect. They might accidentally alter customer details, pricing information, or a host of other things when manually creating documents. These mistakes could lead to expensive complications and harm your brand’s reputation.
With Salesforce, you have the power to automatically create accurate documents.
Personalize Your Documents
With Salesforce, you can create beautiful and professional-looking digital documents for your brand. This last bit is extremely important.
You don’t want your documents to look like they belong to another company. You want to create custom documents that look original and meet your team’s exact needs.
Thanks to document templates inside Salesforce, you can use the tool to create a variety of materials for your marketing, sales, and support team that all have a similar design.
Business Documents You Can You Create with the Salesforce Document Generation Tool
You can create many types of documents inside Salesforce…
Simple documents like sales reports. Complex documents like service agreements. Even middle-of-the road documents like a contract for a moderately priced SaaS product.
The point is, you have a wide variety of options. Let’s take a closer look at a few of them:
(Note: Salesforce platform can only generate documents by integrating with other tools. So the types of documents you have access to will depend on the other apps in your tech stack.)
Quotes
You can easily create complex quote documents using Salesforce data. Doing so will save your sales team hours every week. The extra time they have can then be used to connect with more customers, build deeper relationships with them, and close more deals.
Proposals
Salesforce’s document generation abilities can also be used to create proposals. Even better, the proposals you create can be tracked to see who engages with them and when. This data point will help your reps determine which leads to focus the bulk of their energy on.
Contracts
Looking for a better way to generate contracts? Salesforce makes the doc creation process easy by automatically importing Salesforce data into the document you’re working on, ensuring its accuracy. Just as important, Salesforce will facilitate the e-signing process to boost efficiency.
Agreements
Use Salesforce to create a wide range of agreements, from standard service agreements to detailed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). This level of complex document creation could be troublesome. But Salesforce simplifies the process with high-level automation options.
Reports
Modern business runs on information, which means detailed reports are essential. Quickly produce sales reports, deal forecasts, and other financial documents using your Salesforce data. Those running reports manually will find it much easier to generate documents this way.
Invoices
Finally, Salesforce can be used to generate documents like invoices. The platform will simply pull information from your CRM to ensure accuracy. It will then send the invoice to the appropriate party, which makes the invoicing process much more efficient.
What to Look for in a Document Generation Tool for Salesforce
Salesforce can be used to create sophisticated documents in the blink of an eye.
But like we mentioned earlier, it needs a bit of help to do this. Namely, it needs to be integrated with a separate app for document generation purposes, which you’ll find in the AppExchange.
This begs the question, what should you look for in this third-party app? Every company is different, so the answer to that question will vary. Generally speaking though, look for:
- An Intuitive User Interface: The most powerful document generation tool on the planet won’t benefit your company if it takes a degree in engineering to operate. Choose a platform that offers a quality user experience. That way your whole team benefits.
- The Features Your Team Needs: What kind of documents do you want to create? And how do you want to create them? Make sure the third-party tool will meet your needs. (We’ll talk more about specific features to look for in the next section. Stay tuned!)
- A Price Point You Can Afford: We don’t live in Fairyworld and money doesn’t grow on trees. Your budget is a reality. Select an app that your company can reasonably afford.
While not mandatory, we also suggest choosing a tool with good reviews. What do other people say about the app? Consider their opinions before you make a purchase.
Must-Have Features of a Document Generation Tool
A document generation tool will only help your company’s processes if it has the right features.
So, whether you plan to pair Salesforce with third-party apps to generate documents, or use a separate platform to complete the task, make sure you have access to these capabilities:
Conditional Logic
Conditional logic refers to the ability to set specific rules for machine-based processes. For example, you might tell Salesforce to “Do ABC if XYZ happens” when generating documents.
Conditional logic will revolutionize the way you create documents because it will reduce the number of decisions your team has to make, which will boost productivity and limit errors.
Here’s an example of how conditional logic works:
You want to create a new contract inside Salesforce using a common template you’ve used a dozen times before. But the company you want to send the contract to has different requirements than your typical customers. With conditional logic, you can easily hide or display certain aspects of the contract depending on the details and conditions you’ve worked out with your prospect. The generated document will then only contain the Salesforce data required.
Automation
Automation will save you—and whoever else needs to generate contracts and/or store documents—a ton of time. Because of this, document automation tools are a must.
With Salesforce, users have access to Intelligent Document Automation. This feature allows the Salesforce platform to “read” text and populate fields with the correct data points. As such, it can be used to automate the creation of professional documents.
In a similar vein, no-code document generation solutions will enable you to skip customization processes and create documents quickly. This makes them quite valuable.
Custom Objects
The term “object” refers to the structure by which data is organized.
Think of a standard spreadsheet. The sheet tabs at the bottom of the document are the “objects” while the columns are “fields” and the individual rows are “records”.
Software comes with standard objects, which represent the out-of-box ways to view and organize information within an app. Many software solutions also feature custom objects, which can be used to personalize a solution to meet a user’s specific wants.
You can store a lot of information within a standard Salesforce object—accounts, customers, opportunities, etc. But Salesforce custom objects will give you more flexibility.
The same goes for other doc gen tools. Look for applications that will allow you to create custom objects. That way you have full control when generating documents.
Document Templates
There are many aspects of document management you should be aware of.
One of the more important ones is the ability to store documents, such as simple templates. Trust us, templates will save you time and headache during the document creation process.
Choose an app that will not only allow users to generate documents, but save them as templates. That way they can easily be used again in the future. Hello productivity!
Key Integrations
Finally, look for tools that will integrate with your current tech stack.
Do you draft contracts in Microsoft Word? Perhaps you like to store documents and backup Salesforce files in pdf format on Google Drive.
Whatever the case may be, make sure your document generation tool of choice will connect to these external systems—either with Zapier or as a native solution.
Generate Documents Inside Salesforce
Salesforce document generation is a popular option in sales circles.
Why wouldn’t it be? Reps can easily create and distribute quotes, contracts, and other materials (with the help of third-party web services.) This allows them to close more deals. Plus, once you learn the ropes, Salesforce has an intuitive nature that many sales teams love.
Of course, you don’t have to generate documents inside of Salesforce. There are other tools you can use to complete this task. Just know that you’ll likely sacrifice productivity.
Ready to unlock the full potential of document generation inside Salesforce? Schedule a strategy call with our team today. We’ll assess your needs and give you a tailored demo.
