All delays add up when it comes to making sales and driving growth. If your sales reps are constantly stuck switching between different platforms, waiting on approvals, or tracking down signatures, deals are bound to slow down or even halt altogether.

Major culprits are manual processes and disparate tools, as these things waste time and slow down your revenue engine.

The good news is that eSignature APIs can help with some of these challenges by automating your signing workflows. They can also give your sales team more time to focus on selling.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about eSignature APIs, how they work, and how they can help your sales team move faster, all with fewer errors and better visibility across the whole contract lifecycle.

What is an eSignature API?

An eSignature API enables you to integrate electronic signature functionality directly into your existing platforms, including your CRM. It creates a bridge between systems so your documents can be created, approved, and signed automatically and without anyone having to step in.

What does this mean for you?

Well, your team can create contracts, send them for signatures, and track their status right in the platforms they are already using. This means embedding eSignatures into your workflows for a faster, more secure process with less friction.

How manual signing processes slow down sales

With manual signing workflows, your sales team is bogged down with unnecessary work that wastes valuable time.

Here’s how manual signing processes impact your sales:

• Tool-switching slows everything down. Your reps could pull customer info from your CRM, open a document editor to fill out a contract, export a PDF, upload it into an eSignature tool, send it by email, and then follow up with the customer by phone or another communication platform. That’s way too many steps to be efficient. 
• Approvals get stuck. If there is no structure to the workflow or reminders in place, internal stakeholders (think legal or finance teams) could take days to review documents, slowing down the entire sale. 
• There’s no visibility. Once you send off a document, your sales reps are often left in the dark when you’re working manually. This means no one knows whether the prospect has opened it, they are waiting for someone else to sign, or if legal is reviewing it. 
• Back-and-forth wastes time. Manual processes can lead to small errors or missing fields, which means there will be version control issues, email chains, and unnecessary delays. All of this can be prevented with things like standardized templates and automated routing.

These things lead to friction between teams, plus they can drag out the sales cycle and ultimately impact your ability to close deals promptly.

How an eSignature API solves these problems

An eSignature API can be used to build a smarter, more connected workflow that resolves the pain points that come with traditional document handling.

Here’s how:

• Automated document creation: An API allows you to pull contact and deal data right from your CRM into reusable templates. This means no more copying and pasting, or reentering information.
• Streamlined approval routing: eSignature APIs give you the power of automatic approvals, meaning you can route enterprise contracts to your legal or finance teams before they even reach the customer. 
• Frictionless signing experience: No more logging into third-party platforms to get the job done. A good eSignature API allows you to sign documents immediately, on any device, directly within your platform.
• Tracking document status and notifications: You should be able to see where every contract stands in the process right in your dashboard, including who has signed, who hasn’t, and what needs following up.

PandaDoc eSignature API allows you to integrate all of these capabilities into your own platform, which gives you complete control over your branding, user experience, and workflow design.

No matter the size of your business, an API-driven approach will reduce delays and busywork for all of your teams, and your clients will have a smoother signing experience.

Bonus: We cover everything you need to know about eSignatures here.

Key benefits of using an eSignature API

Here are some core benefits of eSignature APIs for revenue operations and sales leadership.

Let’s break down the core benefits for revenue operations and sales leadership:

1. Faster deal closure

As you know, speed is key in sales. So, being able to move from proposal to signed contract in just hours instead of days, you’ll be ahead of the competition that’s still using manual processes. eSignature APIs will cut down time on document prep, approval, and signature steps through automation.

2. Reduced manual work

As we’ve stated before, manual document processes are dated, as they drain productivity. Reps can lose much-needed selling time when they have to deal with data entry, formatting, follow-ups, etc. Automating these repetitive tasks through an API frees up your team to focus on building relationships and managing the pipeline.

3. Improved accuracy and compliance

By having standardized templates, required fields, and approval rules, you’ll make sure all documents are accurate, complete, and compliant. This is especially important in regulated industries or when handling complex deals. Audit trails and version histories are another way APIs can give full visibility for your legal and compliance teams.

4. Real-time tracking and reporting

Built-in tracking gives you the ability to see where every document stands. This is important as it helps sales leaders forecast more accurately, identify bottlenecks, and actually intervene before any deals slip away.

5. Seamless integration with your sales stack

A solid API (like PandaDoc) needs to integrate with your CRM or ERP system so that your workflows can stay centralized. That means your team should be able to do everything from a single interface.

Enhance your sales process with eSignature API

The bottom line is manual processes slow down your team’s momentum and your revenue goals, while eSignature APIs help you build a faster, smarter, and more connected sales process.

PandaDoc API is purpose-built, allowing you to create, manage, and eSign documents right in your platform so you can optimize your workflow. Plus, we’ve helped our clients speed up the contract process significantly—just ask our client, AeroNet.

“PandaDoc API is naturally dynamic rather than needing manual adjustment. Since switching to PandaDoc, it takes us around 80% less time to create each contract. The sales reps don’t have to do anything now. Whereas before, they could spend 10-12 minutes for each customer, now they just spend two minutes, and that’s it!”

– Jean Pagan, Chief Software Engineer, AeroNet

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