Aberdeen today released a terrific report today, analyzing the best practices of 441 sales teams.
One of the key findings: The 67 companies of the 441 in the survey which had switched to e-signatures substantially outperformed the rest in renewal rates, sales cycles, and error rates.
It was most interesting to see the huge value Aberdeen saw in using e-signatures for renewals:
"Best-in-Class companies average a 91 percent customer retention rate, compared to 78 percent for Industry Average and 62 percent for Laggard organizations.
These same top performers realize an average 6 percent annual increase in the net client value of their customers, compared to 2 percent and 9 percent decreases for the other maturity classes; this validates the importance of focusing on customer renewals by electronic signature users, who support their customers' efficiency by avoiding time-consuming paper trails and providing online signing functionality."
A lot of the initial focus on e-signatures is new customers and new revenue. Make it easier to do business with you, and you'll do more business. Plain and simple.
According to Aberdeen, the benefits are even stronger in renewals. Why? The entire nature of renewals has changed with the migration to recurring payment business models (e.g., SaaS). For many services, a renewal isn't so much a new sale (as with, for example, on-premise enterprise software), but an extension of an existing service.
A key here is taking as much friction out of the renewal process, to minimize the risk the customer is lost, or due to friction, takes a pause and attempts to negotiate a lower price on renewal.
But if the customer is already happy with your service, and getting a fair deal -- making the renewal a 60 second non-event = a much higher renewal rate.
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