Approving quotes and contracts: how to shorten the time from quote to the client’s signature

Take a hypothetical distribution company with 90 employees that sells machine parts to other businesses. On Monday a salesperson finishes a quote, but the client wants a 12% discount, and the salesperson can only give 5% on their own. So they email the sales manager, who is on the road and replies on Thursday that it is the director’s decision.

The director agrees the following Tuesday. The client accepts the terms but sends the contract back with comments, and the external lawyer replies after six working days. Then the contract goes by courier for signature, and on the client’s side two board members have to sign it.

Four weeks pass from a finished quote to a signed contract, even though the actual work took a few hours. In companies that sell to other businesses, the waiting is usually concentrated in the same places:

You do not need any system for this. Take your last 20–30 signed contracts and, for each, reconstruct a few dates from emails and the CRM, the system in which salespeople manage clients and sales opportunities. Record them in a spreadsheet, as in the table below.

For each stage, calculate the median, i.e. the middle value. That way, one case that waited two months will not distort the result. Separately, count how many deals were lost after the quote had been sent, and why – that number matters more than the time itself.

The result usually comes as a surprise. It turns out that one stage, most often discount approval or the lawyer’s comments, accounts for most of the waiting. Start with that one.

Sales materials often promise that a shorter sales cycle, meaning the time from first contact to signature, will raise turnover by tens of percent. That calculation assumes that salespeople will close proportionally more deals in the time saved. This rarely happens, because the number of clients ready to buy does not grow just because you sign contracts faster.

Do the maths cautiously. Suppose a company signs contracts worth PLN 6 million a year and, after the changes, signs them on average two weeks earlier. This brings forward about PLN 230,000 of revenue as a one-off (PLN 6 million × 2/52), but it does not add that amount every year.

There are three real benefits, and each one can be verified. Fewer deals are lost because the client did not have time to switch to a competitor. Money comes in sooner, which improves cash flow. And salespeople stop spending hours chasing signatures, so they have more time for clients.

One management decision removes the most waiting: what a salesperson can grant on their own, what requires approval, whose approval it is and how quickly it must be given. It is worth fitting this table of authority onto a single page and showing it to everyone who prepares quotes.

The thresholds in the example below are illustrative – set them based on the margins in your company. What matters is that the criterion is margin, not just the discount percentage, because the same discount on different products costs the company very different amounts.

Every deviation from the price list should require a short justification in the quote. After a quarter, you will see which discounts really helped win the client and which have become a habit.

The lawyer becomes a bottleneck when they read every contract from scratch. The solution is a company contract template and a written list of changes the salesperson can accept alone. For example: payment terms of up to 45 days, a contractual penalty of up to 10% of the order value, and jurisdiction of the court for the client’s registered office.

Only changes outside the list then go to the lawyer, and in the request the salesperson marks which clauses they concern. The lawyer reads two paragraphs instead of twenty pages. It is worth reviewing the list every six months and adding changes that the lawyer always accepts anyway.

A harder case is a client who sends its own contract template. What helps here is a short list of clauses the company never accepts, such as unlimited liability for damages. The salesperson checks it straight away, before the contract joins the lawyer’s queue.

Microsoft Copilot in Word can summarise a long contract and answer questions about specific clauses, such as penalties or the liability cap. According to Microsoft’s price list, a Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licence costs USD 21 per user per month with annual payment and covers companies with up to 300 users. However, Copilot can make mistakes, so the risk assessment and the decision stay with the lawyer. Our case study on analysing contracts with payment operators shows what such an assistant looks like in practice.

The client’s signature is often the longest stage, because a paper contract travels by courier between offices. An electronic signature shortens it to the time the client needs to make a decision. The type of signature you choose depends on the form a given contract requires.

The Civil Code follows the principle of freedom of form, so most contracts between businesses can be concluded in any way, including by clicking in a signing platform. The eIDAS Regulation also states that a signature cannot be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic. The table below shows typical situations.

The market includes international platforms such as DocuSign and Adobe Acrobat Sign, as well as Polish ones such as Autenti, which integrates with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. Prices depend on the plan, the number of users and the number of documents sent, so compare them against your own volume. Also check whether the platform lets the client apply a qualified electronic signature when the contract requires one.

If quotes are created in a CRM, such as monday.com or Dynamics 365, first check whether that system has its own approval module. The salesperson then does not have to switch between programs, and the history of decisions stays with the client record. When quotes and contracts are created in Word and kept in folders, Microsoft 365 is a sensible route.

The set-up is simple. SharePoint stores the quote together with its data, such as client, value, margin and discount. Based on this data and the table of authority, Power Automate sends an approval request to the right person, who responds in Teams or Outlook, including from their phone.

After internal approval, Power Automate can send the contract for signature in DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign on its own, and save the signed document back to SharePoint. These connectors, i.e. ready-made links between programs, are standard ones. Remember the limit: a single flow run lasts at most 30 days, so deadlines and passing matters to deputies must be built in from the start.

Start with measurement and the table of authority. These two steps can be done in a few weeks and need no budget. Then pick the one stage that came out worst in the measurement, and change only that.

Automation makes no sense when a company signs a few contracts a month and approvals are given by one person sitting next to the salespeople. A written table of authority and an electronic signature are then enough. Nor does it make sense to build a separate workflow in Microsoft 365 if your CRM has a good approval module.

The most common mistakes in such changes are similar across many companies: