3 steps to simplify sending an NDA to your prospects

Sending an NDA shouldn't be difficult. However Sales teams are having to do a lot these days when selling to Enterprise customers. The procurement process usually goes this way.

1. Identify if there is already an NDA in place with the prospect
2. Manually set up an NDA to send out to the prospect
3. Identify if the prospect has the ability to sign the NDA
4. Prospect sends out the NDA to Legal who comes back with a “redlined” NDA
5. Send redlined NDA back to their own Legal department
6. Finally, sign the NDA
7. Locate security and compliance documents to send out to the prospect
8. Email those documents

This is the easy version — a lot of times the process is even more complicated. Here are 3 steps that your team can take to help reduce those steps.

1 - Scope the NDA you are sending

The first step to avoid redlining is to have a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) scoped to the scenario you are facing. When sharing compliance documents (like a SOC2 or Pentest report) with a prospect as part of your procurement process it does not make sense to have an eight-page NDA.

Rather, work with your Legal department once to get an NDA in place scoped to the documents you find yourself sharing the most. 

Mailchimp does a great job at this. They will simply not accept redlining when it comes to sharing their SOC2 report and they are up front about it.

No one likes to send, read, and sign NDAs. But a short and concise one will encourage prospects to sign it to move to the next step.

2 - Reduce the back and forth and incentivize

Prospects are more likely to sign an NDA  if they can access the documents they are looking for right after signing. With Pima you can combine a confidential report with an NDA into an Envelope. The reader will only get access to the documents they requested after signing the agreement. 

A prospect already has great incentive to access your documents so combining a scoped NDA with the documents they want is a great way to reduce the friction of the whole process.

3 - Automate

One way to further eliminate friction is to reduce the steps a prospect has to take to request documents.

By having a form on your website to request Security and Compliance documents, you enable your prospects to be in control of the documents they need while also growing your Sales pipeline.

CircleCI allows prospects to request their SOC 2 Report, and FedRamp documents.

In summary, a little bit of work upfront combined with the right tools can greatly reduce the amount of friction that your prospects will experience, which will help speed up the procurement process. 

Pima can enable your Sales team to handle the compliance part of the procurement process while making sure that no shortcuts are taken. But don’t just take our word for it, try Pima for free right now!