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Jess Perna Studio Seals the Deal with Online Signatures

Moving customers through the sales process can be a deal breaker — particularly if the progression is tedious and inefficient. While contracts serve as a way to seal the deal for Jess Perna Studios, the team cannot begin working on a project without a client’s final say.

Jess Perna is an accomplished illustrator and owner of Classy Artwork, which produces artwork like fine art portraits, illustrations for books and magazines, wedding invitations and greeting cards, print advertisements, court room evidence, business cards and caricatures.

Perna has contributed to over 65 children’s books and drawn for Care Bears, Mattel Hot Wheels and Lil Bratz. Recently, he completed an illustration series for Planet Earth produced by the BBC.

Jess Perna Studio runs a contract-centric business, and most contracts are very detailed, at times requiring multiple revisions. Contracts were faxed back and forth multiple times as illustration or caricature details were changed. Because most clients did not have immediate access to a fax machine, they had to make multiple trips to the store. Ultimately this delayed the process and created a process so difficult that customers would often abandon their requests.

Streamline & Sign

Jess Perna Studio partnered with EchoSign in 2007 to harness the power of e-signatures. With the new online solution, Jess Perna customers receive an email with a direct link to view and sign the contract. A wizard guides them through the process, and the signature is immediately applied to the document. PDF files are then sent to all parties involved within 60 seconds.

The Jess Perna Studio sales team gets data from two different dashboards. One is designed to provide information on sign time, while the other offers percent of contracts signed.  Reports track over time to gauge how close rates increase. Because contracts are digital they have status, real time or daily alerts of contracts, can alert if contract has been viewed and not signed.

“While many customers may not have a fax machine, most customers have access to email and feel comfortable using email as the medium to e-sign the Classy Artwork contracts,” said Judy Cutler, Art Director Jess Perna Studio. In addition, Judy created an online form to manage contract changes and can now easily email the final contract to the customer for signature.

Prior to EchoSign, the executed contracts may have been edited prior to the customer signature, and Cutler had to take time to review each contract for possible changes.

“In sales time is very important; the more time it takes to get a contract signed the higher the chance of losing the sale,” Cutler said. “EchoSign gives us more time to focus on important business instead of messing around with annoying faxes that may come out unreadable at either end.”

Cutler said Jess Perna Studio started “raking in” completed contracts in an hour or less, as opposed to weeks. “We love that we are now able to automate the business process and focus on the artwork,” she said. “Today we are enjoying increased revenue thanks to job andon rates dropping on contract re-negotiations. Plus, as a business run entirely on the Web, getting signatures via the same medium makes it easier to close business with consumers (some across the globe) we will likely never meet in person.”