What can revenue operations do to help the situation where finance wants to start an approval process for discounts being applied too broadly to too many accounts, but sales reps are upset about it?

In my experience, Finance requesting the additional work of monitoring Sales is more indicative of a need for understanding than control.

Look into the root cause(s) of why the discounts are being broadly applied from the sales side:

1. Is it a pricing discrepancy with the market?

2. Is it a training issue with the reps?

3. Is it an outcome of how comp plans or sales quotas are structured?

4. Is it a sales strategy? (ie having a List Price, which no one ever actually pays)

Once you understand the background from the sales side, have the conversation with Finance:

• What raised the concern: Are the discounts impacting profit margin, or is Finance just seeing a lot of customers not paying full price?

Once you understand the two sides, you can bring them together for a conversation on root causes and concerns and how to address them, with responsibilities and accountabilities for all sides. (If the issue relates to a pricing discrepancy with the market, the Product/Pricing Functional Area may also need to be involved)

1. Does the product need regional pricing or a universal price adjustment?

2. Are there specific sales benefits that require the price to be higher than competitors?

3. What are acceptable discount levels? With this discussion, if your product is one that could involve multi-year commitments, make sure to specifically clarify discount ranges for "one-off" purchases versus multi-year commitments.

4. Do the comp plan or quotas need to be revised to dissuade unnecessary discounts?