What’s the benefit of having a deal desk that involves sales / finance / legal etc and how do you keep this from slowing deals down?

The benefit of deal desk involving sales, finance, and legal is that you should significantly improve the commercial terms and deal structure of your deals compared to letting sales "do it alone". While this will inevitably slow deals down, the benefit should outweigh the costs significantly and you can take certain steps to minimize the deal friction.Having deal desk in the first place, and then having it involve sales, finance, and legal has a host of benefits: Improved financials: your deal d ...Read More

Why It's Great: All parties work together on the front end which alows for issues to be identified early and deals close properly. Faster Approvals: With buy-in from all parties up front, there is no greatly reduced last-minute runaround. Lower Risks: Both legal and finance identify potential problems upfront, save you $$$ down the line. Preventing It from Holding Us Back - Define Processes: Everyone should understand the steps and what are they suppose todo to prevent any setbacks in operations ...Read More

A well-run deal desk doesn't slow deals down, it speeds them up by making "can we do this?" a policy question instead of a five-team fire drill. The thing that kills most deal desks is that everything becomes an exception, usually because no one defined what standard looks like in the first place. Start with clear thresholds. Below X discount, no approval needed. Above Y contract length, escalate. Non-standard IP, legal in. Write it down once and hold the line. Time-box every review. Legal gets ...Read More

The benefit of a deal desk is having a team focused on formalizing custom agreements with customers that are outside of standard discounting. Ideally, these deal desk deals should be large, move-the-needle/shore-up-the-bottom-line agreements. Deal Desk can minimize issues with large/custom agreements receiving incorrect discounting or service levels. How do you keep deal desk from slowing deals down? Communication. From initial discovery, Sales should be working with the Deal Desk team to discus ...Read More