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?

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.

Empower the Deal Desk: Provide them with ability to make some decisions without involving high ranks.

Deploy collaborative software that allows everyone to follow the status of each deal in real-time.

- Open Communication: Ensure everyone stays in the know to avoid miscommunication or delays

And when you thoughtfully set up your deal desk, you can have the best of all worlds — deals are fast and high-quality AND it doesn't bog down sales execution.

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?

1. Communication.

From initial discovery, Sales should be working with the Deal Desk team to discuss the business case for alternative benefits/custom discounts etc so that, if the deal moves through, much of the internal discovery/ROI discussion is already done. Sales should also communicate with the customer/prospect that they are working on special incentives for the agreement, which will take time to move through a Finance and Legal process. Most customers who receive custom deals understand that special agreements take more time and discussion than a standard agreement.

2. Appropriate Scope.

Deal Desk should not be involved in every sales transaction. Deal Desk isn't a solution for salespeople "discounting inappropriately". Ideally, 80% of your day-to-day sales business should be able to be handled through the sales and service organizations, with internal sales/service approvals for discounts or SLAs, as needed.