Deal Desk
End-to-end deal-desk operational practice: charter, approval thresholds, deal-review packet design, routing automation, velocity analysis, and the governance that turns "every deal is a snowflake" into "we close non-standard deals in 48 hours predictably."
This skill is provider-agnostic: works whether your CRM is Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, or homegrown. The patterns and decisions transfer.
When to use this skill
| Situation | Skill applies | |-----------|---------------| | Starting a deal-desk function from scratch | Yes — start with charter design | | Reviewing existing deal-desk for slowness / inconsistency | Yes — use scripts/deal_velocity_analyzer.py + bottleneck patterns | | Defining who can approve what discount / term | Yes — use approval threshold matrix + scripts/discount_authority_router.py | | Building the deal-review packet template | Yes — see deal-review packet section + scripts/deal_review_packet.py | | Approving / declining a specific deal | Use the packet generator + approval router | | Setting pricing strategy | Use business-growth/pricing-strategy first | | Forecasting / measuring pipeline | Use business-growth/revenue-operations | | Negotiating an individual contract | Pair with business-growth/contract-and-proposal-writer |
What deal desk does (and doesn't)
Does:
- Review non-standard deals: discounts beyond rep authority, custom legal terms, custom SLAs, multi-product bundles, payment terms outside policy
- Make the approval decision (or route to the right approver)
- Structure the deal: pricing, terms, ramp schedule, success criteria
- Maintain the deal-desk policy — what's standard, what needs approval
- Track deal velocity (time from request → decision → signature)
- Produce evidence for finance / audit (every concession traceable)
Doesn't:
- Set the published pricing (that's pricing strategy)
- Negotiate with the customer (that's the sales rep / AE)
- Close the sale (that's the rep + customer success)
- Run the order-to-cash workflow (that's billing / RevOps)
- Replace legal review (legal is one of the approvers, not the function itself)
A clean deal-desk = the lubricant. Without it, every non-standard deal turns into a multi-week negotiation among engineering / product / legal / finance / executive. With it, those people are consulted by deal desk as needed and the rep gets a yes/no in days.
Deal-desk charter (template)
Every deal desk needs a written charter. Use this template:
purpose:
Deal Desk reviews, approves, and structures non-standard deals to enable
sales to close faster while keeping commercial / legal / financial risk
within company tolerance.
scope:
In-scope:
- All deals > $X ARR
- All deals with discount > Y%
- All deals with non-standard terms (custom SLAs, custom legal language,
payment terms beyond Net 30, ramp deals, multi-year discounts > 12 months
of standard, bundles spanning multiple product lines)
- All renewals with > 20% expansion or > 10% contraction
- All deals to enterprise (>1000 employees) or regulated industries
Out-of-scope:
- Self-serve / PLG transactions
- Standard renewals within auto-renewal terms
- Trial extensions < 30 days
- Add-ons < $X per existing customer
sla:
- Standard deal-desk review (no exec approval needed): 1 business day
- Deal needing CFO/CRO approval: 2 business days
- Deal needing CEO/Board approval: 5 business days
- Legal-only review (no commercial concession): 2 business days
intake_format:
Sales submits via [Salesforce form / CPQ tool / Slack form]. Required fields:
- Customer name + size + industry
- Product(s) + ACV
- Requested deviation from standard (specific list)
- Justification (competitor situation, customer constraint, strategic value)
- Standard-pricing total + requested total
- Contract length + payment terms
- Implementation / SLA requirements
decision_inputs:
- Customer LTV estimate
- Strategic value (logo, reference, vertical foothold)
- Risk (credit, compliance, integration)
- Margin impact
outputs:
- Approve / decline / counter
- If approve: signed approval packet with terms, conditions, expiration date
- If counter: list of negotiable items + non-negotiables
- If decline: reasoning + alternatives
team:
Deal-desk lead: <name>
Deal-desk analysts: <names>
Standing approvers: CRO, CFO, General Counsel, VP Product (escalation paths)
Consulted as-needed: Engineering Lead, Security Lead, Customer Success Lead
metrics:
- Median time-to-decision (target: 1 business day)
- Decision distribution (% approved, % declined, % countered)
- Discount-on-discount % (deals where requested discount was further negotiated up)
- Discount % vs ACV (correlation; outliers reviewed monthly)
- Win rate of deal-desk-approved deals
- Concession follow-through (did the customer keep their side?)See [references/deal-desk-charter-and-process.md](references/deal-desk-charter-and-process.md) for the full charter template, including sub-charters per region, intake form spec, and the standard SLAs.
Approval threshold matrix
The matrix defines: for each deal characteristic (discount %, contract length, custom term type), who can approve it.
Standard matrix template
| Deal characteristic | Rep | Sales Manager | Director | VP Sales | CRO | CFO | CEO | |---------------------|-----|---------------|----------|----------|-----|-----|-----| | Discount 0-10% | ✓ | | | | | | | | Discount 10-20% | | ✓ | | | | | | | Discount 20-30% | | | ✓ | | | | | | Discount 30-40% | | | | ✓ | | | | | Discount 40-50% | | | | | ✓ | | | | Discount > 50% | | | | | | | ✓ | | ACV > $250k | | ✓ | | | | | | | ACV > $1M | | | | ✓ | | | | | ACV > $5M | | | | | | | ✓ | | Multi-year > 12mo standard | | ✓ | | | | | | | Non-standard payment terms | | | | | | ✓ | | | Custom SLA / penalties | | | | (with CCO) | | | | | Custom legal language | | | | | | | (Legal must concur) | | MSA red-line on liability cap | | | | | | | (Legal must concur) | | Most-favored-nation clause | | | | | | ✓ | | | Acceptance criteria / payment-on-acceptance | | | | | | ✓ | | | Multi-product / cross-BU bundle | | | (each BU lead approves) | | | | | | Whitelabel / OEM rights | | | | | | | ✓ |
Customize per company stage, ACV distribution, and authority preference (some orgs want CRO at 30%, others delegate further down).
Stacking rule
When multiple non-standard items apply, the highest required approver applies. A $1M deal at 25% discount with custom SLA needs VP Sales (ACV) AND Director (discount) AND VP Sales+CCO (custom SLA) → effectively requires VP Sales sign-off + CCO + Legal concurrence.
Use scripts/discount_authority_router.py --deal deal.yaml to compute the required approvers for any deal.
See [references/approval-thresholds-and-routing.md](references/approval-thresholds-and-routing.md) for the full matrix design guide, regional variants, escalation paths, and routing automation patterns.
The deal-review packet
Every non-standard deal gets a packet. Without it, approvers ask the same questions repeatedly and decisions take days instead of hours.
Standard packet structure
# Deal Review: <Customer Name>
## Summary
- Customer: <name, size, industry>
- ACV: $<amount>
- Discount %: <%> (vs standard $<list-price>)
- Contract: <length>, <payment terms>
- Decision needed by: <date>
## Standard vs Requested
| Item | Standard | Requested | Delta |
|------|----------|-----------|-------|
| ACV | $X | $Y | -Z% |
| Term | 12mo | 36mo | +24mo |
| Payment | Net 30 | Net 60 | +30d |
| SLA | 99.5% | 99.9% | +0.4% |
| Liability cap | 1x fees | 2x fees | +1x |
| Termination for convenience | No | Yes (90d) | New |
## Justification
- Why customer wants this: <competitor situation, budget cycle, etc.>
- Why we're considering