Best Practices

• Document everything (and make it accessible)
• Prioritize based on deal value, risk, and urgency
• Deal components that typically trigger deal review:
  • Non-standard discounting (CFO)
  • Non-standard payment terms (CFO)
  • Entities outside of approved geographies (CFO) – carries both tax & export control implications
  • Non-standard contract terms (CLO) including but not limited to:
    • Termination for convenience
    • Termination for cause / customer-specific SLAs
    • Customer-specific support terms
  • Non-standard liability limits
  • Compliance risks (CISO or equivalent)
  • Product development / customization commitments (CPO)
  • Non-standard duration (CRO)
  • Large contracts (CFO) – may require credit check
• Clearly outline responsibilities (delegation of authority – DOA) and define/map workflows & SLAs for contract review, negotiation, approval, & provisioning across:
  • Sales; Customer Success; Product; Legal; Finance/Accounting
• Where possible, avoid linear, single-streaming in approval workflows. Build in parallelism and redundancy.
• Contract Management:
  • Create templates for common deal types
  • Use a centralized contract management system to store, organize, and track contracts throughout their lifecycle.
• Compliance & Risk Management:
  • Implement risk management strategies to protect the company from potential legal issues.
  • Ensure that all contracts comply with relevant laws and regulations.
  • Incorporate risk assessment into the deal evaluation process, considering factors like creditworthiness, payment terms, and customer segment.
• Define and communicate SLAs for each stage of the deal process to ensure timely responses and avoid bottlenecks.
• Sales Enablement
  • Equip sales reps with guidelines and thresholds for discounts and approvals to minimize back-and-forth and empower them to close deals faster.
  • Regularly update training materials and onboard new sales team members to ensure they understand Deal Desk processes and can utilize the resources effectively.
• Pricing, Discount Strategy, and Terms & Conditions – Generally standardize & simplify as much as possible:
  • Implement tiered pricing strategies and pre-approved discounting bands to simplify the approval process and maintain profitability.
  • Establish an approval matrix based on deal size, discount level, and other risk factors to streamline decision-making and ensure proper governance.
  • Develop standard business and commercial terms (billing frequency, payment terms, contracting entities, support terms, etc.).
  • Outline ‘standard exceptions’ and the criteria required for pre-emptive approvals. However, beware of customers wanting to ‘stack’ lots of exceptions since AEs should negotiate concessions in exchange
• Deal desk personnel should join forecast calls where major deals are being reviewed to know what complex deals may be coming
• Before final submission to the deal desk, sales reps should validate key aspects of deals, such as signed quotes and matching opportunity data.
• Create regional deal desks when you have sufficient scale. This also supports 24/7 coverage.
• Review accounting or ERP software entries to ensure they match the CRM and contract details
• Gather feedback regularly to improve the deal desk
• Product exceptions require careful review / deep involvement from Product.
• There is an emerging trend whereby deal desks are involved in renewal and expansion

Deal Desk KPIs

• Approval Turnaround Time for Exception Requests
• # and % of Deals Supported by Deal Desk
• Win Rates for Deal Desk Supported Opportunities
• Win / Loss Rates for RFPs
• Time from Deal Submitted to Deal Booked
• Sales Satisfaction
• Staffing (source) [reps:desk desk personnel]
  • Cloudera – 37.5:1
  • Procore – 85.7:1
  • Five9 – 40:1
  • Braze – 41.8:1
  • Samsara – 137.5:1
  • Snowflake – 275:1

Example Terms & Conditions

Financial Terms

Terms & Conditions	Standard
Payment Terms	Net 30
Subscription Billing Frequency	Annual payment upon contract start date and subsequent annual fees upon anniversary of contract start date
Initial subscription term	3 year term for new customers
Failure to pay suspension of service	Suspension of service for failure to pay after 90 days nonpayment
Renewal Opt Out Period	Automatic renewal unless 90 day opt out notice is received
Renewal Term: Price Increase Cap	7% price increase
Termination, early out	No termination for convenience (T4C)
Uncapped enterprise license agreement	Subscription pricing should include proper thresholds based on unit of metric used in price calculation
Price locks	6 months timebound for new products, discount cannot exceed previously negotiated discount offered
Variable software fees (usage based pricing model)	Minimum commitment required equal to x% of annual projected usage
Ramped users/usage on initial term
Future deliverables, commitments or other conditional items
Use of customer’s contract paperwork
Functional currencies

Product Terms

Terms & Conditions	Standard
Data security requirements	[include link to DPA]
Product functionality, future product roadmap
Non-standard 3rd party products or services

Support Terms

Terms & Conditions	Standard
Support terms	[include link to standard support terms posted online]
Languages offered for support	[include link to standard support terms posted online]

External Resources

• Gitlab Handbook
  • Processes: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/sales/field-operations/sales-operations/deal-desk/
  • Roles: https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/sales/deal-desk/
• https://www.momentum.io/blog/the-10-most-important-deal-desk-metrics-to-track
• https://www.cloudkettle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CloudKettle_DealDeskGuide.pdf
• https://www.zuora.com/guides/what-is-a-deal-desk/
• https://www.revopscoop.com/post/building-a-deal-desk-function-in-b2b

Deal Desk Tools – see Tools section

• CLM (contract lifecycle management)
  • Contract generation
  • Redline tracking
  • Signature collection
  • Contract storage
• CPQ (configure-price-quote)
• e-signature
• Project Management tools for deal workflow