Deal Desk
Getting deals across the finish line involves unblocking stuck pipelines, braving slow approvals, and clarifying miscommunication. These derailers affect even the most promising opportunities.
What is a deal desk and what does it do?
A deal desk is a central cross-functional hub within your organization that evaluates, accelerates, and closes complex, high-value deals. The collaborative approach aims to move contracts through the pipeline and execute them promptly.
Here’s how a deal desk helps your sales team:
Evaluate deals: Ensures deals meet qualification criteria before sales reps spend valuable time chasing dead ends.
Streamlines sales processes: Creates a standardized path for proposals, contracts, and approvals, eliminating confusion.
Unblocks pipelines: Identifies roadblocks and helps sales reps overcome them, keeping deals moving forward.
Gets deals signed: Facilitates communication between all stakeholders, ensuring a smooth closing process.
Who uses deal desks?
Deal desks are a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes, but they’re particularly beneficial for companies with complex sales processes, multiple product lines, or geographically distributed teams.
The evolving deal desk in a digital world
The adoption of automation and sales technologies has transformed the deal desk. Today’s deal desks leverage tools like CRM software, contract management workflow, and contract analytics to operate more efficiently and gain deeper insights into deal health.
Optimizing your deal desk for maximum ROI
To achieve peak performance with your deal desk, follow these best practices:
Set clear expectations: Define roles, responsibilities, and performance metrics for the deal desk team.
Identify the right team: Build a team with strong analytical, communication, and negotiation skills.
Optimize the sales process: Map out a clear, well-defined sales pipeline with defined stages and approval points.
Upskill and train: Continuously educate the deal desk team on company products, services, and negotiation tactics.
Embrace automation: Leverage technology to automate repetitive tasks and streamline communication.
Define and track strategy: Establish a clear deal and contract management strategy and regularly review KPIs to measure effectiveness.
Who is a deal desk manager and what do they do?
The deal desk manager leads the charge, ensuring the team operates at peak efficiency. They act as the central point of contact, coordinating with various stakeholders:
Sales: Collaborate to ensure reps have the resources needed to close deals.
Finance: Streamline approvals and ensure the financial viability of deals.
Legal: Review contracts and ensure compliance with regulations.
Product: Provide in-depth product knowledge and address technical questions.
Customer success: Plan for a smooth post-sale transition.
Support: Integrate support resources for potential customer issues.
Where does the deal desk sit in the organization?
Think of the deal desk as the central hub within your sales operations (Sales Ops) team. This cross-functional approach brings together the contract lifecycle management process and representatives from:
Sales
Legal
Customer Success
Finance
Operations
Why implement a deal desk?
Here’s what you stand to gain from implementing a deal desk:
Increased sales velocity: Faster deal cycles and quicker approval processes for sales contracts.
Improved deal quality: Better qualification leads to a higher closing rate.
Enhanced communication: Streamlined communication across all departments.
Data-driven decisions: Leverage data analytics for informed decision-making.
Parting thoughts
A deal desk is integral to today’s sales operations. It optimizes processes and ensures stakeholder alignment to facilitate complex deal management through cross-functional collaboration.
IN THE ARTICLE
