deal-desk

---
name: deal-desk
description: Use when reviewing an inbound deal before close: a discount exceeds AE authority, a customer redlined the MSA, or discount approval needs routing to a named human approver.
category: Commercial
version: 1.0.0
tools: []
---

# deal-desk

Per-deal review and discount-approval routing for Deal Desk, RevOps, and sales leadership. Scores deal margin and risk, routes discount approval to the right named human, and redlines commercial terms against policy. Never auto-approves — every output is a scorecard plus a routing recommendation to a named human approver (Sales Director, VP Sales, CFO, CRO, General Counsel).

## Purpose

Deal Desk / RevOps / sales leadership live at the moment between "sales asks for a discount" and "CFO/CRO/legal signs." This methodology quantifies the ask and routes it to the right approver.

Three deterministic methods:

1. **Deal scoring** — scores a deal 0-100 across 5 weighted dimensions (margin 30%, risk 20%, strategic value 15%, commercial fit 20%, term shape 15% — a CFO-leaning weighting, tunable for RevOps-led shops) and assigns one of four verdicts: APPROVE / REVIEW / ESCALATE / DECLINE, each tied to a named approver chain.
2. **Discount-approval routing** — maps a discount percent + deal size + customer tier to a named approver chain (AE → Manager → Director → VP → CFO/CRO) with estimated cycle days, honoring industry-tuned policy bands (enterprise floor, SMB fast-lane modifiers surfaced explicitly).
3. **Terms redlining** — detects 10 founder/seller-killer patterns in deal terms (uncapped indemnity, MFN, perpetual license-back, missing DPA, NET-60+, broad non-solicit, etc.) with severity, a standard counter, and the named legal/commercial approver who must sign off.

## When to use

Invoke when: sales flags a discount request above AE authority; a customer returns a redlined MSA needing triage before legal; a deal needs CFO sign-off and you need a defensible margin breakdown; an RFP response needs multi-year terms scored; a renewal expansion bundles a discount that needs policy-fit verification; or you're building a deal-desk approval queue and need consistent routing.

Do not use this to author the proposal, redesign the discount matrix, or do deep legal redline of full contract prose — @mention the teammates who own proposal writing, commercial policy design, and general counsel review for those.

## Workflow

1. **Intake the deal** — capture ARR, term, discount, payment terms, customer tier, strategic flags, and any customer-flagged redlines (roughly a 20-minute structured intake).
2. **Score margin + risk** — apply the 5-dimension scorecard for the relevant industry profile (SaaS, enterprise software, services, marketplace). Read the composite score, the per-dimension breakdown, and the verdict.
3. **Route the discount** — apply the discount-approval router for the same profile to get the named approver chain and estimated cycle days, with modifiers (enterprise floor, SMB fast-lane) surfaced explicitly.
4. **Flag the redlines** — run the terms scan to get ranked CRITICAL/HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW findings, each with counter-language and the approver who must sign.
5. **Assemble the packet** — combine the three outputs into a deal-desk review packet that always names the approver chain. The packet is a recommendation, never an approval.

## Reference canon

- Deal-desk practice: SaaStr (Jason Lemkin), Winning by Design (van der Kooij + Reichl), Forrester, RevOps Co-op, OpenView benchmarks, Bridge Group AE compensation research, Salesforce Deal Desk best practices.
- Discount economics: David Skok (For Entrepreneurs), Bessemer State of the Cloud, Tomasz Tunguz, OpenView NRR research, Pacific Crest + KeyBanc SaaS surveys, Insight Partners revenue ops. Worked margin math: a 30% discount on an 80%-gross-margin product destroys 37.5% of margin, not 30%.
- Contract landmines: YC startup library, Robert Klingberg (Founder's Guide to SaaS Agreements), Bowman + Brooke redline guides, IACCM/WorldCC commercial management research, Practical Law contracts library, Bradley Tusk on enterprise contracts, GC100 guidance.

## Assumptions

The commercial policy (discount bands, payment-terms norms, indemnity caps) already exists; this methodology applies it, not designs it. Industry profiles bake in customary thresholds — override with a documented discount matrix where you have one. The terms scan catches the 10 most common landmines only, not a substitute for full legal review. Scoring weights (margin 30%, risk 20%, strategic 15%, commercial 20%, term 15%) reflect a CFO-leaning bias and are easy to reweight for RevOps-led shops.

## Anti-patterns

Auto-approving deals (every verdict, including APPROVE, names the human who must sign); skipping the redline scan because the composite score is high (an uncapped-indemnity finding is still a DECLINE regardless of composite); using this for prose legal review of arbitrary contract text; treating the discount router as a discount calculator rather than a router for an already-proposed discount; routing every deal to the CFO instead of stopping at the lowest-authority hop that can sign; hand-editing the chain to skip a hop.

## Worked example

A 28%-discount enterprise SaaS deal with uncapped indemnity and an MFN clause correctly DECLINEs at 52.7/100 composite — the 28% discount destroys 35.9% of the deal's margin dollars under fixed COGS — and routes AE → Deal Desk → VP Sales → CFO → CRO → General Counsel.

## Forcing-question library

Walk one question at a time, never bundled; lock questions 1-4 before opening 5-7.

1. What's the gross margin at full discount, AND what does next quarter's pipeline look like at the same terms? Model both; refuse to approve until the AE can articulate the precedent risk. (David Skok, Tomasz Tunguz benchmarks — one 40% precedent reshapes 3 quarters of pipeline.)
2. Is this discount inside or outside the standard discount matrix? If outside, surface the policy exception explicitly and route to the named exception approver. (OpenView discount benchmarks, RevOps Co-op playbooks.)
3. What's the strategic value beyond ARR — logo, reference, expansion path? Require a named, verifiable expansion or reference commitment in writing. (SaaStr/Jason Lemkin on logo discounts; Winning by Design on commitment language.)
4. Has the customer signed an indemnity cap, a liability cap, and a DPA (if EU data)? Required — uncapped indemnity is a critical-signal override that blocks APPROVE regardless of margin. (WorldCC/IACCM commercial management research, GC100 contract guidance.)
5. What payment terms — NET-30, NET-45, or NET-60+? Prefer NET-30; NET-45+ is a cash-flow drag worth quantifying — every 15 days of payment terms costs roughly 2% of effective deal value. (KeyBanc SaaS Survey, Pacific Crest data.)
6. Is the term multi-year with annual prepay, or annual auto-renew? Multi-year prepay beats annual prepay beats annual auto-renew; auto-renew without 60-day notice is a redline. (Salesforce Deal Desk best practices, OpenView NRR studies.)
7. Who is the named human approver at each hop of the discount chain? Surface the name, not just the role — "VP Sales" is not an approver, "Maria Singh, VP Sales" is. (Bridge Group SaaS AE compensation research — named approval reduces precedent drift by 50%+.)

After all 7 are answered, apply the deal scorer, then the discount router, then the terms scan, in that sequence.