Deal Desk Function in Transactional Sales (Part 2)

In part 1, we surveyed the landscape of transactional vs. complex sales models and and dug into actual issues that hurt the final stages of the sales process. You can read part 1 and get up to speed here. In today’s post we’re taking a deeper dive into the transactional sales model, and what a high functioning, well implemented, deal desk should look like. 

Transactional Sales Model 

If you have a transactional sales model, your sales are (you guessed it) transactional and you most likely live in the SMB market. These deals tend to be high volume but low dollar, which means the sales cycle should also be shorter. This also means you should operate a low touch/no touch engine.

These deals can often close in one call, or on the trade show floor. Since there aren’t many stakeholders & decision makers involved, there shouldn’t be many bottlenecks when getting deals across the finish line ...in theory of course. 

At Streemly, we’ve had the opportunity to interview hundreds of VPs of Sales, sales reps, deal desk, and sales operations leaders. We get to talk to the brightest sales & operations leaders every day. This has given us the knowledge and the opportunity to truly understand how to build the right process for every type of sale.

Let’s dive in and discuss the do’s and don’ts when building and implementing a successful deal desk function in a transactional sales model.

?DO’s

Do establish clear rules on thresholds and policies around discounting & relevant terms. Establishing “gates” is the first thing you should do.

Do simplify your pricing. Have a standard way to discount and charge for implementation fees, etc. Avoid over-complication in pricing by utilizing product families, buckets, and groups. 

Do know who your stakeholders are, and more importantly why they need to be a part of the process. Every single person you add to your process in a transactional deal severely slows down your sales cycle.

Do automate approvals. You’ll be shocked by how much time you’re actually wasting by not automating approvals. While you’re at it, set up automatic approvals to eliminate unnecessary manual work.

Do create a process that doesn’t require a change in behavior. If your VP of Sales never gets on Slack, they probably won’t start now. The best way to do this is to allow communication and action (approving, rejecting, commenting) to happen through your stakeholders’ preferred channel of communication (email, text, Slack, etc). Also, make sure these conversations are tied back to the opportunity in your CRM.

Do set up controls in your CRM & other tools to allow the right stakeholders to view relevant information. There is such a thing as over-sharing when it comes to structuring a deal and getting it across the finish line--and yes, it will slow you down. 

Do make sure to have a process for exceptions baked into your master process. When exceptions become manual, your data will find itself living outside of your system. 

Do have a system to capture leads at tradeshows. Far too often, we talk to companies that write down info, and then manually enter it into the system. Potential for errors runs extremely high in manual process, resulting in loss of good leads, as well as bad deals being brought in.

Do keep churn at the front of your mind as you’re creating your process. Poorly structured deals result in a much higher likelihood of churning. Transactional deals are already subject to high churn rates, so why subject your precious revenue dollars to even more? 

Do have a thought out handoff to customer success. This is something that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Poorly structured deals hurt CS the most. 

DON’TS

Don’t solve problems by throwing bodies at it. Far too often, companies believe hiring will alleviate pain, when in reality implementing systems or processes are much better options.

Don’t get hung up on symantecs like building a deal desk team, when in reality, you only need a deal desk function. In some organizations, deal desk is a sales operations function, in others it’s a finance function. 

Don’t introduce steps that slow the process down. If you’re looking at adding software to your sales tech stack, make sure it fully integrates with your CRM. If you’re going to add a tool, it should make your CRM better and your process faster. 

Don’t take your reps outside of your CRM. Similar to the point above, don’t introduce software or tools that take your reps away from your true system of record.

Don’t have a million different ways to discount. This will only create confusion with customers, and introduce the art of “creative” deals.

Don’t make deal desk a Slack channel. A central Slack channel may seem like an easy fix, but every operator we’ve spoken with says it ends up adding to the confusion, disorganization, and manual work. Plus it’s nearly impossible to audit. 

Don’t let your reps create their own documents or send quotes to customers without the right approvals. This will often lead to redacting quotes down the road and frustrated customers & reps. Lock them until they are fully approved. It may not seem like a big deal since your ACV is probably small; however, “small deals” that slip through the cracks throughout a fiscal year add up, and hurt your bottom line revenue. 

Don’t “copy and paste” your data. Those words should never be said when describing your process.

Don’t let any part of your process live in a google doc or powerpoint. Your process should be 100% baked into your system. 

To Recap

In transactional sales you're obviously focusing on moving fast. You don’t want software that over-complicates or over-systemizes. But, you also need to add business rules, processes, and some structure to ensure your business is growing quickly & healthy--plus optimized for future growth.

A well implemented deal desk shortens sales cycles and increases close rates. It should streamline & automate the sales close process including: approvals, quote creation, and rules management. If optimized, it removes the guess & stress out the sales close process. We published a post that dives deeper into what deal desk is and why it matters. You can read that here. 

At Streemly, we see our role as consultants to our prospects & customers on how they can improve their processes. We’d love to learn about yours, and add value how we know best! Our platform takes into consideration all of the do’s and don’ts from above and is designed to give you an automated and streamlined sales close process. 

See how Streemly can solve your pain for a transactional sales model or request a demo.