HappyGilmore

Account Executive

Layers of approval

For those who need quotes approved before sending for signature, how many layers of approval do your quotes go through?

At my current org there's 3 to 4 individuals who review and approve a quote before routing to the prospect for signature, which seems slightly excessive.

📈 Closing

☁️ Software Tech

19 comments

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jefe

Arsonist

🍁

It's bad enough when it has to go through that many layers on the customer's side, but on yours!? I'd be sharpening my pitchfork.

We have 1 layer. And that's enough

HappyGilmore

Politicker

Account Executive

Pitchfork is sharpened. It's at the last person for approval, they flagged something but didn't share how it can be fixed and now the quote is just sitting in limbo.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Lovely!! Why would they tell you something like that?!

Revenue_Rambo

Politicker

Director, Revenue Enablement

Entirely depends on what and how much is being discounted. Standard agreements with no discounts require no approvals.

HappyGilmore

Politicker

Account Executive

That's totally fair, especially if it's deeply discounted. Would think if only a slight approval that could reduce one person that needs to approve.

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

My proposals are at my discretion a majority of the time, and I need 1 person for approval on special pricing /large projects.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Two. Anything more and you can call me Bubble Boy

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

Weird. I only seek approvals after I get a deal done. I call my wife, my kid, my mom, a few friends, and at least 4 co-workers.

HappyGilmore

Politicker

Account Executive

🤣

Retired Sales Professional

👍👍

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Layers of approval on your side? How complex is your pricing?
The only additional approvals I require are based on % discount - the higher the discount, the more approvals required. If we are promising some development or something on the roadmap, additional approvals required. Very large deals are passed by CRO before they go out, but that's for visibility.

HappyGilmore

Politicker

Account Executive

Yeah usually 3 layers sometimes 4.
It's not terribly complex but as an org we've made it more complex than it needs to be. It's one of the focus areas going into next year to simplify that so it's easier to put together for us and the customer.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

You can definitely point to your process being outside industry standard, and not in a good way.

SportsSalesGuy

Tycoon

Enterprise Account Executive

3 usually and its slow as can be and I have almost lost deals and have definitely had deals pushed due to this system.

I understand its for compliance and to protect company and so fourth but they take forever and its because they are lazy and not ready to do their jobs and have no sense of urgency. If there is an issue with some language in a contract don't reject it talk to me lets fix it and then keep it moving. DON'T FUCKING REJECT IT AND THEN WE FIX IT AND IT HAS TO START OVER AND GO THRU THE ENTIRE APPROVAL PROCESS AGAIN!!!

And this is just on our side, its gotta do the same or worse with the customer. I swear working with my own internal teams and approvals process is a bigger fight than working with the customers I swear!
Just as bad is when you finally get a deal closed and they take forever to finalize it so u get paid and get credit. And ur boss gets off ur ass as to why u told him its closed but in SFDC its still says closed pending...

GDO

Politicker

BDM

Oh man! It Goes through 3 layers 😅

peachykeen

Politicker

sae e-commerce

Who are all the people that need to approve? What titles do they hold? Maybe you could present a new way to speed up the process? Seems like no one trusts anyone to make executive calls on a quote. Perhaps if it was a very complex contract...

HappyGilmore

Politicker

Account Executive

Sales ops, my direct manager, SVP. Sometimes it goes all the way to the CRO in some cases too.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Errr...none?

Mine are a bit different though. The only "approvals" mine go through is if I ask for warchest. Other than that I have a % I can go negative at my discretion.

saaskicker

Celebrated Contributor

Enterprise AE

Don't wait until the last minute to get this done. If I have an inflight deal I'll get all the odd ball things approved during late discovery / pitch (discounts, redlines, etc) be proactive. You don't have to offer all of these to the customer, but it gives you piece of mind at the end if you've got a good deal on the line that you already have terms approved and can send them out same day.

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HappyGilmore

Layers of approval

19 comments

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