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Example case study · Revenue Operations

Deal approvals in hours, not days

How a deal desk agent cleared the approval queue at a software company and gave reps their week back.

Industry
B2B software
Size
200 people
Systems
Salesforce, Slack, DocuSign
Timeline
8 weeks
2 days → 3 hrsAverage approval time
6 hrsA week back for each rep
$1.1MA year in deals kept and time saved

The challenge

Every discount above 10% and every non-standard term needed sign-off from finance and legal. Requests arrived in Slack threads and email, and reps spent hours chasing them while deals stalled.

  • Deals waited two days on average for approval
  • Similar requests got different answers
  • CRM records were incomplete, so the forecast was guesswork

The timeline

8 weeks

AuditWeeks 1–2Mapped every hand-off from quote to signature and sorted a quarter’s worth of past approval requests.
Architecture & designWeeks 3–4Turned the pricing policy into rules the agents can check, and agreed the limits with finance and legal.
ImplementationWeeks 5–8Launched the deal desk agent first, then CRM and forecast, then handed it over to sales ops.

The audit

Weeks 1–2

  • 8 in 10 approval requests already fit the pricing rules
  • Reps spent about 6 hours a week on approvals and CRM updates
  • The forecast was rebuilt in a spreadsheet every Monday

Architecture & design

Weeks 3–4

Deal desk agent

Checks each discount and term against the pricing rules, and clears routine requests within the limits finance sets.

Approval agent

Writes a one-page summary for finance and legal, and routes only the real exceptions.

CRM agent

Fills in missing fields from emails and calls, and keeps every record current.

Forecast agent

Builds the weekly forecast from live CRM data, with risks flagged.

Implementation

Weeks 5–8

Deal deskWeeks 5–6Routine requests cleared inside the pricing rules. Average approval time fell from 2 days to 5 hours.
CRM and forecastWeek 7Missing CRM fields filled from emails and calls, and the Monday spreadsheet retired.
HandoverWeek 8Approval time down to 3 hours. Sales ops was trained to update the rules and review the agents’ log.

Results & ROI

Before and after

Average approval time
Before: 2 days
After: 3 hours
Rep time on approvals and CRM
Before: 6 hrs a week
After: Under 1 hr a week
Deals with complete CRM records
Before: 61%
After: 98%
Forecast accuracy
Before: ±20%
After: ±7%

Return on investment

$1.1M a year

Paid back in under 3 months

Deals that no longer slip a quarter$620KGross profit on deals that used to stall while waiting for approval
Rep time back for selling$300KAbout 5 hours a week back for each of 40 reps
Discounts kept inside the rules$180KDiscount leakage stopped on routine deals
Total, each year$1.1M

Example figures, for illustration.

Next case study

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