Fast-growing companies fill the seats first: a deal desk, revenue operations, a systems team. Established companies have those seats, built for a simpler deal. Either way, what is missing is how the roles work together: who approves a discount, when legal and finance see a usage commit or other non-standard deal, and what the systems need to book it. Secant Advisors works with those teams to define it, so large deals get approved faster and book clean the first time. The interfaces between teams are defined so the process scales as the company scales.
Glenn Vander Laan, a founding member of US deal strategy at Splunk through a run from $668M to $2.23B in revenue and a change in licensing model, then go-to-market systems at Okta and Klaviyo. More on the background
Approvals moved from one at a time to parallel at a public software company, measured from approval timings in the CRM.
The conversion economics behind a change in licensing model. The target bookings mix finished its first year twelve points above plan, reaching the next year’s target a year early.
Annual contract value of the deals structured and negotiated, with total contract values above $20M.
Context and details are shared in conversation.
Fast-growing software and AI companies from about $30M to $300M in revenue, and established companies whose pricing or go-to-market model is changing underneath them.
A deal desk, RevOps or systems team is in place, but no one has defined how it works with sales, finance and legal.
Procurement, legal and security join deals a self-serve or founder-led motion was never built for.
Quotes built in spreadsheets, and contracts the billing system cannot read.
Commits, ramps, drawdowns, overage and rollover terms the old quote-to-cash process was never built for.
A product-led company adds enterprise sales, or a mid-market team starts selling seven-figure deals.
Two price books, two sets of contract paper and often two CPQ instances in one deal.
Also when a key seat opens up, before an IPO or a sale, or when new AI tools leave each team running its own version of the process.
Every team can be working well while the deal still waits. These five teams own the core of every large deal. In a fast-growing company, the seats get filled first, some of them stretched thin, but who approves what, and when each team steps in, was never clearly defined. When the pricing model or the go-to-market changes, the rules shift again. In a larger company, the seats are filled but the handoffs have drifted.
| Team | Reports to | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | Sales leadership | Terms promised to the customer before deal desk, finance or legal has seen them |
| Deal desk and pricing | Finance or RevOps | Exceptions decided one deal at a time, without agreed rules to fall back on, and discounts that leak |
| Finance and Revenue Recognition | The CFO | Commitments and revenue treatment settled after the terms are agreed |
| Legal | General Counsel | Non-standard terms redlined from scratch on every deal |
| Quote-to-cash and billing systems | RevOps or the CIO | Often a team of one or two, with terms the systems cannot quote, book, bill or recognize cleanly |
Deployment, business value and enablement teams join the larger deals in support.
Just over a minute, with captions.
Built on the processes, tools and methodology the team already runs, and sized to where the company is. Where a deal desk lead is in place, the work is built with them and handed to them.
The operating model for how the roles work together: the strategy, process and systems each one needs, from the policies and selling process to standing up the deal desk. Only what the business and its sellers need. Typical outputs include:
Discount bands and an approval matrix designed with finance, so exceptions are decided once.
The policies and selling process the team follows, order forms, fallback clauses legal has pre-approved, and standard structures for commits, ramps and multi-year terms.
Quoting that fits the pricing, and a booking package billing and revenue recognition can use without rework.
The full process is assessed first, to determine if it needs a change or if AI can streamline it, such as quote generation, approval routing or clause risk flags. Either way: does it work, is it governed, and did deals get faster?
For finance: revenue recognition treatment flagged before signature, booking definitions written down, and approval controls documented with an audit trail.
Deal strategy, commercial guardrails agreed with finance, and a regular review of the largest deals, working alongside the teams in place.
The trigger, what is handed over, who owns it next and how fast. Together they form one shared plan, and each team can change how it works inside without breaking it.
| Example handoff | Trigger | What is handed over |
|---|---|---|
| Sellers to deal desk | Non-standard pricing or terms appear | Deal context, the customer's commercial ask and the business case |
| Deal desk to Finance and Legal | Structure agreed | Terms that need review, with the revenue recognition treatment flagged |
| Sellers to deployment | Before signature, not after | Scope, success criteria and the timeline the customer agreed to |
Built from the last few quarters of closed deals in CRM, CPQ and the contract system.
Exception rate, approval turnaround, quote revisions after a proposal and booking rework, alongside discount leakage and quarter-end slippage, converted to dollars. Cycle time is tracked too.
Traced through real deals and the systems behind them, not a workshop.
The few changes that matter most, each tied to the signal it should move.
The same signals a quarter later, adjusted for deal mix so a bigger quarter is not mistaken for a faster one. Cycle time stays a direction until enough large deals close to prove it.
Most engagements begin with the Baseline. The program and a seat on the team follow from what it finds.
The signals measured, every team and handoff mapped, and the costliest handoffs named. Scoped to one segment, in about four weeks.
What it needs from the team: a read-only extract of closed deals from CRM, CPQ and the contract system, an executive sponsor, and a few hours of interviews across sales, deal desk, finance and legal.
The operating model designed with the teams in place: approval rules, order forms, fallback clauses and the handoffs defined, and a clear strategy each team can run. Ends with a first reading, and the full reading follows a quarter later.
Ongoing operational deal strategy and support. A fractional member of the team who drives deals through the system, and finds and manages the bottlenecks along the way. One to three days a week, more around quarter end. Where a deal desk lead is in place, the work supports them.
When no one is in the seat: interim cover for a deal desk, revenue operations or GTM systems seat, before the first hire or between hires, typically starting inside a month.
After a program: an advisory retainer for a regular review of the largest deals, or The Read, an independent quarterly grade of a program someone else runs, often for a board or investor. Secant does not sell delivery work into a program it is grading.
Larger build work, such as systems implementation, runs through trusted specialists, with who does what agreed up front.
A career spent on how large deals get structured, approved and booked. Before Splunk, Okta and Klaviyo, fifteen years at Quest Software selling and running a services organization. Each of those three grew past a billion dollars in revenue during that time.
Along the way: booking policies for non-standard transactions, deal structure guidebooks and field training, CPQ and contract lifecycle implementations at each company, and territory assignment automated across 400-plus reps, replacing a fully manual process.
AI is part of the toolkit. Hands-on building of agents and connector architectures, and a seat on a company-wide AI Council, so AI workflows are assessed by someone who has built them. One example: checking ideal customer fit took about 3.5 minutes per account by time study, and now runs automatically during enrichment. More in the newsletter AI in GTM Operations.
Glenn leads every engagement. Senior operators from a trusted network join when an engagement needs more depth, and they are named before the work starts.
The first conversation is one question: how long did the last ten large deals take, and where did each one wait? If there is no deal desk yet, it is who approves a non-standard deal today, and how.
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