Deal Desk Director

Overview

This role owns how each order form and commercial term is structured—covering both self-serve templates and customer-paper or negotiated order-form deals. The position implements AI tooling to draft and route routine work, while taking responsibility for items requiring human judgment, including risk review, negotiation support, and process design.

Success involves evolving the deal desk from a person-dependent process into a scalable operating model with clear intake, templates, approval paths, and reporting.

Responsibilities

• Refine the current ad hoc, Word-doc order form process by creating clearer intake, ownership, and decision paths to ensure order forms are created quickly, consistently, and correctly.
• Close deal desk requests within SLA, converting unmanaged ad hoc requests into a process reps can trust to move fast.
• Assist sales representatives with drafting and negotiating business terms for negotiated order form or customer-paper deals, protecting required terms while keeping deals on schedule.
• Build AI “guardrails” including a clause library, approval thresholds, and templates so routine drafting and routing can run with minimal manual effort; review non-standard AI-drafted output before it is sent.
• Guide representatives through pricing and discounting guardrails using margin analysis when needed; involve the appropriate Sales, Finance, and cross-functional leaders for approval decisions before exceptions proceed.
• Own the end-to-end deal desk function (intake, templates, approvals, escalation paths) so it operates as a system rather than relying on an individual.
• Operate Salesforce as the system of record for deal desk activity:
  • Keep opportunity records accurate against every order form produced (AI-drafted or otherwise)
  • Build reporting that makes cycle time, exception volume, and deal stall points visible without manual number-pulling.
• Partner with Legal, Finance, and Sales to resolve exceptions and escalations; serve as a trusted decision-maker for calls that require judgment.

What Success Looks Like

In 3 months:

• Every order form (self-serve and custom) runs through one system with split SLAs by type; all requests are logged in a single queue with a published SLA.
• A first version of the deal desk is established, documented well enough to run without the role present, with an expectation of continued refinement.
• Identify at least one opportunity to pilot or apply AI/automation (e.g., streamlining a task, summarizing data, generating content).

In 6 months:

• SLA performance holds at 90%+ for two consecutive months.
• AI-assisted drafting and routing handles most routine order-form and CRM-hygiene work, shifting time from producing documents to reviewing and approving.
• Clause library and approval matrix mature enough to onboard new reps or deal types without a rebuild.
• Continued rollout and refinement against real volume, tuning templates, thresholds, and routing rules based on early findings.

In 12 months:

• Shape commercial terms practice across deal types (not just execution) and become a go-to voice in deal-structuring conversations.
• Deal desk reporting informs decisions elsewhere in the business, including pricing, contracting policy, and go-to-market structure.
• The function runs at full speed, demonstrating judgment—not only process management—supporting credibility for broader commercial ownership.

Requirements

• 12+ years of related experience with a bachelor’s degree; or 8 years with a master’s degree; or equivalent experience.
• Deep experience reviewing, drafting, and negotiating complex commercial terms, including customer-paper deals, with independent judgment to set precedent and make final calls on exceptions.
• Proven track record building process or policy from scratch in an unstructured environment and driving adoption without a mandate.
• Comfort using AI-assisted drafting and routing tools as a baseline expectation; spend more time reviewing and directing AI output than producing documents by hand.
• Cross-functional influence: demonstrated ability to align Legal, Finance, and Sales on deals without formal authority over each.
• Understanding of how deal structure affects revenue recognition (e.g., payment timing, multi-year terms, non-standard deliverables).
• Working familiarity with Salesforce (or a comparable CRM), sufficient to process orders, build reports, and interpret how deal desk work appears in pipeline data.
• Experience with or strong aptitude for CPQ and contract lifecycle management (CLM) tooling.
• Ability to operate in a regulated, healthcare-data business; direct healthcare experience is a plus, not a requirement.
• Readiness to operate as a senior individual contributor with the ability and ambition to build and lead a team as the function and business grow.
• Comfort using or learning AI-supported tools (e.g., ChatGPT, CoPilot, or role-specific tools) to improve daily workflows.
• Forward-thinking, curious mindset with openness to experimenting with new technologies.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with sound judgment and creativity in designing solutions.
• Proven ability to thrive in fast-paced, high-growth, rapidly evolving environments.
• Ability to work effectively in a remote-first environment and ensure high-quality virtual interactions.
• Ability to travel periodically for work.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive compensation, including health, dental, vision, and other benefits.

Location

• Remote-first environment.
• Periodic travel required for work.