Discount and Exception Policy Design
Build a discount matrix, approval ladder, and exception process with checks for loopholes, conflicting rules, and deal splitting.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
Commercial policy is really important for keeping your sales team aligned. You'd probably want to think about discount structures, maybe tiered by deal size or customer type. Then you need approval workflows so that bigger discounts need more sign-off. ARR bands might matter too, so different sized deals have different rules. You should also think about edge cases where the normal policy doesn't apply, and have a way to handle exceptions. Documentation is key so everyone knows what's allowed. And you might want to audit it sometimes to make sure people are following it correctly and to spot any loopholes.
We'll design a complete commercial policy framework that prevents deal leakage while empowering your sales team. POLICY COMPONENTS DISCOUNT MATRIX Build a multi-dimensional discount grid: rows = ARR band (0-50K / 50K-250K / 250K-1M / 1M+), columns = contract term (1-year / 3-year / multi-year) and payment terms (monthly / annual / upfront). Cells contain maximum discount off list price and approval tier. APPROVAL THRESHOLDS Define who can approve what: • 0-10 percent discount: AE self-approval • 10-20 percent discount: Sales Manager approval • 20-35 percent discount: VP Sales approval • 35 percent+ discount: C-level review + business case required STRATEGIC-VALUE OVERRIDE For customers in key verticals or expansion markets, allow one tier-up approval bypass (bypasses one layer). Document the strategic reason in CRM. EXCEPTION FRAMEWORK Define which exceptions are policy violations vs. legitimate edge cases: • New market entry: one-time discount allowed if VP approves • Competitive churn save: allow 5 percent below policy only if we owned the customer • Multi-year commit: automatic tier-down (treat as larger ARR band) MONITORING & AUDIT Monthly dashboard: average discount by product line, exception rate, approval time to closure. Quarterly: exception audit for gaming patterns, policy tightening recommendations.
About this skill
Your reps keep asking which discounts they can offer, approvers disagree, and deals get split to stay under approval limits. Turn those recurring problems into a commercial policy with explicit discount ceilings, approval rules, and an exception process that closes the loopholes.
What it does
- Builds discount matrices across deal size, committed term, and payment schedule without accidentally stacking concessions.
- Defines how free months, credits, waived fees, and related contracts affect the approval calculation.
- Separates standard commercial limits from each role's approval authority and independent Finance or Legal requirements.
- Designs exception requests, escalation paths, expiration rules, and quote reapproval triggers.
- Audits policies for overlapping bands, missing cases, threshold cliffs, deal splitting, and strategic-value overrides.
- Supplies boundary cases that RevOps can use to validate CRM approval logic before rollout.
What you get
A proposed policy or targeted revision with a discount matrix, approval ladder, exception workflow, and concrete validation cases. Assumptions and decisions requiring an owner are marked explicitly.
Best for
Heads of Commercial, Deal Desk, Sales, and RevOps designing or repairing the rules their teams use across deals.
SKILL.md preview
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name: discount-and-exception-policy-design
description: Designs and audits reusable commercial policies by defining concession math, discount matrices, approval authority, exception routing, and boundary tests. Use when the user says "build our discount policy", "set approval thresholds", "our reps keep splitting deals", "nobody knows who approves discounts", "review this commercial policy", "stop strategic discounts becoming a loophole", or "design our exception process".
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# Discount and Exception Policy Design
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