Require Approval Before a Proposal Discount Reaches the Client

The dangerous discount is the one nobody reviewed

A client asks whether you can sharpen the price. The advisor wants to keep momentum, so a project fee drops, onboarding work becomes free, or a service gets added without changing the total.

The revised proposal goes out five minutes later.

Maybe the deal closes. Then operations inherits the original workload at the lower number. Finance sees less revenue but cannot explain why. The next renewal starts from the concession. If supplier compensation also changed, the firm may not know the actual economics until a commission statement arrives.

The problem is not that a discount exists. A deliberate concession can make sense. The problem is letting one person change price, scope, terms, and precedent inside a live client conversation without showing the rest of the business what moved.

Before a concession reaches the client, require an approval decision and one final version of the commercial record.

Separate supplier pricing from your firm's concession

Technology advisors work with several numbers at once. A supplier may reduce its quote. A master agent may approve special pricing. The advisor may waive a project fee. The client may ask for payment flexibility. Those are not the same concession.

Record each layer separately:

• The supplier's list or original price
• Supplier-approved special pricing and its expiration
• The advisor's standard fee for firm-owned work
• Any advisor discount, waived work, or added service
• Expected supplier compensation and the assumption behind it
• The final amount and terms shown to the client

This prevents a supplier discount from quietly becoming permission to give away advisory work too. It also keeps an advisor concession from being mistaken for supplier-approved pricing.

Start with your service pricing model. If the firm has never decided which work is included, limited, paid, or declined, there is no stable commercial baseline to approve against.

Define which changes need approval

Do not route every harmless edit to the founder. That turns the policy into a bottleneck, and people will work around it.

Set approval triggers around the exposure. A review may be required when a proposal:

• Reduces a firm fee below the standard package or agreed floor
• Adds delivery work, meetings, reporting, support, or revisions without matching revenue
• Changes payment timing, deposit requirements, cancellation terms, or the length of commitment
• Depends on supplier pricing that has not been confirmed or may expire before signature
• Changes expected commission treatment or creates a split with another advisor
• Uses a strategic exception such as nonprofit pricing, a pilot, or an introductory offer
• Creates a promise the delivery owner has not accepted

Standard options can move faster. If a smaller package already has approved scope, price, and delivery limits, the advisor can offer it without inventing a discount. That is a product choice, not an exception.

Make the request answer the business question

"Client wants ten percent" is not enough for an approval.

The approver needs to see the current deal and the proposed trade. Use one short request with:

• Client, opportunity, proposal version, and decision date
• Original price, proposed price, and exact dollar change
• Reason the client gave for the request
• What changes in scope, timing, payment, term, or commitment
• Delivery owner and the operating effect of the change
• Supplier pricing status and expiration
• Expected supplier compensation before and after the change
• Requested approver and approval deadline

Keep client enthusiasm out of the evidence column. "They love us" does not explain whether the work can still be delivered well or whether the relationship justifies an exception. If future volume is part of the trade, record the signed commitment that makes it real. A friendly promise about more deals later is not current consideration.

Use four responses, not a vague yes

An approver should be able to choose approve, reject, request change, or delegate. That keeps the decision clear and gives the advisor a useful next step.

Microsoft's current approval workflow guidance uses those same action types and supports conditions, notifications, deadlines, escalation, and a rule that can prevent the submitter from approving the same document. You do not need Microsoft Dynamics to use the operating idea. A small firm can run the process with a CRM record and a task, as long as the authority and evidence are visible.

For a two-person firm, the founder may still be the approver. The control is not a large committee. It is the pause between proposing a change and promising it to the client.

When the approver requests a change, name the acceptable path. Reduce the reporting cadence. Remove a deliverable. Phase the work. Hold price and change payment timing. Keep the answer tied to the deal instead of sending the advisor back with "do better."

A lower price should produce a different record

If the number changes, something else should usually change with it. That may be scope, term, timing, payment, risk, or another commitment the firm values.

Do not approve a lower number and leave the old scope intact by accident. Update the proposal, statement of work, payment terms, delivery plan, and CRM record to the same version. Name what changed and what stayed.

This is where firms create avoidable trouble. The approval exists in an email, the PDF shows a new price, the project template still carries the old deliverables, and the client remembers the most generous version discussed on the call.

Use the proposal decision brief to preserve the client's actual decision. If work changes after the engagement starts, move it into the scope change process instead of treating the old discount approval as permanent permission.

Put an expiration on the concession

A concession should not float around the pipeline forever.

Record the date by which the client must accept it, the proposal version it applies to, and the conditions that cancel it. Supplier pricing may expire. Delivery capacity may change. A reduced fee may depend on an annual commitment or payment date that no longer exists three months later.

If the client returns after expiration, review the current facts. Do not resend the old discounted proposal because it is easier than reopening the commercial decision.

Approved exceptions also deserve a later review. If the same concession appears across several deals, you may have a packaging problem. If only one advisor keeps requesting it, you may have a coaching problem. If one client keeps receiving it, you may have an account strategy problem. The exception record gives you something better than a hunch.

Build the smallest process that protects the decision

Pick the last ten proposals sent by your firm. Compare the first commercial version with the final version. Look for lower fees, free work, changed terms, added deliverables, payment changes, and supplier pricing that moved.

For each change, ask who decided it, what evidence they used, whether delivery accepted it, and where the final terms were recorded. You will find the approval rule faster by studying real exceptions than by writing a policy from scratch.

Then define the triggers, authority levels, required fields, response options, deadline, and final-version check. Put the unresolved request into your weekly operating review only when it crosses a real exception threshold. Routine approved packages should keep moving.

Advisor OS CRM connects opportunities, proposals, supplier information, contracts, activities, tasks, and commission records. It does not replace your approval policy. It gives the firm one operating record for the facts the approver needs and the commercial version the team must deliver.