Four Eye Policy

Hey, Scott from The Sales Mastermind here. Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

Sellers are only human, and we make admin mistakes. 

However, when it's high stakes, we need to do everything possible to minimise impactful mistakes - hence the Four-Eye Policy.

Storytime

A current client learnt the hard way that without guardrails, even the best-meaning salespeople can make highly impactful mistakes by not fully understanding the consequences of their decisions.

My client hired an excellent first seller. The seller was excited by the freedom the role offered, and, having experience in the industry and with various customer types, my client was equally enthusiastic.

However, the seller lacked experience in business leadership and had never had to consider the factors of profitability or unit economics.

This became a problem when the seller, more than 6 months into their tenure, closed a monster deal with a multinational.

It was the largest deal in the company's history, and the seller had negotiated the use of the customer's logo for marketing purposes. Everyone was ecstatic!

Like usual, the founder received an e-signature document in his inbox. As usual, the contract was already signed by the multinational's "Regional Head of Finance". But as the founder reviewed the contract, his heart sank:

• The contract promised "custom" features, with deadlines and potential penalties.
• The payment terms were net 90 days, and
• There was a customer-only option to extend the contract for 2 years with no changes to terms, including no price changes.

The seller felt he had done the right thing, as he had taken the necessary steps to close the deal, and the "custom" features were already locked on the roadmap.

However, the founder saw only contractual risk and a 90-day delay in cash. Both of which can be deadly for small businesses.

In the end, the founder stepped in to renegotiate the most onerous terms away, but the (now) customer refused to budge on the 90-day payment term. And since everyone wanted the deal to happen, it did.

The lesson here is that contracts and other impactful paperwork require internal review before being sent outside the business. Hence, the Four-Eye policy was born - two eyes for the seller, two eyes for the reviewer.

Four-Eye Policy

As much as we search for sellers who can do it all, most founders accept that there will be trade-offs.

A common trade-off is for a seller who excels with people but lacks attention to detail or focus on paperwork/admin. This is where a Four-Eye Policy is vital.

A Four-Eye Policy means a second person reviews any high-impact paperwork (for example, proposal documents).

In most cases, the policy catches typos, calculation errors, forgotten auto-completes (e.g., ""), over-discounting, or similar minor mistakes.

And in cases where there isn't an established precedent, like our Storytime example, it forces two people to be responsible for anything out of the ordinary.

Demo Login Example

Another example of when the Four-Eye Policy is applicable is when a process is complicated to reverse or correct, should a simple mistake be made.

For example, a previous SaaS customer would offer bespoke demo accounts to late-stage buyers as a final step to seal the deal.

The demo account was created by the seller completing a form, and if there were any typos, it would require ~2 hours of developer time to fix.

Therefore, we implemented the Four-Eye Policy, where a seller would either jump on a quick screenshare with either the Founder, VP of Sales, or another seller to review the form together.

Alternatively, the seller could post screenshots of the form to a Slack channel where another seller would give a green tick emoji if it were accurate.

There was a typo in a Demo Account form about twice a week. After adding a Four-Eye Policy, there was a typo less than once a month. Saving time and generating goodwill with the developers.

Remember, if you're open to learning how to "Close 1 Unexpected Deal in 10 Days (or less)" - reply "10 days" and we'll see if you're a fit.

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