u/Calm-Fill-6746

About 2,800 employees, 4 legal entities, 3 currencies, SF staying as the crm, netsuite downstream. Mostly annual subscription with a usage component growing faster than anyone forecast.

We are in week 6 of narrowing down a shortlist and we keep getting the same names. Nue, conga, dealhub, oracle, or staying in sf if that matters.

What we want is an honest review rather than an evaluation. Every evaluation looks the same on paper. we need to know what you picked and whether the thing that sold you still mattered months or an year later.

The part we are not quite able to reason from the inside is native versus non native. Staying inside salesforce boundary means less intergration work. but we have been burned previously by native meaning we will inherit the platforms way of doing things.

If you stayed on arm and it was the right call, say that too. we would rather hear it now than later on.

We have been going through quote approvals from the last quarter and something does not add up. We processed just over 3,800 quotes in Q2 and roughly 28% ended up going through at least one manual approval. At first glance that didn't seem terrible but when we dug deeper, nearly 40% of those approvals were triggered by manual quote edits and pricing exceptions rather than the real commercial risk. The problem is we cannot tell what is legitimate and what is just process noise.

For example we have reps manually adjusting discount lines or changing payment terms. Some of these kinda deserve approval but others seem to be happening bc the quoting process isn't flexible enough or people are working around it.

Has anyone found a good way to identify which manual exceptions are generating unnecessary approvals?

I feel like my mental peace is being tested by people around me. which boundaries helped you guard your peace?

Our playbook grew to 74 pages before anyone admitted that reps had stopped reading it. New hires spent their first 2 weeks buried in documents instead of making calls. We had all the right discovery questions, objection trees, email templates, targeted clients but no one used them after the first few weeks. The top performers just made their own versions.

How does your sales playbook work in real life and does it help you close deals?

Right now once we send a quote or proposal by email it feels like we lose visibility into what happens next. We don't know who viewed it, how often buyers are engaging with it, which stakeholders are involved or whether the opportunity is genuinely moving forward. We're hoping a deal room might help address some of those issues, but it's hard to tell how much of the value is real beyond the marketing hype. Does a deal room setup improve your win rate or shorten the sales cycle?

I used to think sunglasses were just about style, but comfort and lens quality matter way more than I expected. Some pairs look great but strain your eyes after a while or feel too tight on the nose. Lately I’ve been paying attention to UV protection, weight, and how they sit during long wear. Curious what everyone here values most when picking sunglasses… style, durability, or actual eye comfort?