Put a price on every yes

Time to set up

Half a day

Cost

£0

Driver

Process

The problem

A custom report for one client. A faster response time for another. An integration “we’ll look at” to close the quarter. Each promise helps win or keep a deal, and each one is made by someone who won’t have to deliver it.

The cost lands later, on support and engineering, for as long as that customer stays. Nobody tracks it, so nobody sees it add up. Your cost to serve creeps up while the team spends more of its week on exceptions.

The fix

1. Define non-standard. Anything outside your standard contract, service levels or product scope. Write the definition down and share it with sales and account management.
2. Start a commitment register. One row per promise: the account, what was promised, who agreed it, the date and who owns delivery.
3. Cost it before it’s agreed. The support or operations lead gives a rough estimate of the ongoing effort. Hours a month is enough.
4. Set a sign-off threshold. Above an agreed level of effort, the commitment needs approval from the COO or operations lead, not just the deal owner.
5. Review quarterly. For each commitment, decide whether to keep it, price it properly or retire it at renewal.

Tools to try

• A shared spreadsheet is enough to start. The habit matters more than the tool.
• A required field in your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot) that flags deals with non-standard terms before they can close.
• An account-level tag in your helpdesk so agents can see which customers have special terms, and so you can report on them.

How to measure it

Track the number of non-standard commitments made each quarter, and compare support contacts per account for flagged and standard customers. The gap between the two is the price of yes.