We have designed a new Pricing and Margin Integrity seat on our Accountability Chart to prevent our sales team from discounting our services too aggressively, but neither our Head of Sales nor our Head of Finance wants this seat in their department. How do we assign this seat when both leaders claim it will ruin their relationship with the field?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a seat is a political minefield, department heads will naturally pass the buck. However, leaving accountability for margins unassigned is a fast way to bleed cash and destroy your valuation before an exit. You must resolve this by focusing on the absolute definition of the seats.

Look at your Accountability Chart objectively. Sales is responsible for bringing in revenue, while Finance is responsible for protecting profitability and cash flow. Pricing and margin integrity is fundamentally a control and governance function. Therefore, it belongs under the Finance seat, not Sales. If Sales owns pricing, you have a natural conflict of interest where the person who is compensated on top-line revenue also controls the price.

Move the Pricing and Margin Integrity seat under the Finance seat on your Accountability Chart. The Head of Finance must own this seat and establish clear, non-negotiable pricing boundaries.

To make this work, define the roles of this new seat clearly. The roles should include:
- Establishing pricing floor models
- Approving non-standard discounts
- Auditing deal profitability

Once Finance owns the seat, Sales can focus entirely on selling within those approved parameters. This removes the personal friction because the rules are systemic, documented, and hard-coded into your sales process. Stop trying to make everyone happy and put the seat where it logically belongs to protect the health of the business.