Deal desks have been fixtures in sales organizations for years and were originally intended to provide a process for ensuring pricing compliance. However, this often resulted in missing strategic value and limited the organization’s ability to improve over time. Deal desks have since evolved to become more efficient, and they’ve found a new niche — helping sales improve strategic deal positioning, win rates and deal velocity. In this report, we discuss the three levels of deal management (compliance, deal desk, and deal pursuit), their value to sales and the broader organization, and highlight the requirements for evolving from deal desk to deal pursuit.