What is Sales Cycle Length?
Sales cycle length is the average number of days from first meaningful contact with a prospect to a closed-won deal, and it's one of the four variables in the sales velocity formula.
Sales cycle length measures how long your deals take to close. It's a critical planning metric because it determines when pipeline created today will convert to revenue, how many reps you need to hit your number, and whether your forecast is realistic.
Average Sales Cycle Benchmarks
Sales cycle length varies dramatically by deal size and buyer type. SMB deals ($5K-$25K ACV) typically close in 14-30 days. Mid-market ($25K-$100K) runs 30-90 days. Enterprise ($100K+) averages 90-180 days, with complex deals stretching past 9 months. If your cycle is significantly longer than these benchmarks for your ACV range, you likely have a qualification or multi-threading problem.
Reducing Sales Cycle Length
Four tactics compress sales cycles. First, qualify harder upfront so you don't waste months on deals that were never real. Second, multi-thread early to avoid single-stakeholder bottlenecks. Third, use mutual action plans to lock in timelines. Fourth, get procurement and legal involved earlier, not later. CROs who cut cycle length by even 15% see meaningful revenue acceleration because the same team closes more deals per quarter.
Sales Cycle Length in the Velocity Formula
Sales Velocity = (Opportunities x Deal Size x Win Rate) / Sales Cycle Length. Cycle length is the denominator, so reducing it has a direct multiplier effect on velocity. A team doing $50K deals at 25% win rate with a 90-day cycle produces $13,889/day in velocity. Cut the cycle to 75 days and velocity jumps to $16,667/day without changing anything else.
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