Sales Cycle
A sales cycle is the sequence of steps a company follows to turn a prospect into a customer, and its length is the time a typical deal takes from first contact or qualification to close.
Also called: sales cycle length
Why it matters
Sales cycle length affects nearly every plan. It decides how far in advance pipeline has to be built to hit a target, how quickly new reps can show results and how long it takes to see the effect of a marketing campaign. A long cycle with a big contract can be fine, but a cycle that keeps getting longer often points to stalled deals or weak qualification.
B2B cycles tend to be longer when more people are involved in the decision, the contract is larger, or the product touches security, legal or procurement review. Teams measure cycle length from an agreed starting point, such as opportunity creation, and look at the stages where deals wait longest to find what slows them down.
Example
A company finds that its deals take an average of 90 days from first demo to signature, and that 30 of those days are spent waiting for security review. It starts sending its security documentation at the demo stage, before the buyer asks, and its average cycle drops over the next two quarters.
Turn the definition into a working system.
We build the RevOps systems behind terms like this one. Tell us where your pipeline breaks and we will show you what we would fix first.
