What is Sales Cycle Length?
Average time it takes to move a deal from creation to close.
How to calculate it
Calculate Sales Cycle Length as: Avg days from opportunity created to closed-won. Pull the inputs from your connected data and track the trend over time in your dashboard.
Examples
Example 1
A deal created Jan 5 and closed Feb 20 took 46 days. If your average is 45 days, forecast Q2 closes from pipeline created by mid-May.
Example 2
Enterprise deals average 120 days while SMB deals average 21. Blending them hides the fact that a recent SMB slowdown pushed that segment from 21 to 34 days.
Why it matters
Sales cycle length measures how long deals take to move from creation to close, which directly affects rep capacity, cash flow timing and forecast accuracy. Shorter cycles free reps to work more opportunities and bring revenue forward, while lengthening cycles can be an early warning of friction or weakening demand. It is most actionable when broken down by deal size and stage.
Benchmark context
Highly dependent on deal value: transactional SMB deals can close in days to weeks, while enterprise deals often run 60-180+ days. Compare like-for-like segments rather than a blended average.
Common pitfalls
Averaging across very different deal sizes hides real patterns.
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