Sales velocity

Qualified opportunities times win rate times average won value, divided by cycle length: revenue per day the pipeline produces. Each factor from snapshots and outcomes, not the CRM summary. When it moves, the decomposition says which factor did; usually cycle length.

DefinitionQualified opportunities times win rate times average won value, divided by cycle length: revenue per day the pipeline produces. Each factor from snapshots and outcomes, not the CRM summary. When it moves, the decomposition says which factor did; usually cycle length.

Factors are not independent

More opportunities at a lower win rate is a different result from the same gain at the same rate.

From outcomes

Win rate from open probabilities and cycle from today's close dates are both wrong in the same direction.

How it is computed

Qualified opportunities multiplied by win rate and by average won value, divided by the sales cycle in days.

Example

Eighty opportunities, a 25 percent win rate and $40,000 average value over a 90-day cycle gives about $8,900 a day.

Where it goes wrong

Treated as a target. It is four numbers multiplied together, and the useful question is which of the four moved.

Articles that use this term

How-to guides

Sales analytics KPI definitions: thirty measures on one page, each with its formula

Thirty sales and commercial measures defined in one sentence each with the formula, grouped by what they describe: coverage and activity, wallet and depth, retention and churn, pipeline and forecast, concentration and reporting, and data quality. Each links to a full definition. Written so that a team can adopt the definitions as its own, version them, and stop arguing about what a number means.

16 Sept 20264 min read Forecast and pipeline

Sales velocity: the four factors computed from your CRM, and the one that usually moves

The sales velocity formula, opportunities times win rate times average deal value divided by cycle length, how to compute each factor from CRM snapshots and closed outcomes rather than from the CRM's own summary, per rep and per segment, why the factors are not independent, and how to find which one changed when velocity did, with a worked decomposition.

16 Sept 20263 min read Forecast and pipeline

Win rate by segment, source and deal size: why one win rate is the wrong number

How to compute win rate from closed outcomes rather than open pipeline, why the team's single figure hides a 45 percent rate in one segment and a 12 percent rate in another, the three splits that matter, segment, source and deal size band, the minimum count that makes a split trustworthy, and how the split changes where the pipeline effort goes.

16 Sept 20262 min read Forecast and pipeline

Sales velocity across two quarters: the whole arithmetic on one page

The complete sales velocity calculation and decomposition across two quarters, small enough to check by hand: qualified opportunities, win rate from outcomes, average won value and cycle length from won deals, velocity as revenue per day, the four one-factor recomputations that attribute the change, the interaction residual, and why cycle length explains more than the whole decline, so a reader can reproduce every figure and then run it on their own snapshots and outcomes.

17 Sept 20262 min read How-to guides

The worked examples: every measure on ten rows you can check by hand

A hub for the worked-example pages on this site: each core measure computed in full on a book small enough to check by hand, ten accounts, ten deals, ten invoice lines, five clients, four territories, with every intermediate figure shown and the identity at the end. This page lists them by measure with what each example demonstrates, so a reader can reproduce the arithmetic before running it on their own export.

17 Sept 20268 min read