Sales Velocity
Sales velocity measures how fast your pipeline converts to revenue. The formula: (Number of Opportunities × Average Deal Value × Win Rate) ÷ Sales Cycle Length = Revenue per Day. It's the single metric that captures the health of your entire sales engine — and the four levers you can pull to improve it.
A mid-market SaaS team: 100 opportunities/month × $25K ACV × 25% win rate ÷ 60 days = $10,417 revenue/day. To double velocity, they could: (a) generate 200 opps (2x marketing investment), (b) raise ACV to $50K (pricing), (c) improve win rate to 50% (sales execution), or (d) cut cycle to 30 days (process). Each path has different costs and constraints.
Sales velocity is the metric that explains everything else. Low revenue? It's one of four things: not enough opps, deals too small, win rate too low, or cycle too long. Sales velocity forces you to diagnose which one.
The magic is in the levers. Each one is independently movable: (1) More qualified opps = marketing/SDR problem; (2) Higher ACV = pricing/packaging problem; (3) Better win rate = sales execution problem; (4) Shorter cycle = process/friction problem.
Most teams try to fix velocity by pushing reps harder. That's addressing symptoms, not causes. The RevOps approach: measure each lever by segment, identify the constraint, and fix the system — not the people.
Warning: velocity can hide issues if you aggregate too much. Enterprise and SMB have different velocities. Inbound and outbound differ. Slice the data to find the real story.
Define ItOther Definitions
“Sales velocity is a measurement of how quickly deals move through your pipeline and generate revenue. It factors in the number of opportunities, deal value, win rate, and length of the sales cycle.”
“Sales velocity measures the speed at which you're making money and provides a framework for improving revenue generation by optimizing four key variables: opportunity volume, average deal size, win rate, and sales cycle length.”
“Sales velocity tells you how much revenue your sales team generates per day on average. The formula reveals four levers for improvement and helps identify which part of your sales engine needs optimization.”
Sales velocity measures the rate at which pipeline converts to revenue. Salesforce defines it as how quickly deals move through and generate revenue. InsightSquared frames it as a revenue improvement framework with four optimization levers. Gong adds the practical application: revenue per day and diagnostic power.
The formula: (Opportunities × Deal Value × Win Rate) ÷ Cycle Length = Revenue/Day. Each variable matters: (1) Opportunities — qualified opps entering pipeline; (2) Deal Value — average contract or ACV; (3) Win Rate — % of opps that close; (4) Cycle Length — average days from opp creation to close.
The operational insight: velocity should be calculated by segment (enterprise vs. SMB, inbound vs. outbound, new vs. expansion) because each segment has different dynamics. Aggregated velocity can hide problems.
MistakesCommon Mistakes
Mixing time units — using days for cycle but interpreting as monthly revenue
Using total leads instead of qualified opportunities in the formula
Calculating company-wide velocity when segments behave very differently
Including stale/zombie opportunities that distort win rate and cycle
Not segmenting by motion (inbound/outbound), segment (SMB/enterprise), or rep
Which lever is limiting your velocity?
We diagnose your sales velocity by segment and show you exactly which lever to pull for maximum revenue impact.
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