Sales cycle length: how to calculate it and how long is too long

For each deal you won in the period, count the days from the start point to the day it signed. Add them up and divide by the number of deals.

Worked example, with made-up figures: your team won 6 deals last quarter, and they took 12, 18, 21, 25, 30 and 94 days. That's 200 days in all, so the average is 200 / 6 = 33.3 days. The median, the middle of the six, is 23 days, halfway between 21 and 25.

The one 94-day deal adds 12 days to the average. Take it out and the other five average 106 / 5 = 21.2 days. So work out both, and plan on the median unless your big deals are the ones you plan around.

Your own median answers this better than any average does. Flag any open deal that's run past twice your median, which is 46 days on a 23-day median. It may still close, but it's worth asking the rep what's holding it.

For an outside view, Databox interviewed 65 B2B firms and agencies, in a guide published in January 2024 and updated on 24 September 2026. For most of them, a deal took more than a month, and the largest group, over 30%, took one to three months. It's a small sample, and price moves the number more than anything.

Cycle length is the delay between the work and the revenue. If a typical deal takes 23 days, this week's first meetings are the deals you sign in about three weeks. A quiet week of meetings shows up as a quiet week of signatures later, when it's too late to fix.

So watch meetings during the week, and read cycle length once a month.

• Pick one start point and keep it. The first meeting held is the one a small team can record reliably.
• End it on the day the deal signs, not the day the invoice is paid.
• Count deals won only. If you want the lost side, work out time to a loss separately.
• Split it when your deals differ. New customers and renewals, or small deals and large ones, usually run differently.
• Count days in each stage. The stage where deals sit longest is where the time goes.

Good is shorter than your own last two quarters, with no stage where deals sit much longer than the rest. Your price, how many people sign off and how your buyers buy all set the number.

When the median creeps up, check these causes first:

• More people sign off on the buyer's side, and nobody met them until the end.
• Proposals go out without a date for the next conversation.
• Deals that should have been lost sit open, then drag the count up when they finally close.
• The deals themselves got bigger.

What brings it back down:

• Ask in the first meeting who else decides, and meet them early. Databox's respondents ranked finding the decision makers quickly first for closing faster.
• End every meeting with the next step and its date.
• Close out deals with no reply for a month.
• Look at the stage where deals wait longest, and fix that one first.

Palby Sales Tracker doesn't work out cycle length. Your deal dates live in your sales records. It counts the meetings that start the clock: each one is a tap on the rep's phone, and the board moves within seconds. You'll see a thin week of meetings while there's still time to book more.

• Mindtickle, The sales cycle: what is it and how to optimize it, read 2 November 2026
• Databox, B2B sales cycle length, published 20 January 2024, updated 24 September 2026, read 2 November 2026