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Take a look at your sales pipeline.
Is it blocked by deals that went nowhere or by prospects that no longer seem interested in your products or services?
If this is the case, it sounds like your sales velocity could use a boost. If you’re unsure how to rectify the issues within your sales pipeline or what the term sales velocity even means, we’re here to help with a complete breakdown and 9 expert tips to get your sales velocity off the ground.
Need help with something specific? Jump ahead to:
To put it simply, sales velocity is how fast your company or organization is making money or seeing a profit. It analyzes how fast deals are moving through your sales pipeline and generating revenue.
When you determine sales velocity, it shows how much revenue your business can expect to make in one day or any specified time period.
This is a crucial measurement for organizations, no matter the industry they’re within, as it’s directly related to the health of the business and whether or not it will succeed or grow. For instance, if your sales team moves prospects through the pipeline and converts them into close deals, you’ll have a high sales velocity.
Because sales velocity is so important to all businesses, it’s very common that sales teams keep a close eye and monitor it throughout the year (according to our research, 86.2%).
To decide which goals meet the SMART criteria, sales managers need to look at sales analytics for their teams and monitor sales KPIs, for example:
Based on these metrics, and in light of other revenue-based and activity-based goals, you can identify and set desired goals for future performance, but how to get this information?
Now you can benefit from the experience of our sales experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing an overview of your sales team’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in sales reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up this Sales Analytics Overview Dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
To measure sales velocity, you need to master a relatively simple equation.
You’ll want to multiply the number of sales opportunities you have, the average deal value, and the win rate together. Then, divide the number by the length of the average sales cycle.
So, if your business has 50 opportunities in its pipeline, with an average deal value of $25,000, a win rate of 10%, and an average length of 50 days, your business will be averaging $2,500 a day.
Once you know how to measure the velocity, there are numerous metrics you can start monitoring in your sales dashboard. According to our research, most sales teams monitor up to 5 sales analytics metrics.
Now that you understand what sales velocity is and how to measure the one within your business, let’s discuss the 9 ways to increase it for the long haul.
Interested in a specific tip? Move along to one that catches your eye:
The first way you can boost your sales velocity within your organization is to shorten your cycle.
If you’re unsure how to go about this, Eden Cheng at PeopleFinderFree explains this point to say, “Sales velocity tells you how much time it takes for a business to generate revenue or profit. To increase your sales velocity, you should focus on shortening the length of your sales cycle. In short, all the deals should not be treated equally. Huge deals take a longer time to close, thus increasing the sales cycle.“
Andre Oentoro from Milkwhale also recommends shortening your sales cycle to boost sales velocity. “You can boost your sales velocity by shortening the length of our sales cycle. Doing so makes the process shorter, which makes more room for even more sales. Having long sales cycles prevents you from taking on more potential clients,” explains Oentoro.
Get a snapshot of your deal flow and progress towards set sales goals using this business development dashboard.
Your organization can also increase your sales velocity by upgrading all of your marketing efforts. It’s easy to forget that marketing and sales can work together to increase velocity, but only when done correctly.
For this tip, Brad Wright at Greenbuild shares, “The first thing you need to do is make sure that the marketing material for your product is top-notch. If it looks cheap or unthoughtful, people won’t take you seriously and won’t want to buy from you. In the online world, a well-designed and structured website or shop is part of it. Key information should be clear without much effort to search. The workflow should feel as natural and friction-free as possible. While this may sound very simple, it’s the base to build your online presence on.
Also recommending that companies utilize all marketing channels in their arsenal is Darren Nix at Steadily Landlord Insurance. “We have been increasing our sales velocity mainly through our marketing channels. We use a multi-channel approach that includes all the elements that most other companies that are online are using. For example, SEM, Social Media, SEO, and Advertisement. We are firm believers in using the marketing mix and proper product placement,” explains Nix.
One surefire way to experience bottlenecks with your sales velocity is not knowing your audience, clients, or customers. Identifying your target audience and understanding your customers’ needs are essential for increasing your sales velocity. Without this knowledge, your sales velocity is likely to remain stagnant.
For this, Mudassir Ahmed at Digimiles recommends, “The first step towards closing deals is to target the right people. Focusing on an ideal customer who could get the most value out of your product refines the process and makes it easier. If you go chasing the prospects out of your ideal buyer profile, you may end up wasting a long time closing a little deal.”
Adding to this point is Miranda Yan from VinPit, who shares, “The single, most effective way to boost sales velocity is by recognizing the factors that affect it the most. For this, we research our customers thoroughly and try to understand their marketing patterns.”
If you’re unsure how to really get to know your audience or where to research, consider all places conversations with customers can happen — like on social media. Abby Hao at Cloom Tech recommends checking Twitter to know what your clients have to say. “Listen and pay attention to customer conversations better. 48% of marketing executives believe that good listening is critical to building a fast and responsive marketing department.
More importantly, the company must have the ability to know what it should listen to quickly. Every day, there are a lot of conversations happening on Twitter. If the company wants to listen to all the discussions, this is a waste of resources,” shares Hao.
One popular response that we received from experts was to increase the number of sales opportunities your team receives within the sales pipeline.
Starting this tip off is Charlie Wright at Epos Now, who shares, “One of the simplest ways to increase sales velocity is by increasing the amount of sales opportunities. Having lots of leads from the sales and marketing team isn’t a bad problem to have at all. However, it’s important to be cautious about how much time you’re spending on ‘bad leads.’ Prioritize your time and efforts and qualify your leads for quality, this will help you obtain viable sales opportunities.
Once you have a good number of likely and viable leads, you can then focus on how to increase your win rate. Having a well-thought-out sales process is critical here. This means establishing a clear set of steps on how your customers want to buy and what you should do next. This process must be precise, prescriptive, and standardized throughout your sales team.”
Adding to this tip is William Schumacher at Uprising Foods, who reminds us that it’s important to be cautious of casting a wide net. “One way I increase my sales velocity is to increase the number of sales opportunities. It can be tempting to cast a wide net, but focusing on prospects that are the right fit to fill your funnel is vital. Qualified leads are what I track in my sales funnel dashboard. There’s no sense in bloating the funnel with ‘well, maybe.’ In that same vein, it’s important to be realistic with your prospects, and really research potential leads. If you don’t, it’ll bite you later,” shares Schumacher.
Use this sales team activity dashboard to measure and compare your sales team performance and productivity at any given time.
Do you know which sources fuel your sales pipeline? Watch this video to learn how to set up and track your HubSpot Marketing data in order to decide which sources are worth further investment.
Like what you saw? Then you are going to like this even more. Our support team can actually build this report for you. For free. You just need a free Databox account to get started.
One bottleneck that your company could be experiencing is that the sales team isn’t all on the same page with processes and strategies. Without a unified sales team, it’ll be hard to increase your sales velocity.
James Crawford at DealDrop elaborates to say, ““Ensure uniformity throughout your sales team. Your team should all be working from the same sheet. No customer wants to think that they can get one deal from one salesperson and another offer from a different representative. Employ a standardized approach to remove any doubts or misunderstandings.”
You want to be everywhere your customers are, and the odds are good that they’re on social media. Because of this, consider running social media ads to get their attention and potentially increase sales.
“One of the best ways to boost our sales velocity is by running social media ads. We tend to increase our sales and get a lot more interaction when we advertise a photo showing actual results. A before and after photo showing one of our clients losing an X amount of pounds and showing an incredible transformation can really be effective in driving sales,” recommends John Gardner from Kickoff.
When you have sales calls or meetings with customers, make sure you’re working with them in a collaborative effort to avoid any surprises within the process.
Sharing more on this tip is Ben Rubin at Remotish. “We always build our quotes collaboratively on a call with our clients. This way, we ensure all the correct services are included, the price for the service is understood, and no sticker shock can add time to the deal timeline. This process is much more comfortable for our clients as well. The more visibility each stakeholder has, the better,” explains Rubin.
Another tactic to give your sales velocity a boost is to increase the size of your average deal.
Austin Fain from Perfect Steel Indiana uses this tactic to unlock any bottlenecks with their sales velocity. “Increasing the size of your average deal will require you to put yourself in the shoes of a consultant. Now, if your company sells a product for $50, you cannot sell it for $150. But what you can do is relate the price of the product to its value. In simple terms, what that means is you have to be the answer to your client’s prayers. If they have hundreds or even thousands of products to choose from, give them transparent and thorough advice because, in this day and age, it’s rare.” Not sure what your average deal size is? Use insights from your sales dashboard software to find out.
Finally, consider running a promotion to give your sales velocity a boost.
As an example, Mike Nemeroff over at RushOrderTees recommends, “ When we want to increase sales, there’s nothing that works better than a good ol’ sale. Whether it’s a flash sale, “buy one get one free” or a seasonal discount, having some sort of promotion always works in increasing sales.
Once you apply these ten tips to your sales organization, you’re likely to see the boost in sales velocity your business needs to get off the ground. Remember that unblocking a bottleneck takes time, and if one tip doesn’t work for your team — try a different approach. A robust sales pipeline wasn’t built in a day, but now is the time to shoot for the stars!
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Mara is a freelance writer at Databox and a Content Marketing Manager at G2. In her spare time, she's either at the gym, reading a book from her overcrowded bookshelf, enjoying the great outdoors with her rescue dog Zeke, or right in the middle of a Netflix binge. Obsessions include the Chicago Cubs, Harry Potter, and all of the Italian food imaginable.
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