Sales velocity measures how fast you’re making money. It looks at how quickly leads are moving through your pipeline and how much value new customers provide.
Why is it so important to track sales velocity? A higher sales velocity means you’re bringing in more revenue in less time.
Sales velocity is calculated using the number of opportunities, conversion rate, average order value and time to sale. Each offers a lever you can pull to drive business growth.
In this article, I’ll teach you how to increase your sales velocity, including practical steps you can take to influence the process. I’ve also included 22 diagnostic questions that can help you identify what to focus on personally.
Sales velocity is the speed your company makes money. It’s based on the number of opportunities, conversion rate, average order value and time to sale.
That means there are four components to the sales velocity formula:
Number of opportunities X Conversion rates X Average order value –––––––––––––––––––––––––––- Time to sale |
= Sales velocity |
In simple terms, you want to increase the conversion rate, opportunities and order value while reducing the time to sale.
So, how do you impact that equation? We’ve looked at each area to share the techniques and sales training that will help your business improve.
A powerful social media and social selling strategy is the cornerstone of bringing in leads.
Compelling thought leadership is a great way to attract the right people and build trust, whether it’s done through articles, events or another format.The key is to share information that’s valuable, which teaches new ideas and perspectives that lead to your solution.
This type of social selling is a marathon, not a sprint. Think about compelling content that provides value and how you can involve yourself in your prospects’ conversations.
Clearly, increasing sales velocity isn’t just about the volume of leads. It’s integral you’re creating the right kind of opportunities: deals that are mutually valuable for you and the client.
That means getting rid of the scattergun approach and knowing what the people you want to go after actually look like. That starts with past client analysis.
What types of trends and themes pull your best types of clients together? What conditions trigger a need for what you are selling?
Knowing that information allows your sales teams to have conviction that prospects are right for your solution and equips them to talk their language and qualify leads quickly.
Finally, salespeople need to be able to sell the value of a conversation.
Reaching out to prospects and selling your product limits the chances of a conversation as they will make a decision then and there whether it’s the right time to buy.
Instead, sell the value of a conversation with you using compelling insights about their peers or end-users; they need to believe the conversation will be worth paying for in itself.
Know the effort you need to put in. Sales people are often fixated on revenue targets but the way to reach these is to focus on effort.
Work out the target, average order and conversion rate, and map that back to the number of leads you need to achieve this target.
Conversion or win rate is the percentage of leads that turn into business in a given period.
If people are dropping out of your pipeline unexpectedly, it’s normally because they can’t convince a key stakeholder, weren’t a good fit in the first place or were doing a price or competency comparison on an existing supplier.
Making decisions in B2B is personally risky for your client and trust is key to how they choose. Pitching your company in the right way and aligning your brand with client needs has become far more important than ever before.
Selling internally is not easy and, in most cases, the likelihood of a deal going through – and going through quickly – can dramatically increase if you work as a team with your client.
Here are four ways you can increase conversion rates.
To act on your conversation, clients need to see why they should shift from their status quo. Just diagnosing needs isn’t enough. Your role is to help clients understand and redefine their real needs.
Make sure you focus on client outcomes and then explore their current approaches, so they see a compelling reason to change. That comes from effective questioning.
It is 10 times more likely a client will buy from you if they’re involved in creating their solution.
Compelling proposals outline why a client should change, choose you and why the project is going to work. It’s crucial to create them with the different stakeholders in mind.
Salespeople need to be able to help the client navigate the decision-making process by foreseeing the challenges that the client will face building consensus with stakeholders.
Deal size is the average selling price for deals you close in a month.
It’s a tough lever to impact. But, similar to conversion rates, pitching and proposals are vital to pulling this lever effectively.
Talk about long-term outcomes and position yourself as a partner that will help them achieve those outcomes. That allows you to develop a growth plan.
Effective negotiation is critical to increasing deal size:
Optimise low and high value deals by identifying the type of customer and what they need.
This allows you to invest more time in opportunities that have a greater potential deal value and close smaller deals quickly.
Don’t force solutions on to people that don’t need them; you’re wasting everyone’s time.
Learn how to identify accounts that have the potential to be high value, then work on real account plans and strategies to grow them over time.
Length of sales cycle or time to sale is the average time it takes to close deals.
To reduce that, you need to be really good at foreseeing and overcoming objections and proposals need to be really strong.
Make sure you understand the stakeholder group that’s involved in the decision-making process and equip the people you’re talking to with the resources they need.
Finally, you need to be strong at negotiation, so you can come away with a win-win solution that both you and the client are going to be happy with moving forward.
The strongest sales people instil confidence in the client by being proactive and assertive to move the sale through to the close.
If it’s taking too long to close deals, break down your sales process into steps to identify issues and opportunities for improvements. That could include automation, creating sales assets, decreasing follow-up time or any number of other improvements.
Want to know what lever to focus on first? Use these questions to test your strengths and weaknesses.
If you answer “no” to a number of questions in a section, spend time working on it so you can increase your overall sales velocity.
25 questions to ask yourself if you want to increase your sales velocity.
Training is key to developing habits that will increase sales velocity.
Use Flume’s Sales Enablement platform to access:
At Flume, we’re all about embedding behaviours that move the needle. That’s why we’ve developed a course that looks specifically at sales velocity. It’s perfect for companies that are committed to coaching and turning knowledge into habits, and want to drive performance at scale.
Book a call with one of our experts or follow us on LinkedIn to find out more about how you can increase your sales velocity.
We deliver our high impact sales training in the way that best suits your business needs.
Group Workshops
Webinar Plus – Content webinar + skills project + live coaching
Flume Sales Enablement – On-demand + demonstrations + live coaching
Do ONE crucial thing to boost your 2023 sales success
28th March 2023
Join Flume Live for an introduction to sales velocity – crucial hacks to power your pipeline
23rd March 2023
Selling in a tough climate – 5 key takeaways
14th March 2023
The sales funnel is dead. Long live the sales ‘nail’!
7th March 2023
Preboarding | Onboarding | Everboarding
13th February 2023
Selling in a tough climate – the challenges
31st January 2023
Sales 2023 : Three big questions
30th January 2023
Flume’s trends and predictions for the events industry
30th January 2023
5 Steps to Power your 2023 Pipeline
14th December 2022
5 Key recession-busting sales behaviours
13th December 2022
Sales Innovation Expo 2022 Trends
30th November 2022
How to align your customer success team with your sales process
2nd November 2022
Sales velocity: How to increase average order value in sales
17th October 2022
Sales velocity: Increasing the number of sales opportunities
17th October 2022
28 Sales Acronyms used daily
8th September 2022
Sales velocity: Speeding up the decision-making process
24th August 2022
Sales velocity: How to improve conversion rates
13th July 2022
Sales kick-off meetings: How to use the momentum to power long-term change
17th May 2022
Drive retention and performance through a sales academy
9th March 2022
Call AI: The sales coaching technology you need in 2022
22nd February 2022
Drive real results from sales training in 2022: Why the traditional model doesn’t work
2nd February 2022
Sales Engagement Summit – Hosted by Raoul
16th December 2021
How business development reps can give buyers the confidence to say yes
3rd December 2021
The biggest mistake sales development reps make (and three things you should do instead)
9th November 2021
Five myths you need to know about customer success teams
11th October 2021
The four levers you can pull to increase sales velocity and how to make an impact
1st September 2021
Outcome Based Selling
3rd August 2021
Why most sales training doesn’t work and what to do about it
1st July 2021
3 reasons why writing a proper proposal is worth your time
18th March 2021
How to win a sales pitch…
26th February 2021
Sales Professionals: Why you shouldn’t assume you’ve got remote selling nailed
15th January 2021
Is your sales team ready for 2021?
4th January 2021
Selling Virtual Events
26th November 2020
Why salespeople must be ‘long-term greedy’: A five-step approach to winning more sales
13th November 2020
Closing skills: Why the pandemic has made it even harder to close that deal and what to do about it.
1st November 2020
Post Covid: How to fill your B2B pipeline with customers who do want to speak to you?
5th October 2020
3 steps for monetising virtual events
15th July 2020
Storytelling
18th May 2020
5 tips for closing in the crisis
4th May 2020
Using audience insights to engage with customers
20th April 2020
Biggest challenge of leading a remote sales team
15th April 2020
“Clients don’t want to engage with me”
6th April 2020
The world has changed – what should I sell?
31st March 2020
Leading remote sales teams
30th March 2020
Selling in a crisis
25th March 2020
Proposal writing research: Why your proposal doesn’t work
17th March 2020
How to accelerate your sponsorship revenue
17th February 2020
How selling to the individual increases your chance of them buying by 2x
7th February 2020
New Year, new rules. How to deliver sales training that actually works!
2nd January 2020
Half of B2B sales people will miss their 2020 targets. It’s time to shift perspective.
18th November 2019
Questions that drive more sales
15th November 2019
How to speed up prospect decision making… PART TWO
21st October 2019
How to speed up prospect decision making – PART ONE
14th October 2019
The biggest mistake salespeople make… and how to avoid it
26th July 2019
You have the right to demand more ROI from your sales training (and here’s how you get it)
16th May 2019
How to grow customer accounts this year
22nd March 2019
5 big sales mistakes from this year
23rd December 2018
How to turn the marketing trust crisis into sales opportunity
5th October 2018
Why is it so hard to find great business development talent?
21st September 2018
It might be hot outside but you still need a SCARF.
12th July 2018
The Peter Principle: Great Salesperson, Crap Manager
25th June 2018
The ‘great deal graveyard’ and how to avoid it
8th June 2018
The secret to selling in today’s market: Old-school to New-school
22nd March 2018
Why people DON’T buy from people they like
28th February 2018
What salespeople can learn from Nike
5th February 2018
Why “yes” doesn’t mean YES
26th January 2018
Take charge of your sales career in 2022
15th January 2018
How sales and marketing must work together to deliver results: tips from the front line of B2B selling
20th July 2016
6 facts and stats B2B sales people cannot ignore
26th May 2016
The amazing power of stories and 5 ways to make them sell
15th October 2015
The trouble with Blitz Days and how to increase their effectiveness
7th October 2015