Sales cycles are longer than ever.
In 2025 the typical time to close deals has extended to several weeks, or even several months – much longer than in previous years. There are many reasons at play here – prolonged economic uncertainty, global trade disruptions, tighter budgets, and talent shortages. All this in addition to the impact of more demanding and risk averse buyers who like to research, assess, review, and justify every purchasing decision.
Increasing sales cycles have a significant knock-on impact on win rate. The 2025 GTM Benchmark Report by Ebsta sheds light on this pressing issue, revealing that when deals extend beyond two months, win rates plummet by a staggering 113%.
It’s fair to say there’s a lot at stake – deal slippage is a significant threat to sales velocity and therefore revenue predictability and growth.
It’s time for decisive action.
Top four causes of lengthening B2B sales cycles
- Lack of prioritisation and urgency at discover stage: Poor questioning techniques and a lack of buyer understanding are the enemy here. Sales cycles stall when sellers fail to tap into pressing buyer needs and pain points effectively. A little more time and effort spent during discovery stage pays huge dividends when it comes to empowering buyer decision-making later.
- Lack of buyer confidence and multiple stakeholder concerns: Sellers don’t just need to re-risk the buying processes, they need to align with the needs, desires and uncertainty of multiple stakeholders. Building broad confidence is the name of the game here. Sellers must feel confident in engaging with multiple stakeholders, and have the knowledge and ability to affirm value at every touch point.
- Failure to tackle objections and roadblocks: Unaddressed concerns and objections can only serve to slow down decision-making. When sellers cannot proactively identify and tackle potential blockers on the road to closing a deal, momentum will inevitably stall.
- No solid business case and poor presentation skills: Weak business cases lead to extended buyer decision-making timelines and deal delays. Sellers without compelling and aligned businesses case and ineffective presentation skills will keep eroding time to value, impacting both buyer and business success – a common mistake that’s completely avoidable.
Low-performing sales representatives are 217% more likely to experience deal slippage.
However, some sellers are smashing their targets. What are they doing differently?
Strategies to accelerate the speed of sale
The performance gap between top and bottom sellers is widening. Seller velocity delta has grown to 11x, meaning top sellers are closing deals much faster than lower performers.
The highest performing sellers combine talent, with a buyer-mindset, and well-honed sales velocity skills.
- They treat discovery as a continuous strategy, asking high-impact questions to uncover shifting priorities.
- They utilise insight-driven personalisation to reduce friction and accelerate deals.
- They qualify early, engage multiple stakeholders, and focus on ROI-driven selling to keep deals moving.
- They maintain consistent communication to handle objections and anticipate potential roadblocks.
The most effective way to build momentum is via a sales velocity training and coaching methodology, focussed on embedding new behaviours, winning habits, and value-driven approaches.
Organisations that are doing well in the current environment have doubled down on transformative behaviour change – addressing the root causes of sales slippage and equipping teams with tailored approaches to fix them.
Flume’s methodology has helped businesses reduce sales cycles by up to 30%
- UserZoom generated an 87% increase in sales velocity by implementing a ground-breaking approach, that radically changed how it’s sales team thinks about client expectations.
- Relx experienced a 58% increase in deals closed by bringing new thinking and sales velocity sophistication to a conservative market.
- Make-A-Wish boosted time to revenue with more engaging proposals, and sellers who are more confident when speaking to prospects.
Work smarter, not harder
Through insight, research, and top training talent, Flume has a uniquely deep understanding of how buyers buy – and therefore how high-performance sellers must sell.
Get in touch to explore how you can embed the behaviours, winning habits, and value-driven approaches key to driving sales velocity.
Get your speed of sale score
Take 2 minutes to answer our scorecard questions, and get a personalised report with immediate actionable insights to increase your speed of sale.