What Is Sales Cycle Length?
TL;DR
Sales cycle length is the average time between the start of an opportunity and the day it closes, measured in days. Which event counts as the start decides the number, so a team measuring from first touch and a team measuring from a qualified meeting are not reporting the same thing.
Where does the clock start and stop?
Pick one start event and apply it to every deal. First touch, first reply and first held meeting each produce a different length for the same pipeline, and the gap between them is often wider than any improvement a team is trying to measure.
The stop is the close date, won or lost. Measuring only won deals reports a shorter cycle than the team actually runs, because losses take the longest to arrive at.
Why use the median rather than the mean?
Because one deal that took a year moves the mean and says nothing about the next deal. The median is how long a typical deal takes, which is what capacity planning and the pipeline velocity calculation actually need.
Reporting both is the usual compromise: the median for planning, and the spread for seeing how much of the pipeline sits nowhere near the average.
Frequently asked questions
Yes for a picture of how long the process takes, and no for the pipeline velocity calculation, which pairs cycle length with a win rate and is normally run on deals that closed won. Whichever you choose, keep it fixed across periods.