Overview

For closed opportunities, the average sales cycle time from opportunity creation to close. For open opportunities, the average number of days since those opportunities were created. (Learn more about how Atrium Actions & Objects work to calculate metrics.)

Why It’s Important

As we’ve continued to build out the cards that will give you a full picture of your team’s AE bookings formula - including win rate, opportunity count, and average selling price - the final piece of the puzzle is understanding your team’s average sales cycle time. If total AE capacity is limited to working a certain number of deals at once, then how long it takes to close those deals has significant implications for how much they can generate in bookings in a set time period.

Who It’s Useful For

AEs and their managers.

Definition

The average time in calendar days between when an opportunity was created and the current day, for all open opportunities, and between when an opportunity was created and when it was closed, for all closed opportunities. As with the Opportunity Count and Pipeline cards, you can filter this card to only show opportunities of one or more of the following statuses:

New: Average days between opportunity creation and the present for opportunities that were created during the time period, or was transferred to the rep by someone else (and thus, were new to that rep) during the time period, and were still open at the end of the time period.
Static: Average days between opportunity creation and the present for opportunities that were open and in the rep’s name at both the beginning and the end of the time period and did not advance forward one or more stages during the time period.
Advanced: Average days between opportunity creation and the present for opportunities that were open and in the rep’s name at both the beginning and the end of the time period and did advance forward one or more stages during the time period.
Transferred: Average days between opportunity creation and the present (for open opportunities) or the close date (for closed opportunities) for opportunities that were either open and in the rep’s name at the beginning of the time period or created during the time period but were then transferred to another rep before the end of the time period.
Closed Won: Average days between opportunity creation and the date on which the opportunity was closed for opportunities that were either open and in the rep’s name at the beginning of the time period or created during the time period but were Closed Won before the end of the time period.
Closed Lost: Average days between opportunity creation and the date on which the opportunity was closed for opportunities that were either open and in the rep’s name at the beginning of the time period or created during the time period but were Closed Lost before the end of the time period.

What Data Is Used

Opportunity data from Salesforce. The Opportunity Owner is used to determine who to show the opportunity under, and the system-stamped created and closed information is used to determine when the opportunity was opened and closed. The Probability field is used to determine whether the opportunity advanced one or more stages during the period.

Alerting

Alerting on this card tracks the average age of Closed Won, New Business opportunities. As a result, alerting on this card is effectively an alert about average sales cycle time.

The alert triggers if an AE’s average sales cycle time increases or decreases in the trailing 90-day period versus the average of the prior four 90-day periods, or if an AE’s average sales cycle time is significantly higher or lower than their peer average. Goal alerts also look at the trailing 90-day period.

Back of Card

The back of this card shows, for each opportunity included on the front of the card given the filters that are selected, the name of that opportunity, the age of that opportunity, the status of that opportunity, and the opportunity type.

How to Use It

Alerts on this card will indicate a faster or longer sales cycle time, which can impact a rep's ability to reach bookings goals.

Looking at the average age of open opportunities can give information about the freshness of a sales rep's pipeline, which can inform forecasting decisions about the likelihood of those opportunities to close.

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