"Every sales leader faces the same tension. Close deals faster to hit revenue targets, but maintain high standards to avoid bad fits, legal issues, or deals that fall apart post-signature. Push too hard on speed, and you end up with buyer remorse, contract problems, and unhappy customers. Move too cautiously, and competitors snatch opportunities while your team is still scheduling discovery calls."
"The good news is that speed and quality are not opposing forces. Most sales processes are slow because of inefficiency, not because thoroughness requires time. Remove the waste, and you can close deals faster while actually improving deal quality. The trick is knowing where to focus your efforts. Not all delays are created equal. Some parts of your sales process genuinely need time for proper evaluation. Others are just bureaucratic friction that adds no value."
"Most sales leaders blame slow cycles on prospects who take forever to make decisions. But internal delays are usually the bigger problem. Legal review takes a week when it should take a day. Contracts sit in approval queues waiting for someone to click a button. Custom pricing requires three levels of sign-off. Technical resources are double-booked and cannot join discovery calls for two weeks."
Sales teams face tension between closing deals quickly and maintaining standards to avoid bad fits, legal issues, or post-signature failures. Speed and quality can both improve when waste is removed from the process. Not all delays are equal: some stages need genuine evaluation time, while others are bureaucratic friction that adds no value. Mapping a sample of recent deals reveals structural internal issues that slow cycles. Internal bottlenecks — slow legal review, approval queues, multi-level custom pricing sign-offs, and unavailable technical resources — create artificial delays that frustrate sales teams and prospects and kill more deals than prospect hesitation.
Read at London Business News | Londonlovesbusiness.com
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