If you are a Founder-CEO of a Series B or C company, you are likely the best salesperson in the building. You carry the tribal knowledge, you hold the authority to discount on the fly, and you can override legal objections in real-time. This is why you are pulled into every major deal at the 11th hour to "get it over the line."
It feels like leadership. It’s actually a liability.
When the CEO is the deal desk, the sales cycle moves at the speed of your calendar availability. In 2025, that speed is too slow. Market data reveals that B2B sales cycles have lengthened by 22% since 2022, driven by an explosion in decision-makers—now averaging 6.8 stakeholders per deal. While your competitors are navigating this complexity with systems, your team is waiting for you to finish a board meeting so they can send a contract.
The adage is old, but the math has changed. In the current interest rate environment, capital is expensive and buyer scrutiny is at an all-time high. A deal that stalls for two weeks in "legal review" (read: waiting for your approval) doesn't just push revenue to Q3; it increases the probability of "No Decision" by over 40%. Buyers aren't just comparing you to competitors; they are comparing you to doing nothing. Every day of friction gives the CFO an excuse to pause the project.
You are likely seeing this manifest in your data:
To scale past $20M or $50M ARR, you must stop being the closer and start being the architect. You need to replace founder heroics with a predictable commercial engine.
The most common misconception Scaling Sarahs have is that a "Deal Desk" is a bureaucratic layer for Fortune 500 companies. In reality, a Deal Desk is simply a codified set of rules that allows your team to close without you. It is the operationalization of your intuition.
When implemented correctly, systems like Digital Sales Rooms and automated CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) workflows can reduce sales cycles by up to 28%. This isn't about buying expensive software; it's about decision governance.
Your sales reps claim every enterprise deal is a "snowflake" requiring bespoke terms. This is false. 90% of your "custom" requests fall into three buckets: payment terms, liability caps, or opt-out clauses. By pre-approving these variables within set guardrails, you remove the friction of executive approval.
See our guide on fixing unpredictable forecasting to understand how standardized terms stabilize your revenue predictability. If a discount is under 15% and terms are standard, no approval should be required. If it's 15-25%, it goes to the VP of Sales. Only above 25% does it hit your desk.
In many Series B firms, "Legal" is an outsourced counsel who bills by the hour and has no incentive to close quickly. This is a velocity killer. You must establish a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with your legal resources—internal or external. Redlines must be turned around in 48 hours. To achieve this, you need a "Pre-Approved Clause Library"—a document containing your standard position, your fallback position, and your "hard no" position for every common contract clause.
Modern buyers are asynchronous. They make decisions in Slack channels you aren't part of. Emailing static PDFs is insufficient. Leading firms are moving to Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs) where all collateral, contracts, and business cases live in a shared, trackable environment. Data shows that DSRs don't just organize content; they act as a forcing function for mutual action plans, cutting administrative lag significantly.
Reducing time-to-close isn't a sales training exercise; it is an operational engineering project. Here is your 90-day implementation roadmap to remove friction from your deal cycle.
Train your team to anchor the close date to the customer's implementation goal, not your quarter-end. If the customer needs to go live by October 1st, and implementation takes 30 days, the contract must be signed by September 1st. This reframes the "closing pressure" as "project management," aligning you with the buyer's success.
When you reduce your sales cycle from 6 months to 4 months, you don't just get cash faster. You increase the efficiency of your CAC spend, you improve morale, and you free up your own time to focus on strategy rather than redlines. Investors pay a premium for engines that run without the founder turning the crank. Stop being the hero. Start building the machine.
