The proposal has been updated, the demo has happened, and the salesperson knows the names of the client's team. Six months later, the message arrives: the project will not move forward at this time. The history shows work was done. But at what point did the purchase stop moving?
The six months in the title are part of a hypothetical scenario, not an average duration found by this report. Long negotiations can be necessary for complex purchases. The problem is when time itself starts to function as proof of progress, even without new evidence of a decision.
The thesis here is that a deal can die long before the final notice. Priorities change, the budget is not confirmed, a contact person leaves the company, or implementation remains uncertain. It could also be alive, albeit silent. Distinguishing between these situations requires tracking commitments and conditions, not just the calendar and rapport.
The cycle has grown, but the cause can't be summed up in one sentence
The 2024 B2B Sales Benchmarks, in Ebsta's H1 update, records sales cycles that are 20% longer compared to 2023. The analysis covers 4.7 million opportunities across 566 companies and $57.3 billion in analyzed revenue. The original report also states that the number of stakeholders involved increased from five to eight in the compared base.
This data does not represent a Brazilian probabilistic sample, nor does it prove that more participants caused the cycle to lengthen. The commercial source gathers observational information. The result allows for formulating hypotheses about complexity, but not for estimating the timeline of a particular deal.
More people can mean a necessary review of risk, governance, or implementation. The conclusion that the buyer has become 'difficult' dismisses the need to investigate what each participant needs to resolve. In an organizational purchase, consensus is not equivalent to everyone liking the demo.
Did the project lose priority, or did it never have it?
A request for a proposal can initiate research, planning, or comparison. If the salesperson interprets any request as an intention to close soon, the deal is born with an imagined deadline. The client may be investigating a problem whose budget still depends on another decision.
In Brazil, hypothetical examples help situate the difference. A retail chain evaluating a system may need to align the implementation with the operations of multiple units. An agribusiness company might condition the purchase of equipment on credit, delivery, and a usage schedule. These are not researched cases, nor are they evidence of a common duration in these sectors.
The follow-up needs to clarify these conditions without manufacturing urgency. If financing is not defined, the forecast must reflect this uncertainty. If implementation depends on an internal resource, the conversation should make it visible. The salesperson doesn't control everything, but they can avoid presenting assumptions as confirmations.
The difference between contact and commitment
Sending a message maintains presence; getting a response about the next step clarifies the process. Even a commitment can be fragile if there is no responsible party and purpose. Scheduling a meeting without knowing what decision will be discussed may produce just another interaction.
A deal advances when relevant evidence emerges: technical validation, scope confirmation, financial conditions discussed, or contract review, depending on the business. No single sequence works equally well for all companies. The criteria must be compatible with the identified buying process.
The article on CRM and commercial memory shows why storing activities without context doesn't help with forecasting. The history needs to explain what has changed and what remains unknown. Otherwise, six months of contact can look like six months of progress.
The risk of continuing because you've already invested too much
The time spent on the deal can create pressure not to terminate it. The team has gone through meetings and reviews; abandoning the forecast feels like admitting waste. But the effort already expended does not confirm future demand. The decision must consider current evidence, not the desire to justify the past.
My interpretation is that removing an opportunity from the forecast can be an act of quality management. It doesn't require breaking off the relationship. It can mean acknowledging that the project is paused, that a condition for moving forward is missing, or that the offer does not meet the current need.
It's also necessary to avoid the opposite extreme. An important purchase can have legitimate periods of silence and a long timeline. Automatic removal after a certain number of days would cause the system to ignore specific circumstances. Useful criteria arise from a lack of evidence combined with known context, not from a universal stopwatch.
The proposal may not be addressing the main concern
A technical negotiation can stall due to fears about implementation. A price discussion might hide a lack of consensus about the problem. Another deal might end simply because the project is no longer economically viable. These are different hypotheses and should remain hypotheses until they are clarified.
Consultative selling, as discussed in has the buyer changed?, does not consist of persuading the company to ignore its risks. It consists of discussing the limits and conditions of a choice, with verifiable information. Sometimes, the responsible outcome will be to postpone or not to buy.
There's no guarantee that a better conversation will reactivate the project. There is a possibility of producing a more honest forecast and preventing the team from continuing to pressure a buyer who is in no position to decide. This alone changes the quality of the work, even before it changes the revenue.
When the deal completes another month, what will your team be able to point to as a decision that has actually advanced—besides the time that has passed?
Sources and methodology
Ebsta — 2024 B2B Sales Benchmarks: H1 Update. 2024 first-half update: 4.7 million opportunities from 566 companies, $57.3 billion in analyzed revenue, and over 1.2 million hours of conversations. Observational commercial base, not a probabilistic sample of Brazilian companies; associations do not prove causality.
McKinsey — B2B Pulse 2024. Published on September 12, 2024; almost 4,000 B2B decision-makers, 34 sectors, eight major industries, and 13 countries. Survey of declared preferences and behaviors; international comparison, not a Brazilian census nor causal proof of a strategy.
Opening photograph: illustrative image from the Unsplash photo stock; it does not depict a company or case investigated in this article.