What's the fastest path to close?
Some deals close in 10 days. Others take 60. The difference is usually the path they took, not the prospect. Here is how to identify your fastest repeatable sales journey and replicate it.
The short answer
Your fastest path is the touchpoint sequence that produces the shortest average days-to-close among your won deals. It is usually a combination of fast initial response, fewer handoffs, and a specific channel mix (e.g., referral leads that go straight to a demo close faster than cold outbound leads that need multiple nurture emails). To find it, you need to group your closed deals by their journey pattern and compare the average cycle length.
Why speed to close directly impacts your cash flow
A deal that closes in 12 days puts money in your bank 48 days sooner than one that takes 60 days. If you close 10 deals a month and you can shift your average from 35 days to 20 days, that is 150 extra days of cash flow across your pipeline. For a business with $200K in monthly bookings, that difference can mean $100K more cash on hand at any given time.
Speed also affects your team. Deals that close fast consume fewer sales hours per dollar of revenue. Your reps can handle more pipeline when deals move quickly, which means you can grow without hiring as fast.
The goal is not to rush every deal. It is to find the deals that naturally close fast and figure out how to get more of them into your pipeline.
How to find your fastest path in HubSpot
- 1Export closed-won deals with timing data
Go to CRM → Deals. Filter for Closed Won, last 6 months. Export with Deal Name, Amount, Create Date, Close Date, Original Source, and the “Time in” calculated properties for each stage.
- 2Calculate days-to-close for each deal
Subtract Create Date from Close Date. Sort from fastest to slowest. Your top 25% fastest deals are the ones to study.
- 3Map the activity timeline for the fastest deals
Open each of the fastest deals and record the touchpoint sequence: first interaction type, channel, timing between each step. Look for what they have in common.
- 4Identify the pattern
Common fast-path patterns include: referral leads that skip the nurture phase, leads that get a same-day call, and deals where the proposal is sent before the third meeting. Note the lead source, touchpoint count, and stages skipped.
- 5Validate against deal size
Fast deals are only valuable if the revenue is worthwhile. Check the average deal size for your fastest path. If fast deals are consistently small, the “fastest” path might not be the most valuable one to optimize for.
Total time: 2-3 hours. You need to export deal data, review activity timelines for your fastest-closing deals, and cross-check against deal sizes.
What it takes to track your fastest path every month
The fastest path changes as your lead sources shift and your team evolves. Monthly maintenance includes:
- Re-exporting and re-analyzing new closed deals.
- Checking if the fast pattern is still holding or if a new one has emerged.
- Cross-referencing with invoice and payment data from QuickBooks to include the full cycle (CRM close to money received).
Or see your fastest path automatically, every month
Bottomline connects to your CRM and accounting software, groups your closed deals by journey pattern, and ranks them by speed. You see which path closes fastest, how many deals follow it, and what the average deal size is.
Notice how the fastest path (referrals) closes in 9 days but the highest-revenue path (cold outbound) takes 34. Both are valuable, and Bottomline helps you see the tradeoff so you can allocate resources accordingly.