Velocity metrics determine how long it takes an account to move from one funnel stage to the next. Knowing the average velocity of each channel, campaign, or content piece allows you to optimize accordingly and drive results in a shorter timeframe.
Calculating Velocity in InfiniGrow
InfiniGrow lets you see the velocity between two consecutive funnel stages, as well as the length of the sales cycle from lead to closed-won.
In each dedicated timeframe, the calculation takes into account the average time (in days) it took for accounts/users to transition from one stage to the next, across all channels, campaigns, and pieces of content.
To understand velocity calculation, we'll need to break it down into two subgroups - velocity between the same object funnel stages, and velocity between different object funnel stages.
Let's use this funnel as an example:
This is Company’s Y funnel:
Leads - Count by people.
MQL - Count by people.
SQL - Count by people.
Opportunity - Count by deal.
Closed won - Count by deal.
Same Object transitions
The same object transition means that both stages use the same object for configuration, same "count by". For our example, transitions between Leads→ MQL→ SQLs (people) and Opprotunity→ Close won (deal).
For same object calculation, InfinGrow calculates how long (in days) it took for a specific deal, for example, to transition from opportunity to closed won.
Likewise, Leads and MQLs are both grouped by "people", and InfiniGrow will calculate how long it took a specific user to transition from Lead to MQL.
Different Object transitions
To calculate the velocity between funnel stages of different objects, like the transition between SQL (people) and Opportunity (deal), InfiniGrow uses associations.
In B2B journeys, there are multiple stakeholders, and each has an impact on velocity.
Say John from company "X" requested a demo with your company , now John is a lead .
In the demo one week later, Dana, John's boss, also joins and transitions to lead.
One month has passed, Dana & John have transitioned through the funnel, and now company "X" is in the opportunity stage, with a deal named “THE DEAL”
What is the Lead to opportunity velocity?
Object-to-Object velocity will be calculated based on the time that has passed between the Opp transition, and the first lead transition that is also associated with the relevant object in your CRM, in this case deal.
If Dana and John are both associated to “THE DEAL” your CRM, the velocity is 37 days (one month and a week).
If Dana is the only person associated to “THE DEAL”, the velocity will be 30 days (one month).
Make sure your team associates contacts with companies and deals for accurate velocity calculations in InfiniGrow.
The above explains how velocity will be calculated for transitions across a single account. To provide an aggregated velocity between funnel stages, InfiniGrow will run the above calculations for all transitions that occurred in the timeframe, and average the result.
Weighted velocity: Calculating a channel’s impact on velocity
Analyzing a channel's velocity is actually about understanding the impact that a channel's presence had on a transition. The calculation is based on journeys that transitioned during a selected time period and based on the time it took to transition from one stage to another. The additional element that is added to the calculation is the dominance of the channel in the journey.
The calculation takes into account the presence of the channel, as well as the channel's weighted impact on the time it took to transition from one stage to the next.
For example, to analyze the velocity of LinkedIn, journeys in which LinkedIn was attributed with the majority of the conversion will get a higher weight than journeys in which LinkedIn was not an influential channel.
Let's say we have two journeys, both of which transitioned from Lead to MQL during the past month. They both had touchpoints from LinkedIn ads and SEO, but the impact of each channel was different in each journey.
| Lead → MQL Velocity | Attributed MQLs to LinkedIn ads | Attributed MQLs to SEO |
Journey 1 | 20 | 0.8 | 0.2 |
Journey 2 | 4 | 0.2 | 0.8 |
The average velocities across both journeys:
Lead to MQL (general) velocity - (20+4)/2 = 12 days.
LinkedIn ads channel Lead to MQL velocity - 20*0.8 + 4*0.2 = 16.8 days.
SEO channel Lead to MQL velocity - 20*0.2 + 4*0.2 = 7.2 days
As a result, you can see that -
LinkedIn ads have a negative effect on Lead → MQL velocity - journeys where LinkedIn ads played a significant role are longer than average.
SEO have a positive effect on Lead → MQL velocity - journeys where SEO played a significant role are shorter than average.
In this example, if you'd like to shorten your Lead → MQL velocity you should invest more in SEO.
Learn more about pipeline acceleration.
Campaign and content velocities are calculated in the same way.
Velocity calculation examples:
2022 (Timeframe), MQL → SQL (transition), Facebook Ads (channel).
InfiniGrow will look at journeys with an MQL → SQL conversion during 2022.
InfiniGrow will then drill down to only look at journeys that had a Facebook touchpoint.
InfiniGrow will calculate the MQL → SQL transition duration (in days) for each one of the selected journeys.
InfiniGrow will then calculate Facebook’s weighted velocity across journeys within the segment that has a Facebook ads channel touchpoint in 2022, as shown above.
Troubleshooting:
Q: I see zero days velocity between stages, that can't be true.
A: Most of the time this means that there is no association between the stages in your CRM.
Usually, this happens when looking at funnel transitions between objects for accounts with Salesforce CRM. This can be overcome by simply associating contacts with deals in the CRM. Moving forward, we recommend adding this to your protocol for opening new deals in your CRM. When opening a deal, associate it with the company and all relevant contacts.