2025 looks incredibly encouraging as evidenced by the latest Lightspeed Venture Sales Benchmark report for 2024.

My cliff notes summary in my own observations.

• We’re seeing an encouraging uptick in companies hitting their projections YoY, rebounding from the 2023 dip. This momentum looks promising for 2025.
• Sales cycles for deals >$250K annually are stretching beyond 6 months. This isn’t shocking, but it’s a crucial planning consideration.
• Series D+ companies are only generating 14% of revenue through partners. Despite all the partnership buzz, there’s significant room for growth here.
• While pipeline coverage is up YoY, I’m concerned we’re seeing quantity over quality. Prediction: This metric will drop in 2025 as the market demands more trusted, targeted interactions.
• Net new deals showing significant slippage, renewals more stable, customer retention remains critical in 2025 (when is it not critical?!)
• AI – 63% of companies integrating AI into core products but only 39% customer adoption rate

The actual details of the report (the full report can be found here):

Sales Performance and Trends

• Revenue attainment is improving. The percentage of companies hitting or exceeding revenue targets is projected to reach 65% in 2024, up from 39% in 2022, while major misses (falling short by over 20%) are projected to decrease to 10%. (Slide 2)
• Sales cycles are lengthening, especially for high-value deals, with 100% of deals over $250k now taking over six months to close.
• Quota attainment is rebounding to 2021 levels, signaling a stronger sales environment.

Go-to-Market Strategies

• Direct sales is the most common go-to-market model at 82%.
• Product-led growth is favored by early-stage startups. By Series C, 65% of companies shift to sales-led growth.
• Partner/channel sales become more important as companies scale, reaching 14% by Series D+.

Pricing Strategies

• Usage-based pricing (UBP) is on the rise. 44% of companies are considering adopting UBP for future products or services.
• Flat-fee subscriptions are popular in early stages but decline as companies scale.
• The main challenge with UBP is predicting future usage for new customers.
• Companies are prioritizing flexible, value-aligned pricing strategies that evolve to directly address customers and scale.

Sales Teams and Operations

• Remote work dominates among sales teams, with 92% operating fully or partially remotely.
• High-performing sales teams are often at least partially remote, challenging the notion that in-office teams are more productive.
• Sales team configurations vary based on initial sale price, with smaller deals favoring frequent assessments (monthly or quarterly) and larger deals shifting toward bi-annual or annual reviews.
• Pipeline coverage ratios have increased year-over-year indicating a need for more coverage to meet revenue targets. (Slide 9)
• New deals face the highest risk of slippage with a 41% slippage rate and 38% fall-through, while renewals are more resilient.

Technology and AI

• 63% of companies have integrated new AI features into their core products, but only 39% of customers are using those features.
• Only 33% of companies find these AI features profitable, while 39% lack sufficient insight into COGS to fully assess their financial impact.

Billing Infrastructure and Challenges

• 58% of companies plan to change their billing infrastructure to increase functionality, with 50% seeking improved integration with other systems.
• Billing challenges are widespread, with 35% of companies struggling to systemize custom contracts.
• The average billing team size is small (2) and primarily handled by finance (35%) and founders (29%), suggesting that companies may be under-resourced in this area.

Key Challenges

• Inaction and economic uncertainty are the leading reasons for lost deals.
• Predicting future usage for new customers is a major challenge for usage-based pricing.
• Balancing remote work with traditional management views is still an issue.

This summary provides a broad overview of the key insights from the sources, highlighting trends, challenges, and strategies in sales, pricing, and operations.