We talk to a lot of startup sales teams here at Salesbricks. One of the most common challenges we see is sales velocity (and sales operations) getting bogged down by a disconnected hodgepodge of tools. You probably know what we’re talking about—Stripe for payments, Google Docs for quoting and agreements, an e-signature app, and maybe some other tools for billing—none of which are in sync.

Early on, it may not matter what tools are used—we get it—everyone just needs to close deals.

But as startups see success, operational debt becomes real. The one-off processes that got you your first sales will eventually slow you down. Especially in sales, you’ll find yourself and your team stuck with manual tasks, using different tools for quoting, signing, invoicing, and collecting.

Growth will always be a little crazy, but we suggest these five keys to ensuring that sales velocity doesn’t decelerate:

1 - Standardize pricing and packaging, and set guardrails for sales.

Consistency will streamline your sales motion, make billing and collections easier, and lead to more predictable, repeatable selling motions. It also helps when scaling the team—guidelines and guardrails around pricing make it much easier to onboard new reps.

2 - Don’t let time kill a deal.

Ensure that deal response time is quick. If it takes even a few hours for a rep to get approval, adjust a quote, and send it back to a customer, it’s taking too long. Quoting and responding to customer requests should be digital—and done in real time.

3 - Avoid separate systems for quoting, signing, and invoicing.

If you’re using separate systems, reps will get bogged down. Even if you have a dedicated sales ops lead, managing and coordinating across multiple platforms will become a bottleneck and a source of errors. Perhaps the biggest issue is that data ends up scattered across different tools, making even the simplest reporting a nightmare.

4 - Collect on time and don’t miss money owed.

If you aren’t billing and collecting on time, it will slow down renewals and create a bad experience for customers. Too often, startups enter renewal conversations only to realize a customer hasn’t been paying—not a great situation when you're handing them a renewal contract along with a huge past-due bill, and your only explanation is disorganization. Timely billing builds consistency, and consistency is key to strengthening customer relationships. Plus, your investors will be much happier when they see accurate revenue metrics and confidence in your ability to collect.

5 - Reduce operational debt as much as possible.

This point ties into all of the above, but it’s worth emphasizing. Operational debt will drain your team’s time and slow down growth. Manual processes might work in the early days, but if you want to scale, you have to automate them.