Are Your Sales Taking Longer?

If you’ve noticed that it’s taking longer to make a sale than it used to, you’re not alone. According to our recent survey, 61% of galleries say it takes them more time to make a sale than it did five years ago.

For The Artlogic Gallery Report 2024, we asked gallery professionals from 50 countries for their thoughts on their sales cycle, workplace wellbeing, and future trends.

This slower sales cycle could, in part, be driven by a widespread lack of time across the art world, with 45% of respondents claiming to have less capacity to complete essential tasks, such as planning, than they did in 2019. As a result, just 16% of gallerists spend most of their time on sales and negotiations, with 44% finding that they're mostly wrapped up in prepping for shows, exhibitions and fairs. Could all this art fair prep be diverting too much attention from making sales?

Another possible contributor to the slower sales cycle is the amount of time gallerists are now dedicating to their online strategy. 73% of galleries are now spending more time on online sales than they did in 2019, despite 41% stating that it takes more time to sell online. This compared to 31% who think person-to-person sales take longer and 28% who think both online and in-person sales take a similar amount of time.

However, the longer sales cycle phenomenon isn’t uniform across the market. Mid-size galleries are actually bucking the trend, managing to conduct 75% of their sales in under a month – quicker even than the largest galleries (those with 50 or more employees).

Whatever your current strategy, our findings suggest that, in an increasingly omni-channel art market, all galleries could have better results by investing in technology that can help them manage leads across multiple sales avenues.

These are just some of the incredible insights we’ve uncovered in The Artlogic Gallery Report 2024. Download the full report to find out how gallerists around the world are feeling about their work-life balance and how optimistic they are about the future.