January 18, 2025

4 min read

Sales Growth Rate: Tips to Calculate Sales Growth Using Formula

Nalin

Founder & CEO

reviewed by

What's the exact scenario of your business? Is your business booming or limping along?

Essentially, you want to tell whether it is growing or declining. One of the most basic ways to figure this out is by calculating the company's sales growth rate.

Though it may not seem like the most glamorous aspect of a job, it is nonetheless an essential part of understanding how your deals influence your company's productivity and future.

We have picturized everything you have to know about sales growth rate and tips to grow your revenue.

Let's explore!

What is Sales Growth Rate?

Sales growth rate is the rate at which a business grows over a fixed period of time. For example, the annual growth rate of your business is the difference between your current revenue and the previous year's revenue. You experience a positive or negative sales growth rate depending on whether there's an increase or decrease in your current year's revenue compared to the previous year. It can be calculated in percentages or dollars.

The growth rate is not only reported and tracked internally by managers to help grow the company's annual revenue, but investors also pay close attention to this number.

The reason? To gauge if your business has the potential for long-term sustainable growth or might soon run out of steam. With this critical metric exposed, companies will know where they are at and how best to proceed when the time comes for improvement!

Sales Growth Rate Formula

You can calculate the sales growth rate of your business and find the efficiency by using a simple formula. All you need to have is the net income value of one period(initial period) and the net income value of another(current value).

You can get this number from an income statement or other business metrics. Once you have those two figures cited above, you can use the following sales growth calculation formula:

‍

Sales growth rate = [(current period sales - prior period sales) / Prior period sales]*100

Let's understand this better with a practical example;

ABC SaaS company is a startup. They want to know their sales growth rate compared to last year's sales. As per their income report,

Sales revenue for the 1st quarter of 2021: $5.25 billion

Sales revenue for the 1st quarter of 2022: $6.34 billion

Now their sales growth rate will be = [(6.34-5.25) / 5.25]*100 = 20.76%

Thus ABC SaaS company had a growth rate of 20.76%, more than last year's sales.

What is an Average Sales Growth Rate?

If you are looking for a way to measure your company's sales performance, then you should consider using the average annual sales growth ratio. As it sounds, this figure indicates how much a company's global sales have grown annually.

From an analyst's perspective, this concept helps examine other ratios that indicate how well a company performs in various areas such as profitability, return on assets and debt management, capital structure, etc. You can find the average sales growth rate by using the formula,

‍

Average annual sales growth rate =

(Sales growth rate A + Sales growth rate B + [Another period you want to measure])/ Total number of periods

Let's understand this with a practical example;

ABC SaaS company wants to measure their sales growth rate over the past three years. They have their Annual sales values and growth rate per year on their hands.

Year Revenue Growth rate
2018 $0.75 million -
2019 $1 million 25%
2020 $1.12 million 10.71%
2021 $1.5 million 25%

Now to calculate the average annual sales growth;

(25%+10.71%+25%) / 3 years = 20.23%

Thus, from 2018 to 2021, ABC SaaS company had a growth rate of 20.23%.

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How to Calculate Your Sales Growth Rate?

Revenue is the king of all SaaS metrics in terms of growth. Revenue growth is the increase or decrease of a company's sales over time-based on the amount and frequency of sales made during that period.

You can calculate your sales growth rate simply in 3 steps. Let's do it;

Step 1:

Determine how many tickets for your service or product was sold or used during the initial time. This will denote what happened with your profits and net income during that period.

Step 2:

Determine your business value at the end of that period. That number will represent how well your business performed during that period. It can also be the present value.

Step 3:

If you have your initial and end values at your fingertips, you can apply those values to the sales growth rate formula to get your sales growth rate.

You can even use an interactive digital flipbook to present this data to make it more accessible to your team.

Tips to Improve Your Sales Growth

Now that you know how to track your sales growth. But how can you maximize your business's efficiency to reach a better growth rate?

Below are five ways in which you can improve your sales growth without having to alter your entire business model. Let's discuss possible ways of increasing it.

1. Understand your present sales scenario

The first step in any sales-related improvement plan is to look at existing practices. If you're not satisfied with your current sales growth rate, consider the “why” behind everything.

For example, is your team hitting their regular targets over the past few weeks? Do most of your sales come from cold email outreach by your team or through call center software, proactive customer contact, or referrals? Are your overall sales figures high, but the net amount you'll see isn't quite matching up? If there have been times when things slowed down, try to identify the potential problems in your system and tailor strategies to meet your goals.

2. Optimize how your company generates revenue

To ensure your company is successfully pulling in revenue, you need to understand every layer of your organization. You need to know what it takes to bring in funds and how changes could benefit your company's earnings performance. But how can you do this? That's where the role of intelligent Revenue comes in.

Intelligent revenue looks at your data to determine the most crucial areas to focus on when it comes down to identifying what is fitting for your business. It helps you make changes that could lead you closer to succeeding with sales growth and ultimately fueling up your revenue positively.

So, if you pinpoint every layer of your organization, you can optimize your strategy to reach the expected growth rate.

3. Provide training to your sales team

Sales reps can become complacent and stale if they don't receive enough training. If your sales team doesn’t have enough input to play their game, you can’t scale your business.

Make sure you keep your team engaged in regular sessions that help with their sales or introduce them to new products.If you decide to change the sales process (like using a new B2B data provider or automating sales activities), ensure the sessions are relevant and up-to-date.

4. Make customer satisfaction your priority

Satisfied customers are essential to continued business growth. If you want to improve your sales performance, your customers must be happy with the products and services they're receiving or becoming aware of from being a part of your business.

In fact, 78% of consumers stay loyal to brands that understand their goals. Large markets flood buyers with thousands of offers every day. Today's buyers need more than just a product or service they can purchase. They need someone they can trust, who understands them and what they do – not just their consumer preferences.

5. Increase sales through practical product demonstrations

Presenting your product effectively can help increase the sales of your company. To do so, it's essential to have a compelling pitch that packs a punch and draws attention to your business.

When creating this pitch, list out what makes your product stand out from the crowd in an easily understandable manner. Also, make sure you discuss the benefits of looking into your products without selling them directly. One of the effective ways to establish this is having an interactive sales demo software in place.

In conclusion - aim for digestible skimmable content that touches on the best points about your product or service.

Close Deals faster and Increase Sales Growth - how?

Landing a B2B sales deal in today’s competitive market can sometimes be tricky. The key is to do your research before pitching and discover your customer’s goals and pain points.

Once you know the pain point of your users, it will be simple for you to address them with your product.

But how? That’s where the role of an interactive product demo comes in. It not only encourages your prospects to take action but also lets your sales team thrive with their efficiency.

During the qualifying process, you should have identified these needs that you can now show off during the demo as to effectively communicate how your software aims to meet them as well as benefit your client.

In addition to informing the customer that this concept of yours solves the problems they have been experiencing for so long, you also demonstrate that you have researched and understand their struggles.

The takeaway

Finally, a successful business will rely heavily on producing and selling new products to achieve a hipe on growth rate. You may have a great product that solves your prospects' problems.

But if you fail to present it in a way that stands out from all those other products competing for people's attention, you can’t convert leads to customers. Moreover, the sales will merely be stagnant.

Every business needs interactive software to enhance its sales because, ultimately, that drives revenue growth through repeated purchases, as customers are inspired by the experience they have with your product. It's not enough just to put together a collection of pages to describe the features of your product. You have to give a demo that is both simple and interactive.

But how can you achieve this? With the help of Storylane. We help you tailor your product demo that fits the expectation of your prospects and drives the session to a favorable destination. Want to explore how it helps your business? Book a free demo and present your product in a way that it deserves.

FAQs

What is the formula for growth rate in sales?

You can calculate the sales growth rate using the formula: Current period sales - prior period sales / Prior period sales *100.

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Storylane vs Navattic - 2025 Update

8 MIN READ

•

Product

If you're in the market for demo automation software, you've probably come across Storylane and Navattic. This comparison should help you differentiate between both platforms to guide your purchase decision.

Why GTM teams prefer Storylane

At a high-level, customers prefer Storylane for the product functionality, versatility, ease-of-use, commercial model, and rate of innovation.

1. Product functionality

Before diving in, here’s a quick overview of core features common to both Storylane and Navattic — really, they’re table stakes for any modern demo automation platform:

Self-serve free plan: Build your first demo on your own, for free
Browser extension: Chrome extension for click-based capturing
HTML/CSS demos: Clickable, editable HTML-based demo capture
App integrations: Your usual suspects - CRMs, Slack, Zapier, etc.
Demo analytics: Account reveal, performance metrics, intent signals, etc.

And with that out of the way, here are a few ways Storylane stands out from Navattic...

1.1 Flexible demo formats

Broadly, there are two formats of interactive demos:

Image demos: Screenshot or video-based demos with sequential steps. Limited scope to control on-screen elements and interactions, but quick to create and load.
HTML/CSS demos: Clickable demos that capture the product's look, feel, and interactions. On-screen elements such as text, data, and graphics may be edited.

In their own words, Navattic only specializes in top-of-funnel HTML demos. Storylane, on the other hand, is expressly designed for both demo formats — complete with auto-capture, annotations, guides, blurs, zooms, presenter videos, voice overs, and more.

What does this mean for you? With Storylane, you have the flexibility to pick between demo formats based on your needs: image-based guided demos for your website, video demos for email campaigns, HTML demos for sandbox environments, etc.

This flexibility (coupled with the next set of differences) puts Storylane in an unequivocally stronger position when it comes to scaling demos across departments and use-cases.

1.2 Agentic demo automation with Lily AI

One of Storylane’s biggest differentiators against Navattic (and pretty much every other vendor in this category) is Lily, our demo automation agent. Broadly, Lily helps in two ways:

Easier, faster demo creation for sellers
Contextual demo discovery for buyers

Here’s a rundown of what you can do with Lily today:

Create with AI: Generate or improve demos in seconds — complete with product-specific guides, prompt-based editing assistance, voiceovers, zooms, and more.
AI Avatars: Pick from dozens of avatars or make one of yourself to generate studio-quality presenter videos. You have the option to manually record content in-app as well.
AI HTML Editor: Customize HTML demo environments on the fly to meet ad hoc requirements. Edit text, images, and graphs with simple prompts — no code needed.
AI Voiceovers / Translate: Choose from over 65+ voices (or record your own) and 25+ languages to expand accessibility and furnish your demos with a human touch.

As for discovery, think of Lily as a conversation product expert with as much information as your best sales person, available 24/7 to guide prospects through discovery and qualification. Coming soon.

Where’s Navattic at with all this? As it stands, they do not support any comparable features.

1.3 Demo Hub

Next up, we have Demo Hub: one of Storylane’s flagship features to address multiple buyer personas and use-cases in one place with galleries and playlists of demos. Galleries help marketers showcase a library of bite-sized product demos on their website (without overwhelming early stage prospects) while playlists help sales and presales teams share curated demo experiences with later stage prospects.

Navattic does not support any comparable feature to date. As it stands, Navattic’s response to Demo Hub is Demodash, an agency that charges as much as $2000 per demo to create demo centers for their customers.

1.4 Apps galore

Another key differentiator is Storylane's lineup of native apps. We’re the only demo automation vendors to support apps for Gmail, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Desktop (Mac).

Try the Salesforce app, listed on the Salesforce AppExchange
Try the HubSpot app, listed on the HubSpot marketplace
Try the Gmail plugin
Download the Storylane desktop app

These quality of life improvements are designed especially for sales teams to personalize and share demos without logging into Storylane (plus, easier change management is always nice).

You might be noticing a pattern here: To date, Navattic does not support this functionality — and given their focus on a limited set of use-cases, nor do we believe that they plan to. More on this next.

2. Versatility across GTM

Most demo automation vendors sell to a specific function. Saleo sells to sales. Consensus sells to pre-sales. And Navattic? Well they primarily sell to marketers. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it can be a limiting factor when you’re looking to scale demo operations across departments and use-cases.

Storylane is specifically designed for horizontal adoption across marketing, pre-sales, sales, and even customer success, product, and development teams. The differences in product functionality highlighted above (coupled with under the radar features such as secure demo sharing and personalized links for email campaigns) are testament to this claim.

3. Ease of use

As for which demo automation software is easier to use, we’ll let numbers do the talking.

‍

‍

"Storylane makes it much easier to organize content with its tagging system for chapters and sections. While Navattic allows labeling, it lacks searchability and filtering capabilities, which becomes crucial when managing multiple chapters. I particularly appreciate how Storylane structures chapters with their own dedicated build sections. In contrast, with Navattic, when I created an 80-step process, it stretched into one long, horizontal sequence that required constant scrolling back and forth. Storylane's more concise organization makes me much more excited to build out product demos” - A customer when asked about how Storylane compared to Navattic

4. Commercial models

Upon initial inspection, Storylane is (slightly) more expensive per plan than Navattic. A closer look, however, reveals that we offer several features in our lower tier plans. To name a few:

Lily AI (Available in Storylane’s free plan onwards vs unavailable on Navattic)
Account reveal (Available in Storylane’s $40/mo plan vs. Navattic’s $1000/mo plan)
Demo translations (Available in Storylane’s $40/mo plan vs Navattic’s $1000/mo plan)
Demo Hub (Available in Storylane’s $500/mo plan vs unavailable on Navattic)
Offline demos (Available in Storylane’s $1200/mo plan vs. Navattic’s enterprise plan)
Demo coaching (Available in Storylane’s $1200/mo plan vs. Navattic’s enterprise plan)

If you really think about it, this probably translates to better bang for your buck. But what about the whole “unlimited seats” deal? Sounds great, sure — but how sustainable is it really? As your organization (and demo requirements) start to scale, it’s unrealistic to expect the same support for a 5 seat plan as a 200 seat plan. Another reason why Storylane’s value-based pricing makes more sense for the long run.

Edit: Recently, Navattic has also started capping their seats per plan. Goes to show that as a commercial model, the whole unlimited seats approach probably didn't work out as intended.

And there you have it! Both Navattic and Storylane are leading demo automation softwares — but when you break it down, it’s hard to argue against the latter. Storylane's objectively in the clear for most buying considerations: functionality, versatility, ease-of-use, and commercials.

5. On innovation - What’s next?

It may not feel like it (especially to us), but demo automation has only been around for a handful of years. As a category, we’re still in nascent stages. Unlike with established verticals such as CRMs or project management tools, it’s on younger companies like ours to innovate and push the envelope in these “early days” of demo automation.

Nitty-gritty comparisons aside, it’s worth sharing that Storylane has been at the forefront of this since day one. With category-first initiatives like self-serve PLG, Demo Hub, and more recently, Lily AI — innovation continues to be at the heart of our business. If you decide to go with Storylane, we hope the question “what's next?” excites you as much as it excites us!

Introducing Lily: Your demo automation agent

From day one, our mission has been to simplify B2B buying and selling. When we launched in 2021, we recognized that product demos – a key touchpoint in most customer journeys – generated undue friction for buyers and sellers alike. From both a creation and discovery stand point, demos fell flat in terms of ease-of-use, accessibility, and scalability. This gap is exactly what we set out to close with Storylane.

A trip down Storylane

Storylane's growth has always been marked by industry-first innovations. We began by introducing interactive demos in 2022. The goal was to help teams build quick and simple demos for a range of marketing and sales use-cases. Soon enough, this put us on the map as the fastest, easiest-to-use demo automation tool in the market.

Next, in 2023, we became the first self-serve platform in our category. Here, our goal was to democratize access to demo automation for marketing, sales, and presales teams of all sizes. Today, we work with over 3000 companies ranging from early-stage startups to industry giants such as Microsoft, Gong, and Cognism.

Last year, in 2024, we recognized that one demo wasn’t going to cut it. After all, B2B purchase decisions involve multiple buyer personas, use-cases, and product lines. In such cases, it only makes sense to share multiple, context-specific demos with prospects.

After much anticipation, we launched Demo Hub; another category-first innovation designed to share multiple demos as galleries or playlists.

In 2025, Storylane goes agentic

We’ve done well to get to where we are today — but we know there’s still a ton of scope to simplify B2B buying and selling for everyone involved. We realize that:

Sellers prefer spending their time on qualified, high-intent deals — not demo operations
Buyers expect self-guided, context-specific product discovery — with minimal sales intervention

And so, in our attempt to address these all-too-common gaps in the buying experience, we're thrilled to announce Storylane’s boldest innovation yet: Lily, your demo automation agent.

Meet Lily: Your demo automation agent

Lily is a demo automation agent built for both buyers and sellers. She represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll be thinking about demo creation and discovery going forward, bringing in an agentic approach to Storylane’s existing line of demo automation products.

‍To start with, here’s what's in it for demo creators

‍1. Create with AI: Simply capture your product with Storylane's browser extension and leave the rest to us. Lily will create and optimize demos in a single click — complete with product-specific guides, annotations, and voiceovers.

2. AI Avatars: Pick from dozens of avatars — or make one of yourself. Share a script and generate studio-quality presenter videos in seconds. No camera, edits, or redos needed.

3. AI Voiceovers: Speak your audience’s language — literally. Generate studio-quality voiceovers in over 60 diverse voices and 25 languages.

4. AI HTML Editor: Customize demos on the fly to meet your prospect's unique needs. Edit text, images, and graphs with just simple, code-free prompts — Lily does the rest.

But wait…there’s more

All this? Just the beginning.

In March, Lily will evolve to support autonomous, contextual demo discovery for buyers. Imagine prospects exploring your product, right on your website, through intelligent conversations with Lily — getting exactly the information they need, when they need it — without any of the friction associated with traditional sales touchpoints.

‍In short, Lily will be a 24/7 tour guide — equipped with as much product knowledge as your best sales rep — to support buyers with contextual, self-serve product discovery.

Looking ahead: sales enablement & beyond

‍As we launch Lily, we're more committed than ever to our founding mission: eliminating friction in B2B buying and selling. We believe agentic demo automation represents the next frontier in B2B sales enablement, moving beyond static product demos to intelligent product experiences.

To our customers who've been part of this journey – thank you. Your feedback and trust have been instrumental in shaping not just Storylane, but the future of demo automation. And to those considering how to make their demo experience more effective and engaging – welcome to the era of agentic demo automation.

‍The future of product demonstrations is here, and we couldn't be more excited to help you tell your product's story in ways never before possible.

2024: Year-In-Review

8 MIN READ

•

Dec 30, 2024

This time last year, we spoke about product-market fit and our journey to democratize demo automation. 2024 was about building upon that vision and momentum – and wow, what a ride it's been!

Over the past 12 months, we grew our revenue by 2.5x, expanded to over 16k teams, shipped a new feature every four days (yes, you read that right), and hosted our very own awards show. But let's back up a bit and explore how it all unfolded.

Shipping at warp speed

From day one, our goal has been to eliminate friction for software buyers and sellers with accessible demo automation products. In 2024, we doubled down on this commitment with over a hundred (100!) product releases, both big and small. Here are some of our favorites:

Demo Hub: Build demo libraries that address multiple use-cases and buyer personas in a centralized gallery or playlist view. This was certainly our biggest launch of the year.
Personal video & AI voiceovers: Bring an engaging, personalized human touch to interactive demos with Loom-style video recordings and AI voiceovers.
Offline demos: Address the all too common challenges associated with unreliable, expensive WiFi at in-person events and conferences by downloading demos for offline use.

On the PLG front, we implemented convert CTA buttons, an advanced demo editing toolkit (blur, crop, screen layout, etc), as well as deeper analytics and lead attribution functionality, among others. All in all, the tremendous efforts from our product and engineering teams translated into serious business growth.

Growth that speaks volumes

In our previous review, we were thrilled about tripling our growth and establishing Storylane as a leader in the demo automation space. Looking back at 2024, we're humbled and so, so excited to see this momentum continue.

Revenue grew by 2.5x
Expanded to 16k+ teams
Brand search tripled (3x)
Website traffic surged by 20x
Our ACV increased by 50%
Last but not least, we acquired a company! - Storylane acquires PreSkale, expands into presales

Each one of our customers validates our vision and pushes us to innovate further. This year, we're particularly proud to welcome industry giants such as Microsoft, Pearson, Nasdaq and Silicon Valley Bank to our growing list of enterprise customers. Needless to say, we feel the love ❤️

60 million+ mins spent watching Storylane demos, 10x more than last year
85k+ Storylane demos created
5 million demo views per month, 4.7x more than last year

Making some noise (the good kind)

Go-to-market was all kinds of fun in 2024. There’s just way too much to cover, but here are a few highlights that helped us stand out in an increasingly competitive demo automation category.

Website redesign: Our website went through a complete overhaul earlier this year. This revamp – complete with bright colors and bold styling – reflects our move upmarket.
Demo-led SEO: What started off as an experiment, Storylane’s demo-led SEO BLEW UP in 2024. Our podcast with Exit Five on the topic has gone on to become their most popular post in the community!
An eventful year: We took the show on the road at Product Marketing Alliance Summit, Exit Five’s Drive, SaaS Open, G2 Live, and a handful of other fantastic events — a great chance to connect with our community and beyond.
Customer reviews: Our customers have been incredibly supportive, with over 500 G2 reviews. Out of 145,000+ products. and over 2,100 categories, Storylane was the only demo automation platform in G2's top 100 fastest growing products!
PreSkale acquisition: Storylane’s acquisition of PreSkale comes at an exciting time, marking our strategic expansion into the presales market in 2025. Read all about it here.

A few more initiatives that helped us make a lot of noise: Demo Dundies (our spin on conventional webinars, themed around The Office’s Dundies), product marketer affirmation cards (a deck of painfully relatable affirmations for our friends in product marketing), and Demo Kitchen (our recipe book inspired series of customer case studies).

40+ Storylaners and counting

As our team continues to grow, we've maintained the supportive, high-performing culture that's been our foundation for four years. This year, we welcomed our first People Success hire and celebrated team achievements with offsites in Bengaluru and Bali.

What’s cooking in 2025

If you thought 2024 was exciting, wait till you see what we've got in store for 2025! We're all set to take demo automation into sci-fi territory with first-of-its-kind AI functionality. We can’t spill all the beans just yet but picture this: an AI demo agent to polish, scale and show you personalized demos.

To our team, customers, and the entire Storylane community - thank you for being part of this journey. We're just getting started, and we couldn't be more excited about what's ahead. Here's to another year of pushing boundaries and helping you create amazing demos!

Make buying easy with Storylane

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What is Sales Growth Rate?

Sales Growth Rate Formula

What is an Average Sales Growth Rate?

How to Calculate Your Sales Growth Rate?

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Tips to Improve Your Sales Growth

1. Understand your present sales scenario

2. Optimize how your company generates revenue

3. Provide training to your sales team

4. Make customer satisfaction your priority

5. Increase sales through practical product demonstrations

Close Deals faster and Increase Sales Growth - how?

The takeaway

FAQs

What is the formula for growth rate in sales?

Related Articles

Storylane vs Navattic - 2025 Update

Why GTM teams prefer Storylane

1. Product functionality

1.1 Flexible demo formats

1.2 Agentic demo automation with Lily AI

1.3 Demo Hub

1.4 Apps galore

2. Versatility across GTM

3. Ease of use

4. Commercial models

5. On innovation - What’s next?

Introducing Lily: Your demo automation agent

A trip down Storylane

In 2025, Storylane goes agentic

Meet Lily: Your demo automation agent

‍To start with, here’s what's in it for demo creators

But wait…there’s more

Looking ahead: sales enablement & beyond

2024: Year-In-Review

Shipping at warp speed

Growth that speaks volumes

Making some noise (the good kind)

40+ Storylaners and counting

What’s cooking in 2025

Make buying easy with Storylane