Short answer: six to twelve months enterprise, three to nine mid-market, sixty to ninety days SMB. The early cycle has its own signals and they are not first close.
Month one and two are the architecture build. Hero, deck, proof packet, price presentation, credential map, ICP definition, buyer journey. Month two through four is the pipeline generation: outbound, ABM, paid demand-generation, partner-led intros, conference presence. Month three through five is technical evaluation and security evaluation. Month four through eight is procurement, legal, and signature for enterprise. The first close lands at the end of that cycle. The cycle is structural. The home market does not change it.
What month three should show: second-meeting rate above 20% on qualified first meetings, at least one named champion per ten opportunities, proof packet forwarding inside buyer orgs, and procurement-stage requests on at least two deals. If those four are present, the cycle is healthy and the seven-to-nine-month first-close band holds. Per IMAP German Mid-Cap M&A 2026, cross-border vendors that hit those four leading signals at month three convert at 2-4x the rate of vendors that do not.
Gartner projects 90% of B2B purchases will involve AI agents by 2028 and Forrester puts 1 in 5 B2B sellers facing an AI buyer-agent by end-2026. AI buyer-agents shorten the early sort. They do not shorten the procurement gate. The first sixty days compress. The procurement and legal stages do not. The seven-to-nine-month enterprise band is going to compress to five-to-seven over the next two to three years. It is not going below five.
Buyer-language pattern. The company works at home. The US buyer still asks what category it belongs in, why the proof is relevant here, and what the next low-risk step should be.
Related answers and pains
A Market-Entry Marketing Sprint covers month one and two: architecture, deck, proof packet, credential map. A Cross-Border Marketing Build runs month one through six and is the shape that lands the first close at month seven to nine inside a working pipeline engine. A Global Marketing Partnership is monthly retainer with a twelve-month minimum. Commercial terms are set after fit and scope are clear. No public price bands are published.
Sources for this page: Roland Berger Mittelstand survey 2025-2026, IMAP German Mid-Cap M&A 2026, US BEA FDI inflows 2025, Gartner agentic commerce forecast 2028, Forrester B2B AI buyer-agent forecast.