Sales Win Rates Matter

Your win rate is one of your two most important personal sales metrics.

What percentage of your most qualified prospects do you convert into paying customers?

Win rates are not a terribly useful team metric because there is no collective activity you can undertake to improve it.

A team win rate is just an average. And averages are not reliable measures of performance across a diverse group of sellers.

Individual contributors have win rates. Improvement has to come at the IC level.

Recently, some sales pundits have tried to make the argument that win rates don’t matter. That the only thing that matters is the size of your commission.

Which is just nonsense.

First, every one of you has a win rate. You should know what it is at all times.

It's a relevant indicator of how effective you are at each step of personal sales process.

Second, your win rate is the buyer’s ultimate referendum on your ability to add value to their buying journey.

In general, customers won't buy from a channel that adds cost but no value.

Third, and most importantly, if you’re hitting 100% of your on-target earnings, and your win rate is 35% or less, then you’re leaving a ton of commission dollars on the table. (And, if you’re not at 100% OTE, then win rate is everything.)

Want to make more money? Do the hard work to improve your win rate.

You can be satisfied with your low win rate if you think you’re earning enough commission.

However, sellers who aren’t satisfied will be out there winning your deals and kicking your butt around the block.

Improving your win rate takes hard work.

You have to analyze each step of your personal selling process to identify areas for improvement.

You have to identify the particular behaviors and skills that you need to amplify.

This requires some straight forward coaching and mentoring.

And it requires new perspectives and instruction on ways to develop and master new selling habits that fundamentally change the value you deliver to your buyers.

If you’re an individual contributor, a seller with account responsibility, then you can try on your own to piece together all of these resources you need to improve your win rate.

Or you can leverage our sales coaching program to help improve your and your rep's win rates.

To your greater success,

Peter C. Mclees, Principal
Smart Development

We help sales reps and sales organizations accelerate their sales.