Win rates are critical to driving performance and achieving our goals. Win rates are critical to our understanding of our pipelines. We leverage them to help us understand whether we are working a sufficient volume high quality opportunities to achieve our goals. The higher our win rates, the more we shift the pipeline numbers in our favor.
As a simple example, today, we settle for 15-20% win rates. Everything else being equal, and it seldom is, we need 5-6 times pipeline coverage to achieve our goals. Improving win rates to 30-40%, which usually is not that difficult, nor does it take a lot of time, changes the dynamics profoundly. We only need 3-4 times pipeline coverage to achieve our goals.
And then there are those high performing organizations that consistently have 60-80% win rates. To achieve the same goals, they have to have far fewer qualified opportunities.
And all of this ripples through to top of pipeline and above the pipeline. The number of prospects we have to engage, the number of people we have to engage, turning them to prospects, changes profoundly as we improve our win rates.
Alternatively, we can chase higher growth rates and more aggressive revenue goals.
But here is where there is a huge misunderstanding of win rates. How do we improve our win rates?
Mistakenly, too many people think we can improve them in our pipeline reviews. But win rates are a data point that facilitate our deal reviews, we can’t improve them by talking about our pipelines.
We only improve win rates in our deal execution!
We improve win rates deal by deal by deal!
To win more deals, improving win rates, we have to think about: Are we chasing the right deals with the right customers? Is there a high sense of urgency to change? Is there something the customer needs, as opposed to wants, to change? Do they need to change it now? How are we helping the customer effectively and efficiently navigate their buying journey? Are we addressing FOMO and FOMU in working with our customers as they navigate the change process? Are we creating value with them in every interaction? Are we demonstrating how we help them solve their problem and achieve their goals? Are we helping them build support within the organization and with their management? Are we helping…….
Our win rates are based on how effectively we execute our selling process, aligning with the customer buying process. The more deals we win, the higher our win rate. There is no other way to think about and talk about improving win rates!
In our pipeline reviews, we should talk about our win rates. We should talk about how our business and pipeline dynamics changes as we improve win rates; or as they deteriorate. Likewise, we should talk about the impact of improving deal quality in our pipelines, or improving average deal size, or reducing selling/buying cycles. All of these impact pipeline dynamics.
But we fix none of these in pipeline discussions.
We only fix them in deal execution, so the issue becomes, how are we helping our people in improving their deal execution?
Afterword: I’m experimenting with a new AI tool. This tool reads the article and two characters conduct a discussion about it. It’s a fascinating perspective, I hope you enjoy listening to it.
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