Glossary

Win rate

The share of sales opportunities that close as won, out of all opportunities that reached a final decision.

Also called: close rate, win percentage

Win rate measures how often a sales team converts opportunities it pursues into closed-won deals. It is one of the most-watched sales metrics because it reflects the combined effect of lead quality, sales execution and competitive positioning in one number.

The usual calculation is won opportunities / (won opportunities + lost opportunities) x 100, counting only opportunities that reached a decision. A common variant divides won deals by all opportunities ever created, including ones still open; this produces a lower and less comparable figure, so it matters which denominator a report is using before comparing win rate across teams or time periods. Win rate is often broken down by segment, source or rep to find where conversion is weak.

Win rate feeds directly into sales velocity and forecasting models, and is tracked alongside average deal size and sales cycle length to see the full shape of a pipeline, not just its speed. A rising win rate paired with a shrinking pipeline can still mean falling revenue, and reps sometimes inflate the rate by disqualifying weak opportunities early rather than logging them as losses, which hides real conversion problems from sales forecasting.

Last reviewed September 22, 2026

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Related terms

Sales cycle length The average time from an opportunity being created to a deal closing, either won or lost. Average deal size The mean revenue value of closed-won deals over a period, found by dividing total value by deal count. Sales velocity A single measure of how fast a sales team generates revenue, combining pipeline volume, deal size, win rate and cycle time. Pipeline coverage The ratio of open sales pipeline value to a revenue target, used to judge whether enough deals exist to hit it. Sales forecasting Predicting future sales volume or revenue from pipeline data, historical trends or statistical models. Quota attainment The percentage of an assigned sales quota that a rep, team or organization actually achieved in a period.

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