Q: Sales team has a 7% win rate over last 6 months. CEO has put full revenue accountability on the marketing team. How do I keep sales from failing?
Not to be too much of a Pollyanna — but a 7% win rate isn’t all bad. In fact, if you have an A+ engineering team, it might be borderline great news.
A 7% win rate certainly means you are losing 93% of deals … but it also means you are getting invited into a ton of deals. You’re getting a shot. You’ve getting the leads and the opportunities. You just can’t close them.
The hardest part is actually getting into a deal. So I’d take a pause and just as a team think through how you can get to 10% and then later, higher:
- What are the top 3 feature gaps you can close?
- Do you need better sales leadership? That alone can increase your close rate 50% at these levels.
- Are you nurturing leads properly?
- Are you hands on enough during trials?
- Are you providing your sales team enough training on FUD and competitive advantages?
- Are you focusing your marketing efforts in the areas you do win? After all, you do win some deals.
- And important — does at least 1 rep do a lot better? A lot better than 7%? More on that here.
You can drive this 7% number up. You have the leads. Getting anyone to even take a look at another vendor is hard. You aren’t doing everything wrong 
especially on the marketing side (even if it doesn’t feel like it).
And think about what even getting to 9% will do to your growth rate.
I know you want to win 70% of deals, not 7%. But take it step by step. This is the stage where even a few percent improvement will drive massive revenue gains.
(note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer)
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Jason Lemkin, Khareem Sudlow
