Sales Driven Marketing Hub

There are ways to track your selling process to predict the likelihood of closing a sale.

While the mantra of “always be closing” still rings true, there are other factors at play you might find surprising. 

Implisit recently analyzed over 20,000 opportunities to find out what predicts the likelihood of closing a sale. Here are their findings so you can better manage your sales pipeline.

1. Be Realistic

According to the research, opportunities are only 30% likely to close. On average, less than one-third of opportunities end up as closed-won, the other 70+% are closed-lost. 

2. Close Quickly 

Over 50% of won opportunities were closed within 30 days. On the other hand, 37% of lost deals were still open and in the pipeline after six months.

What’s more, deals are more likely to be won than lost in the first 30 days. After six months, however, there’s less than a 20% chance that a deal will be won. 

3. Collaborate with Other Reps

The more sales reps that collaborate on an opportunity, the higher the likelihood it will close. While deals that were won involved 1.4 sales reps on average, lost deals involved only 1.1. 

4. Follow-up

Closed-won deals tend to involve 4.8 times more communication than those lost. While winning deals averaged 34.9 emails, lost deals only had 7.2. Track your communications activity level to identify opportunities at risk, follow-up with value added calls and sales emails. 

5. Involve More Stakeholders

While won deals included an average of 1.3 people from the client side of the table, lost opportunities only involved 1.1. By getting more decision makers involved, you’ll have a bigger audience and a better likelihood to close the deal. 

6. Stay Confident

At the end of the day, only 17% of companies have a win rate of over 50%. Yep, you read that right; 83% of companies have a win rate of 50% or below. So don’t be too hard on yourself if your win rate is lower than you’d like—sales is a tough business. 

Conclusion

Implisit’s findings highlight what you can do to keep the deal moving until you close the sale. These statistics also help manage your expectations for the how strong your sales opportunities really are. Maintain constant contact to ensure high customer engagement, and you'll see the most viable prospects close more quickly and your win rate improve.