Glossary
Win rate
Win rate is deals won divided by deals decided in the same period, counting the wins and the losses and leaving out everything still open. It is the cleanest test of whether you are quoting the right work at the right price. Read it beside proposals sent, because a win rate climbs whenever a team stops bidding on anything difficult.
01
Reading win rate next to the volume behind it
Monthly for most companies, and weekly only where enough deals get decided to keep the fraction stable. On a weekly Scorecard the safer pair is proposals sent and deals won as raw counts, with the percentage calculated for the monthly review. Raw counts cannot be improved by quoting less, which is the failure mode of the ratio.
Win rate tells you whether the problem sits at the top of the funnel or in the room. A low rate with plenty of proposals points at qualification, pricing or the pitch itself. A high rate with very few proposals usually means the team is bidding only where it feels comfortable, and the company is leaving work on the table.
Worked example: An engineering consultancy took its win rate from twenty-six to fifty-one percent over three quarters, which everybody enjoyed. Bids submitted had halved and revenue was flat. The partners had started declining anything with an unclear scope, which was sensible, but nobody replaced the volume until the pattern showed up on the board.
Sources: klipfolio.com/kpis/sales; kpi.org/kpi-basics/dashboarding-and-analysis
Ratio metric
A ratio metric divides one number by another: win rate, cost per lead, revenue per employee, the percentage of orders shipped on time.
02Pipeline coverage
Pipeline coverage divides open opportunity value by the sales target, so three times coverage means three dollars in play for every dollar needed.
03Sales cycle length
Sales cycle length is the median number of days between a defined starting point, usually qualification, and a deal closing either way.
04KPI examples by department: sales, ops, finance, HR
Concrete KPI examples for each department in a small company, tagged leading or lagging and weekly or monthly, to help you build a Scorecard that works.
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