This was a short, sharp Webbit. Fifteen minutes. A timer. Mild jeopardy. And five fresh win-rate stats pulled from £48 billion in opportunities across the UK and the US.
No fluff. Just numbers that should make most revenue teams slightly uncomfortable. The whole point was simple. Stop guessing. Start comparing.
If your win rates look nothing like these, that’s not “context”. That’s a problem.
We kicked off with the win rate by deal size. Mid-market came out worst at 21.2%, which, surprise of surprises, surprised exactly nobody who has ever watched a top SMB rep get promoted and then quietly struggle. Mid-market is not just a bigger SMB. More stakeholders. More risk. More legal. Less forgiveness. Enterprise actually performs better because it knows what it is doing. Brutal, but fair.
Then we moved on to the lead source. Organic inbound and partner referrals looked strong. Warm deals usually do. The interesting bit was organic inbound outperforming partners on win rate, while partner referrals were still 30% more efficient overall. Translation. Partners work, but only if you give them time and teach them how to qualify properly. Six months is not a strategy. It is impatience dressed up as decisiveness. Our own partner programme took 18 months to establish itself.
Sales stage conversion was where things got spicy. Nearly half of deals make it through discovery, demo, and alignment. Then they die later. That tells you one thing. Most teams are qualifying far too late. The best reps qualify out early and often. It feels harsh. It is actually polite. Nobody enjoys a six-month sales cycle that was never going to close. Especially your solutions engineers.
Sales cycle length backed this up. Once SMB and mid-market deals drift past 180 days, the win rate drops to 4%. Hope is not a strategy. If there is no momentum, no access, and no plan, cut it. The only valid excuse is someone important being in the hospital. And even then, maybe.
We finished with multi-threading and senior engagement. The numbers were not subtle.
- One contact. Roughly a 6% win rate
- Two contacts. Just over 50%
- Seven or more. North of 50% and climbing
- CFO involved. 35% win rate versus 12% without
- Genuine engagement with the decision maker. Up to 40%
CFOs are not the bogeyman. They want the story explained properly. And engagement is not sending 50 emails into the void. Two emails. One reply. That counts.
Everyone who attended gets the infographic. Keep it handy. Quote it in meetings. Start better arguments. And if you reach out on LinkedIn and mention the win rate, we will accept. We promised.
