Every win rate depends on a decision most firms have never formally made: at what point should an opportunity be created?
Two partners, two measures
Imagine one partner creates an opportunity after a first conversation with a prospect. Another waits until the engagement letter is ready to send.
The first partner’s opportunities include everything that didn’t work out. The second partner’s are almost all wins, because by the time they’re recorded the work is already won.
Put them together and the firm’s win rate is an average of two different measures. Neither tells management anything reliable. Win rates can’t be compared across teams, services or offices, and nobody can measure how long the sales cycle really is.
The firm in our whitepaper with a 97.4% win rate showed exactly the pattern you’d expect if most opportunities are entered once the work is already won.
Agree the entry point
The firm with the more useful data had done something simple. It agreed a clear set of conditions for creating an opportunity and a small number of defined stages from there to won or lost. Closing an opportunity as lost requires a reason.
The exact criteria matter less than the fact that everyone uses the same ones. Once the entry point is agreed and applied consistently, losses are captured from the start rather than reconstructed later, and the pipeline starts to reflect real demand.
