Close rate calculator

Calculate your close rate

How to calculate close rate

The formula is one line: close rate = deals won ÷ opportunities × 100. The argument is always about what counts as an opportunity.

• Quote win rate counts from the moment a price was put in front of someone. It tells you how well your offer and your price conversation work.
• Overall close rate counts from the first real conversation. It also captures everyone who talked to you and never got as far as a number, which is where most small businesses actually lose deals.

Track both. A 33% quote win rate looks fine on its own. If only one call in five reaches a quote, your overall close rate is under 7%, and the problem is upstream of the price.

What is a good close rate?

Published benchmarks are mostly for sales teams with SDRs, CRMs and qualified pipelines. A freelancer or consultant selling to people who asked to talk can use these rough bands for quotes won:

• Under 15%: quotes are going to people who were never going to buy, or the offer isn’t landing.
• 20–40%: healthy. Most of the growth from here is volume, not closing technique.
• Over 50%: you are probably too cheap. Winning nearly everything you quote means buyers see a bargain.

For calls that reach a quote, under 40% usually means the wrong people are booking calls, or they leave unsure what you actually do.

A worked example

A web developer had 20 discovery calls last quarter, sent 10 proposals and won 2. Overall close rate: 2 ÷ 20 = 10%. Quote win rate: 2 ÷ 10 = 20%. Half the calls reached a proposal, which is fine. One in five proposals won, which is the low edge of healthy.

So the developer’s next move is not more calls. It is working out why eight proposals went quiet. That is almost always a conversation problem, not a price problem: see why prospects ghost after the quote.

Questions people actually ask

How do you calculate close rate?

Divide the deals you won by the opportunities you had in the same period, then multiply by 100. If you count from quotes sent, it is your quote win rate; if you count from first sales conversations, it is your overall close rate. Say which one you mean, because they differ by a factor of two or more.

What is a good close rate?

For a freelancer or small service business selling to people who asked to talk, winning 20 to 40 percent of the quotes you send is healthy. Above 50 percent usually means your price is low. Below 15 percent means quotes are going to people who were never going to buy, or the offer is not landing.

What is the difference between close rate and conversion rate?

Conversion rate usually measures a step early in the funnel, such as visitors who become leads. Close rate measures the last step: opportunities that become paying customers. A business can have a fine conversion rate and a poor close rate, and the fix for each is different.

How do I improve my closing ratio?

Find which step leaks first. If calls rarely turn into quotes, the wrong people are booking calls or they leave unsure what you sell. If quotes rarely turn into wins, the offer or the price conversation is the problem. Fixing the wrong step wastes months.

More free tools

• Lead generation calculator — how many leads you need to hit a revenue goal.
• Sales pipeline calculator — the pipeline value and new deals a week your target needs.
• Consulting rate calculator — your floor hourly and day rate from real numbers.

Find your real bottleneck

A close rate tells you that deals leak. The free Bottleneck Finder tells you why: 18 questions that score all nine stages of the path from stranger to customer and name the one that’s blocking you.

Find my bottleneck — free, 5 minutes

No email, no login. The full framework is the book From Stranger to Sold; the first chapter is free.