Sales win rate is the share of decided quotes you win: quotes won divided by quotes won plus quotes lost. For a distributor it is one of the few numbers that shows directly how customers react to your prices. Measured by segment and by price level, it tells you where you are priced too high, and, more often, where you are winning everything because you are priced too low.
The win rate formula
Count only quotes that reached a decision. Quotes still open belong in next month's figure. Expired quotes, where the customer never answered, need one rule applied consistently: most distributors count them as lost after the validity date, because the customer bought somewhere else or not at all.
By count or by value
The two answer different questions. Win rate by count shows how often customers say yes. Win rate by value shows whether you win the large quotes. A distributor that wins 61% of quotes but 56% of value is losing more of its big ones, which usually points to price on large orders.
Measure it per line as well as per quote
Distribution quotes often have 10, 20 or 40 lines, and customers frequently buy some lines and not others. A quote counted as won because the customer ordered three lines out of twenty hides seventeen losses. Tracking line win rate shows which items and price levels customers actually take, and that is the data a pricing model needs.
How price moves win rate
Every distributor's history has the same pattern: the further above the segment's normal price a line is quoted, the less often it wins. The shape of that curve is what matters. Here is an example for one segment and category, from a year of quote lines:
- 8% below list81%
- 4% below list74%
- At list62%
- 4% above list49%
Read with margin, the curve shows where profit is. On the 6205-2RS bearing, with an $18.56 list price and $11.60 landed cost, moving from 8% below list to 4% below loses 7 points of win rate and adds about 3 points of margin. Expected profit per unit rises from 81% × $5.48 = $4.44 to 74% × $6.22 = $4.60, so the higher price earns more. The pricing optimization guide shows how expected profit, win chance times margin, picks the best price.
Why win rates mislead
- Price checks inflate the denominator. Some customers ask for quotes only to compare with their regular supplier, so they were never likely to buy.
- Lost quotes go unrecorded. If reps delete lost quotes, the win rate looks high and nobody learns why.
- Mix changes. A month with more quotes to new customers will show a lower win rate without anything going wrong.
- Rep habits differ. One rep quotes everything a customer mentions, another only firm requests.
How to improve it without giving margin away
- Record every loss
With the price offered and, when the customer says, the winning price.
- Split by segment and category
Find where win rate is low and where it is suspiciously high.
- Fix speed before price
Slow quotes lose deals that a lower price would not have saved.
- Move price where the curve says
Small cuts where win rate is low, small rises where it is near 100%.
Machine learning pricing learns each segment's win curve from your own quote lines and recommends the price with the best expected result on every line, so win rate and margin move together instead of against each other.
See win chance on your own quote lines
Common questions
Divide the quotes you won by the quotes that reached a decision, won plus lost. Leave out quotes that are still open, and decide once how to treat expired quotes. A distributor with 412 won and 268 lost quotes in a quarter has a win rate of 412 ÷ 680 = 60.6%.
There is no universal number, because it depends on how many quotes are real buying intent versus price checks. A distributor's own trend, by segment and by rep, is a better yardstick than any published benchmark. A sudden rise can be as worrying as a fall, if it means prices are too low.
No. A win rate near 100% usually means prices are too low: you are winning quotes you could have won at a higher margin. The goal is the most gross profit across all quotes, which often comes with a win rate a little lower than the maximum.