5 Tips to Increase the Close Rate for Your Sales Team

You put so much work into constructing, adjusting, and overseeing a sales strategy that moves opportunities through each stage in the sales funnel. Finally, it all pays off once the sales close. 

But exactly how often do all these efforts really pay off? How do you know whether your reps close enough sales to reach the team’s goals or whether there is room for improvement? 

Close rate is the ultimate measure of success for great sales reps, teams, and organizations. That’s why you need to know how to increase your close rate to high-performance levels.

Cracking that code and closing more sales can put your sales team on a trajectory to unprecedented success, and failing to do so could lead to lackluster revenue and stymied growth.

So this article provides five key tips for increasing your sales team’s close rate and answers the most pressing close rate FAQs.

Defining Close Rate

Close rate, also known as ‘closing ratio’ and ‘closing percentage,’ is an extremely insightful key performance indicator. But how should companies define this crucial metric?

Close Rate- the ratio of sales successfully closed compared to the total number of sales opportunities over a given period.

How Is Close Rate Calculated?

In addition to being a valuable KPI for performance analysis, close rate is simple to measure. To calculate close rate, divide your closed deals by your sales opportunities. 

Closed Deals / Sales Opportunities = Close Rate

For example, imagine a sales rep had 100 sales opportunities and closed 42 sales from those interactions. To calculate sales rate in this scenario, the formula would be:

42 closed sales / 100 Opportunities = 42% Close Rate

When calculating close rate, it’s important to consider the time period of your analysis. By calculating close rates over various periods, companies can track time-specific sales trends that provide vital data for optimizing performance. 

Sales Close Rate by Industry

Successful close rates vary significantly by industry and sector, commonly by 10% or more. Industry average sales close rates can show how you stack up to your competition:

• Finance Industry Close Ratio: 19%
  
  
• Business & Industrial Industry Close Ratio: 27%
  
  
• Computer Software Industry Close Ratio: 22%
  
  
• Computers & Electronics Industry Close Ratio: 23%
  
  
• Biotechnology Industry Close Ratio: 15%

Understanding the industry average close rates empowers businesses to create accurate sales forecasts and develop sales goals and quotas that align with industry norms. 

Five Tips to Increase Your Sales Close Rate

1. Open a Line of Communication with Your Customers

Companies find valuable information and winning strategies by engaging with their customer base. 

Keep in mind, this step towards an enhanced close rate shouldn’t feel like a sales situation to your customers. Instead, create a conversational and collaborative environment to gain the deepest awareness of what’s working and what needs work.

2. Make Sure Your Sales Enablement is Top-Notch

Sales managers are responsible for arming their team with the best training, tools, software, and strategies to successfully close sales. Sales enablement is an essential factor in achieving sales excellence and contributes heavily to your salesforce’s overall success.  

Keep your sales managers up-to-date with the best tools, practices, and strategies to ensure your sales enablement supports an excellent close rate.

3. Revitalize Your Sales Script

Trends and strategies constantly evolve in modern businesses and markets, rendering golden sales scripts moot far faster than many sales managers would prefer. As a result, companies that don’t update their sales scripts may find themselves with an outdated script that takes weeks or months of intensive effort to rehabilitate or replace.

Alternately, companies can nimbly adjust to shifting circumstances and thrive in any market by consistently reviewing and improving sales scripts. 

4. Harness the Power of Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics is making waves in the business world. The credit, insurance, and mathematical industries have employed predictive analytics for decades, and advancements have made predictive analysis invaluable to sales-oriented businesses. 

Predictive analytics creates highly accurate forecasts through advanced machine learning and computational modeling. These forecasts can help predict larger business trends as well as pre-hire candidates’ individual performance, which is our focus at PerceptionPredict. Functions like this assist companies’ strategic hiring decisions to maximize sales performance and growth.               

5. Keep Momentum Rolling

Sales reps can increase their close rates by controlling the sales cycle’s pace. Establishing a steady cadence of follow-ups and touchpoints keeps prospects engaged throughout the sales cycle, boosting reps’ odds of successfully closing.                                        

Three FAQs About Increasing Close Rate

Now that you know more about close rate, you’re likely ready to apply this knowledge to your sales team and its particular conditions.

By answering some close rate FAQs, we hope to point you in the right direction to analyze and adjust your sales teams’ close rates effectively.

1. How do I close more sales?

There’s no magic bullet to closing more sales.

Improving close rate is a multi-step process that involves evaluating current strategies and results, identifying promising alternatives, outlining an implementation plan, and continually adapting to real-world feedback. 

2. What is a good close rate in sales?

The benchmark for a ‘good’ sales rate depends on a multitude of factors. However, most targeted sales rates fall between 20-30%.

This figure highlights the uphill battle sales teams face in the field, as even the best performing sales reps only expect to close a small portion of total sales opportunities. 

3. Is a 30% close rate good?

A 30% close rate is exceptional. Only two industries, SaaS and business services, regularly pursue a close rate as high as 30%. Even then, a 30% close rate represents the peak of optimistic sales projections.

A sales team that consistently maintains a close rate of 30% or higher can transform a company, pushing revenue to new heights while steadily winning market share. 

Increase Close Rate and Sales Performance with PerceptionPredict

Our unique sales candidate modeling tool, Performance Fingerprints, is how PerceptionPredict reaches new heights in advanced analytics.

Performance Fingerprints use research-based psychometric data points to create quantitative profiles of candidates’ ‘sales DNA’ pre-hire. This exciting new technology empowers companies to make strategic hiring decisions that promise a healthy ROI from every role they fill. 

PerceptionPredict’s predictive analytics software has contributed to world-class sales teams for international giants like Mercedes-Benz and CrowdStrike.

Book a Demo today to learn more about how predictive analytics can optimize your hiring process to improve your close rate.