What's your number? This is such a personal question. It's a critical question and the answer can affect how we live and work, and yet so many of us have no idea what our number is. Those of us that do know our number probably don't want to share it, but we can't help but wonder how our number stacks up to other people's numbers. You know the number we are talking about - our close rate!

To find this number, take all of the sales engagements you are involved in - RFP responses, contract renewals and everything in between - and determine how many you won and how many you lost. Now do the calculation (wins divided by total number of engagements) to find your hit rate. Certainly this number is relative. To some people a 25% hit rate is adequate and to others it is downright embarrassing.

Now dig a little deeper and look at your hit rate based on the type of deal you were pursuing. Typically, our hit rate is highest on contract renewals and lowest on RFP responses. The RFP response hit rate itself can certainly vary, as there is a big difference between RFPs we respond to in a reactive way and RFPs where we help the customer write the bid specs.

Why is this number so important? Because if we know our reactive RFP response hit rate is poor, we quickly come to the realization that we have almost nothing to lose. This allows us to become more creative and courageous in our sales activities, and frees us up to "break the rules" to find a better way!