In the high-stakes world of enterprise SaaS, founders obsess over pipeline: number of demos booked, proof-of-concepts launched, and proposals sent. But there’s one metric that quietly determines whether your forecasts, runway, and board updates hold water — your win/loss rate.
The problem? Reliable, recent, and comparable win/loss benchmarks are scarce. Public companies don’t report them, private companies treat them as trade secrets, and when surveys are published, definitions vary wildly.
For pre-seed and seed-stage enterprise SaaS companies — especially those targeting $100k+ ACV deals — the stakes are even higher. You’re selling into conservative buyers, without the brand recognition or proof points of incumbents, often with a sales motion still being built in real-time.
In this post, we’ll cut through the fog using three credible, 2022-plus data sources:
- HubSpot 2024 Sales Trends Report — global B2B average win rates: https://www.hubspot.com/hubfs/HubSpots%202024%20Sales%20Trends%20Report.pdf
- Ebsta x Pavilion 2024 B2B Sales Benchmarks — win-rate cohort trends across millions of opportunities: https://www.ebsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/B2B-Sales-Benchmarks-2024_.pdf
- Winning by Design (WbD) March 2023 Industry Analysis — enterprise ACV>$100k win-rate decline data: https://winningbydesign.com/resources/2023-industry-analysis/
(Plus, a bonus tactical insight from Champify 2025 Impact Report — https://23850949.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/23850949/Champify%20Impact%20Report%20-%202025.pdf
What “Win Rate” and “Closed-Lost” Actually Mean
Before we jump into the numbers, let’s align on definitions — because this is one of the reasons benchmark data is so inconsistent.
- Win Rate: Number of opportunities won ÷ number of opportunities with a decision (won + lost). This excludes deals still in play.
- Close Rate: Often used interchangeably, but sometimes calculated as wins ÷ all opportunities (including those still open). This tends to make your number look worse.
- Closed-Lost: Opposite of win rate — percentage of decided opportunities you did not win.
- No Decision: Deals that stalled without a formal “no” (budget cuts, internal reprioritization, ghosting). Some companies lump these into closed-lost; others don’t.
For early-stage founders, the trap is definition drift — changing what you call a loss mid-year — which makes quarter-over-quarter trends meaningless.
The Macro Benchmark Picture Since 2022
Overall B2B: HubSpot’s 21% Win Rate
The HubSpot 2024 Sales Trends Report found the average B2B win rate in 2023 was around 21% (source). That means ~79% closed-lost. This includes SMB and mid-market deals, so it’s a bit more optimistic than what you’ll see selling enterprise SaaS from a standing start.
Recent Win Rate Benchmarks (HubSpot, WbD, Champify)
| Sales Cycle Stage | Approximate % of Closed-Lost Opportunities | Common Reasons for Lost Opportunities (Highest to Lowest) |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 35% | 1. Poor discovery/Not understanding buyer needs (65%)2. No compelling reason to change/Status quo wins (60%)3. Lack of urgency or business case (45%)4. Wrong stakeholders engaged (40%)5. Product-market fit issues (30%) |
| Qualification | 28% | 1. Budget constraints/No allocated funds (55%)2. No decision-maker authority identified (45%)3. Timing not aligned with business priorities (40%)4. Insufficient qualification of real need (35%)5. Competing internal projects (25%) |
| Needs Assessment/Solution Design | 22% | 1. Solution doesn’t meet technical requirements (50%)2. Complex implementation concerns (45%)3. Competitor offers better fit (40%)4. Security/compliance requirements not met (35%)5. Integration challenges identified (30%) |
| Proposal/Negotiation | 12% | 1. Price objections/ROI not demonstrated (60%)2. Competitor chosen (better pricing/features) (45%)3. Contract terms unacceptable (35%)4. Procurement process delays (30%)5. Legal/compliance issues (20%) |
| Contract/Closing | 3% | 1. Last-minute budget cuts/freezes (40%)2. Internal reorganization/priorities changed (35%)3. Key champion left organization (30%)4. Competitor last-minute competitive move (25%)5. External market conditions (20%) |
Enterprise Pressure: WbD’s ACV>$100k Decline
Winning by Design’s March 2023 industry report tracked enterprise deals with ACV>$100k and found win rates fell from ~26% to ~17% in late 2022 and early 2023 (source). For seed-stage founders selling into Fortune 1000 accounts, that’s the neighborhood you’ll live in — a ~83% closed-lost environment.
Cohort Movement: Ebsta x Pavilion’s Volatility Story
Ebsta and Pavilion analyzed over 4.2 million opportunities and $54 billion in pipeline to show that win rates aren’t static (https://www.ebsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/B2B-Sales-Benchmarks-2024_.pdf?utm_source=tldrfounders). They declined sharply in early 2023 before stabilizing and rebounding for some top performers in 2024.
The takeaway: single-point benchmarks are dangerous — your numbers may swing 5–10 percentage points in a year due to macro factors, pricing changes, or GTM experiments.
What This Means for Pre-Seed/Seed Enterprise Startups
If you’re raising your first institutional round or operating with 12–18 months of runway, you need to set expectations conservatively.
- For $100k+ ACV enterprise targets: model win rates in the 15–20% range early on.
- For $50–100k ACV mid-market/enterprise deals: you might stretch to 20–25% after refining ICP and messaging.
- Closed-lost rates will live in the 75–85% band for most of your first year post-launch.
This isn’t pessimism — it’s planning reality. Overestimating win rate by even 5 percentage points can cause a 25–30% shortfall in bookings forecasts.
How Early Teams Can Beat the Average
Relationship Leverage: The Champify Example
Champify’s 2025 Impact Report showed that deals with a “known contact” — someone who’s worked with your team or product before — had a 37% win rate vs 19% for cold outreach (source).
For a seed-stage founder, that’s not just nice to know — it’s a GTM strategy. Build campaigns targeting:
- Former customers now at new companies
- Past colleagues in your ICP
- Investors’ network introductions
Partner-Assist & Nearbound
Ebsta x Pavilion’s top performers leaned heavily on multi-threading and partner-influenced deals (source). Even if you don’t have a formal partner program, you can track and incentivize any opportunity where a trusted third party adds credibility.
Process Discipline
Frameworks like MEDDICC help ensure your reps (or you, if you are the rep) are qualifying hard, documenting champion buy-in, and avoiding “happy ears” late in cycle. Pavilion members reported more consistent win rates when process adherence was monitored weekly (source).
Avoiding Common Data Traps
- Definition Drift — Document exactly what “Closed-Lost” means for your team.
- Stage Hygiene — Ensure reps move deals out of open stages promptly; bloated pipelines distort win rate.
- Weighted vs Unweighted — A 10% win rate on $500k deals may be more valuable than a 30% win rate on $20k deals; measure both.
- Cohorting — Group deals by creation date to track win rate improvements; avoid mixing old, long-cycle deals with fresh pipeline.
- Segmentation — Always separate new logo from expansion, inbound from outbound, SMB from enterprise.
Benchmarks You Can Actually Use in a Seed-Stage Model
Here’s a plug-and-play matrix for your forecast spreadsheet:
| Motion Type | Win Rate Start Point | Closed-Lost Start Point |
| Inbound Enterprise POC | 20–25% | 75–80% |
| Cold Outbound Enterprise | 10–18% | 82–90% |
| Warm/Relationship-Led | 30–40% | 60–70% |
Re-baseline quarterly — Ebsta x Pavilion’s dataset shows that even high-performing teams saw shifts of 5–10 percentage points across 2023–24 (https://www.ebsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/B2B-Sales-Benchmarks-2024_.pdf?utm_source=tldrfounders).
How to Report Win/Loss to Your Board
For early-stage boards, clarity beats optimism. Use a single slide showing:
- Definition of win rate and closed-lost
- Last 2Q trend (line chart)
- Segment breakdown (inbound vs outbound, new logo vs expansion)
- Top 3 loss reasons (e.g., pricing, missing feature, status quo)
- Actions planned (e.g., pricing test, new champion enablement deck, partner pilot)
This avoids the “why did our win rate drop?” ambush during QBRs.
Conclusion & Call to Action
If you remember only three numbers from this post, make them these:
- 21% — average B2B win rate (HubSpot 2024): https://www.hubspot.com/hubfs/HubSpots%202024%20Sales%20Trends%20Report.pdf
- ~17% — ACV>$100k enterprise win rate trough (WbD 2023): https://winningbydesign.com/resources/2023-industry-analysis/
- 37% — win rate with known contacts (Champify 2025): https://23850949.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/23850949/Champify%20Impact%20Report%20-%202025.pdf
Most seed-stage enterprise SaaS founders will live in a 75–85% closed-lost reality for their first year. That’s not failure — that’s the game. The winners are those who measure precisely, learn aggressively, and create structural advantages like relationships, partners, and process rigor.
Benchmark your funnel honestly, publish your definitions, and — when you can — share anonymized win/loss data with peers. The more transparent the ecosystem becomes, the better founders can plan, raise, and grow sustainably.
Also published on Medium.
John Mecke
View More PostsJohn is a 25 year veteran of the enterprise technology market. He has led six global product management organizations for three public companies and three private equity-backed firms. He played a key role in delivering a $115 million dividend for his private equity backers – a 2.8x return in less than three years. He has led five acquisitions for a total consideration of over $175 million. He has led eight divestitures for a total consideration of $24.5 million in cash. John regularly blogs about product management and mergers/acquisitions.
