Last reviewed 2026-08-25 · Richard Fritzke
Close Rate: Formula, Calculator, and What It Actually Tells You
Close rate is the percentage of qualified opportunities that turn into signed, paid work. It's a signal about your sales conversation, pricing, and follow-up — not a verdict on your whole business.
Formula
Jobs Won ÷ Qualified Opportunities × 100
Included
- Every estimate or proposal you actually presented to a qualified prospect
- Estimates you never heard back on
Excluded
- Unqualified inquiries you didn't actually quote
- Leads that never reached the estimate stage
"Qualified opportunity" is a definition you set once and use consistently — otherwise the number drifts in meaning month to month and stops being comparable to itself.
Worked example
14 ÷ 40 × 100 = 35% close rate
Calculate your own
Close Rate Calculator
This runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type here — including revenue, labor cost, or job details — is sent anywhere or stored.
What this can indicate
- A sales-process or follow-up gap, if leads and marketing spend look fine but few are converting.
- A pricing or positioning mismatch for a specific lead source, if close rate differs sharply between sources.
- A specific technician or salesperson's conversation needing coaching, if one person's rate is far below the others.
What it does not prove
- That your marketing is working or not working — close rate is downstream of lead quality, which this number alone doesn't isolate.
- That a low number is "bad" without knowing your own historical baseline and job-type mix.
- Anything reliable from a small sample — 3 wins out of 5 estimates is not a 60% close rate you can act on.
Common causes of a poor number
- Slow response time letting the prospect go with whoever called back first.
- Estimates presented without a clear next step or follow-up cadence.
- Pricing that doesn't match what the lead source's typical customer expects to pay.
Practical first actions
- Pull your own close rate for the last 90 days, segmented by lead source and by technician, before concluding anything.
- Check whether estimates you never heard back on are being followed up at all.
- If one lead source closes much worse than others, look at what that source's leads actually expect before assuming it's a bad channel.
Trade-specific notes
- HVAC
- Separate service-call upsells (repair vs. replace) from standalone install quotes — they behave very differently and blending them hides which one needs attention.
- Roofing
- Insurance-claim jobs and out-of-pocket retail jobs have different sales cycles. Track them separately.
- General Contracting
- Competitive bid work and negotiated/referral work aren't comparable — track separately.
On industry benchmarks
We are not publishing a specific close-rate target here. It varies by trade, lead source, ticket size, and market, and we haven't found a benchmark source with disclosed methodology we're confident citing. Establish your current baseline, then compare the same definition month over month — investigate material changes, and treat this metric as one signal, not a diagnosis.
Which TMT system this connects to
Conversion
Leads are coming in but not turning into signed, paid work fast enough.
See how TMT's Growth & Systems approach addresses thisRelated metrics
Next step
Is the gap pipeline visibility or follow-up?
A weak close rate is often a follow-up problem, not a sales-skill problem. Modern Trades CRM tracks every opportunity so nothing goes quiet on its own.
See Modern Trades CRMModern Trades CRM is an affiliated software product available nationally, sold independently of TMT services.