Define and enforce qualification criteria
Agree what makes an opportunity real — budget, authority, timing, product fit — and make it an entry requirement for the stages where proposal effort begins.
Increase win rate
KPI: Win rate · Increase by x points
- KPI
- Win rate
- Levers
- Qualification · Sales methodology · Proposal quality · Pricing · Product fit · Competitive intelligence · Seller enablement
- RevOps tasks
- 10 actions
- Leading indicators
- Proposal-to-close rate · Stage conversion · Loss reasons captured · Competitive loss rate
- Target outcome
- More revenue from the same amount of pipeline
How well you convert real opportunities into revenue. For media companies the upside here is unusually large, because so much work goes in before anything is won — discovery, media planning, inventory research, proposals, revisions, pricing approvals, presentations. Going from a 25% to a 30% win rate is real incremental revenue without generating a single extra opportunity.
How you actually get there
Grouped by the phase it belongs to. Flag anything that is a real problem for you as you read. That is what builds your plan, so there is no long questionnaire at the end.
PlanAssessment, sequencing, business case. The fundable first step.
BuildConfiguration, data architecture, integration.
Capture structured loss reasons
Replace free-text loss notes with a fixed set of reasons, captured at close, so losses become data instead of anecdote.
Build a competitive intelligence library
Keep current, accessible positioning against the competitors and platforms you actually lose to — including the ones that are not other media companies.
Build proof by vertical
Case studies, benchmarks and results organized by category, so a seller can show an advertiser what worked for someone like them rather than describing capability.
Introduce pricing and discount guardrails
Define what can be discounted, by how much, and by whom — so price is a decision rather than a reflex, and discounting stops being the default answer to a hard deal.
Add next-best-product guidance
Use advertiser profile, category and historical performance to steer sellers toward the products most likely to work — rather than the ones they personally sell most often.
ExecuteMigration, training, adoption.
Standardize the sales methodology
One discovery framework, one set of stage criteria, one way of documenting need — so deals are worked consistently and coaching has something to hold on to.
Raise proposal quality
Move proposals from inventory lists to arguments — the advertiser's objective, the recommended approach, the expected outcome, and the proof it has worked before.
RunMaintain, extend, improve.
Run structured win/loss reviews
Review closed deals on a regular cadence by rep, product, category and competitor, and feed what you learn back into positioning, pricing and qualification.
Coach to the methodology
Use win rate by rep and stage conversion to target coaching where it changes outcomes, rather than coaching everyone on everything.
The distinction that makes it actionable
Competitive loss
The advertiser bought, but from someone else.
A positioning and proof problem. The only loss type where you know the money existed.
No-decision loss
The advertiser did nothing.
Usually the largest bucket, and rarely counted honestly — it is a qualification and urgency problem, not a competitive one.
Late disqualification
The opportunity was never real, and it took a proposal to find out.
The most expensive kind in media, because the proposal work is already spent.
What leadership reads
Win rateShare of qualified opportunities won. The whole point: five points of win rate is incremental revenue from pipeline you already have, with no extra prospecting, no extra sellers, and no extra proposals.
Win rate by product, category and repWhere the blended number is hiding a specific problem — and usually where the coaching should go.
No-decision rateShare of opportunities that end in nothing. Often the biggest bucket, and a qualification signal rather than a competitive one.
Average discount depthWhat you are paying for the wins you get — a win rate bought with margin is not a win rate improvement.
Revenue per proposalYield against the effort that goes in. In media, proposal work is a real cost and this is the number that prices it.
Leading indicators
What moves before the KPI does.
Proposal-to-close rateShare of delivered proposals that convert.
Stage conversionProgression rate between stages — shows where deals die, not just that they died.
Loss reasons capturedShare of closed-lost deals with a structured reason. Nothing else here works without it.
Competitive loss rateLosses to a named competitor or platform, as a share of all losses.
What we’d need to know
Answer what you can. The blanks are as useful to us as the answers. They are usually where an assessment starts.
01What does it cost you to produce one proposal — in hours, across everyone who touches it?
02Of the deals you lost last year, how many were lost to a competitor and how many to no decision?
03Do you know your win rate by product, or only overall?
04How often does a discount get approved without anyone asking what it bought?
05At what stage do you start doing real work on a deal — and how sure are you it's real by then?
Last one
Mark what you need You’ve seen the plan. Where do you need to improve?
Mark each action you need and we’ll turn it into a sequenced draft plan.