Closed Won

Closed-won is a sales term that is used to signify that a deal has been successfully closed with a prospect or lead and that this person is now considered to be a customer or client. In other words, it’s the moment when a prospect exits the bottom of the sales funnel and everything has been 100% finalized. It is the opposite of closed-lost, where a prospect formally declines to go through with a purchase. 

Situations that typically lead to a closed-won situation include: 

• Finalizing the sale of a product or service order
• Electronically signing a subscription contract
• Converting a prospect into a customer

Why Closed Won Matters

It’s more than just a status update. Way more. It’s a milestone in the sales journey that showcases all your hard work and perseverance. It’s a signal to yourself, your colleagues, and your managers that you’re doing well. 

A closed won is the culmination of: 

• Outreach
• Solution alignment
• Negotiation

It’s finally all come together, and you’ve got a customer excited to start their journey with you. And executives can count on the incoming revenue from the sale. 

Using Closed Won Data 

In CRM platforms like Salesforce, the closed won stage plays a critical role in forecasting and reporting. Sales managers use this data to evaluate the performance of their teams and measure conversion rates. They can also use it to predict future revenues. After all, if a strategy worked once, twice, or three times, why wouldn’t it work again?

Because only finalized deals are considered closed won, the status stands as one of the most reliable indicators of success for a sales team. 

How You Get to Closed Won Status  

Getting this outcome involves several steps, and often multiple teams. It begins with outreach and qualification. You’ve got to make sure you’re connecting with the right potential clients. 

From there, you move into the pipeline stages: analysis, proposal, and negotiation. In these stages, sales reps have to address objections, tailor offerings, and build trust. 

After all these stages have been knocked down, your deal moves into closed won status. 

And you celebrate. 

What You Can Learn from Closed Won Outcomes

After your happy dance is over, it’s time to learn from your successes and failures. Yes, you can have failures along the way toward a closed won status. There may have been avoidable delays or reasons you almost lost the client. It’s time to address those before the next sale. 

You can also learn from your successes. Look at what went well and figure out how to turn that into a repeatable process. Analyze all your wins and treat them like valuable insights. 

Because they are. 
In the end, while the term closed-won is not that widely used in business environments, you may come across it in customer relationship management (CRM) systems like Salesforce. It is a reflection of the outcome all sales reps hope and work so hard for. It’s like that golden ticket: the ultimate measure of success at every level.

How to Create a Closed Won Report:

FAQ for Closed Won