The first quarter of 2026 came to a close with the Qingming Festival holiday, and companies have started releasing their sales performance numbers.

I recently met with over a dozen CEOs and VPs, and their Q1 reviews were revealing:

— "Our sales leads grew 15% in Q1, but revenue only went up 5%." 

— "We built strong client relationships and nailed the pricing, but we still lost the final deal."

— "We've invested heavily in the sales team, but our win rate is still stuck at 20%-30%."

Behind these comments lies a common problem: leads and effort are there, but performance isn't following.

Leads Are Growing, So Why Isn't Revenue?

Many people's instinctive answer is: the market environment is tough, client budgets are tightening, and competition is fierce.

But these are all external factors. What truly determines performance is an internal formula:

Revenue = Number of Sales Leads × Win Rate × Average Deal Size

When your sales leads are growing and your average deal size hasn't changed much, but revenue isn't following—there's only one problem: your win rate.

A win rate stuck at 20%-30% means you're winning only 2-3 out of every 10 deals. If your competitor's win rate is 40%-50%, they're winning 4-5 deals from the same number of leads.

Your sales efforts are essentially warming up deals for your competitors.