By Rob Kall, CEO & Co-Founder, Cien.ai

“Discounting is the only way we can win most deals. But I think we’re selling ourselves short.”

– PE-Backed B2B Mid-Market CRO

The Problem: When Discounting Becomes a Reflex

Discounting is often seen as a necessary evil in B2B sales — especially in mid-market and enterprise deals. It helps close faster, appease skeptical CFOs, and has become part of many sales orgs’ DNA. But not all discounting is helpful.

This article isn’t here to say discounting is bad. In many cases, it’s absolutely required to get a deal across the finish line. What is dangerous is automatic and excessive discounting — the kind that erodes your margins without improving win rates. As one PE-backed CRO told us:

“Discounting is the only way we can win most deals. But I think we’re selling ourselves short.” In fact, we frequently see companies offering large discounts without fully understanding the impact, or lack thereof, on deal outcomes.

The Solution: Understand Your Discount Curve

Before optimizing discounting, you need to measure it comprehensively and contextually. That starts with understanding: 

• Average discount level by product family and customer segment
• Variability across teams, geographies, and time
• Discounts given on won and lost opportunities (not just booked deals)

It’s often not as straightforward as pulling a single report. List prices might live in disconnected systems or be subject to ad hoc overrides. And if you’re only analyzing won deals in an order system, you’re ignoring critical data: what discount would it have taken to win the lost ones?

At Cien.ai, we address this challenge using a data-driven approach embedded in our Heatmap Analysis. By evaluating late-stage deals — those serious enough to be won  potentially — we correlate discount levels to win rates.

What we typically observe:

• No discount → underperforms expectations
• Moderate discounts (5–30%) → increase win rates
• Steep discounts (>30+%) → flat or even declining win rates

If your average discount is higher than where your win-rate curve peaks, you’re essentially giving away margin without improving results. Conversely, you may find missed opportunities where discounts were too low to close viable deals.

Graph that illustrates that discounting above 5% does not materially affect the outcome.

What Does Success Look Like?

You’ve moved beyond gut feel. You know exactly how much discounting improves your close rate — and when it stops being effective.

With Cien.ai, B2B sales orgs can: 

• Benchmark discounts by segment, product, and stage.
• Understand where discounting helps — and where it doesn’t
• Arm reps and managers with data to justify pricing strategies
• Align RevOps, Sales, and Finance around revenue and margin goals
• Instead of “just doing what it takes to close,” you’re doing what it takes to grow — intelligently and profitably.

About the Practical RevOps Analytics Series

This article is part of our Practical RevOps Analytics Series, inspired by our work with B2B business leaders, RevOps practitioners, and PE operating partners. These articles focus on the technical and analytical strategies that drive GTM performance. If you want to explore the broader business context for topics like this, check out our companion content in the Cien.ai Growth Essentials Series.