Why does nobody talk about tracking your rejection rate

Charles Bailey · 2026-04-22T10:25:05.529761+00:00

I spent my first two years freelancing thinking every no meant I was doing something wrong. Then I started keeping a spreadsheet last March, just dates and reasons for rejections. Turns out 80% of my rejections were from clients who never even looked at my portfolio. Now I focus more on the initial pitch and my acceptance rate went up to about 1 in 5.

the_sean5mo ago

My first spreadsheet was just a list of my many flaws.

8

iris_schmidt5mo ago

Track your numbers for a few months, it's the only way to see the real story. I did the same thing and found most of my "no's" came from people who just weren't a good fit from the start, like they needed a different skill set. Now I ask a couple quick questions before I even send a full proposal to screen them out. It saves me hours of work on dead-end leads. My closing rate got way better once I stopped chasing every single opportunity.

1

ryan7935mo ago

My buddy Mark tracked his for a month and saw half his rejections were just budget mismatches... he started listing his starting rate right in his first email.

0