What's a Good Close Rate for an Integrator? Benchmarks From Real Project Data
Integrators who track their wins and losses close about 69% of their proposals, and the average gross margin across the industry sits around 42%. The biggest lever on close rate is speed: proposals delivered within 14 days of the walkthrough close 88% of the time.
Those numbers come from D-Tools' 2025 data on real proposals and contracts, shared by Jason Knott, D-Tools' Data Solutions Architect and Evangelist, on episode 5 of 1NSIGHTS. Knott spent 25 years as editor of CE Pro before joining D-Tools. One caveat: the data blends residential and commercial projects, and large bid-based commercial work pulls close rates down.
How quickly should you deliver a proposal?
Within 14 days of the client meeting or walkthrough. Proposals delivered in that window closed at 88% in 2025. Proposals that took more than 60 days still closed at about 69%, but that's a big drop.
Knott sees two reasons speed matters:
- It signals how you run your business. A fast, accurate proposal previews what working with you will be like.
- It protects momentum. Clients leave a walkthrough excited. Every week of silence gives that excitement time to fade and competitors time to get in.
There's a ceiling, though. Knott has talked with residential integrators who hold finished proposals for 48 hours, because a same-day turnaround can make a custom design feel cookie-cutter.
Even a fast proposal doesn't mean a fast signature. Clients sit on proposals for an average of 35 days before signing, usually while collecting competing bids. That gap is why a steady pipeline matters.
What's a realistic close rate for an integration business?
About 69%. D-Tools' raw figure is lower, around 51%, because many integrators never mark proposals as won or lost, so those proposals sit open forever. Among integrators who do record outcomes, the close rate is 69%.
That makes recording outcomes the first step to knowing your own number. Once you're doing it, Knott suggests studying your losses as closely as your wins:
- Format. Do itemized proposals close better than ones with a single total? Room-by-room or system-by-system?
- Order. Some integrators now lead with security, which clients want, instead of the network, which drives everything but doesn't excite anyone.
- Presentation. Do proposals with product images, drawings or client references outperform plain ones?
Jason Griffing, OneVision's Director of Product and the show's host, added that the data doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. Set a recurring time to clean up old proposals. It becomes essential once you hire salespeople and can't rely on gut feel.
What gross margin should integrators target?
The 2025 average across D-Tools users was a 42% blended gross margin, slightly above the 40% target the National Systems Contractors Association sets for its members.
Two details shape what that number means:
- Equipment carries the business. On average, 76% of project revenue comes from equipment and 24% from labor. Unlike electricians or HVAC contractors, AV companies earn most of their margin dollars on product.
- Small projects earn less. Projects under $10,000 tend to use shoppable consumer products with little room for markup. Larger projects take longer and are harder to manage, but they deliver the stronger margins.
Knott also suspects many reported labor margins are inflated, because integrators don't calculate fully burdened labor costs. That includes benefits, insurance, training, vehicles and rent, plus utilization: you pay a technician for 8 hours but may bill only about 6.5. Labor rates should be set from that true cost, and installation difficulty, like a scissor lift for 35-foot ceilings, needs to be in the estimate.
How should integrators structure progress payments?
There's no single standard. These are the common structures Knott pulled from the data:
- 50 / 40 / 10: Mid-size, multi-phase, equipment-heavy projects.
- 30 / 30 / 30 / 10: Phase-based billing across pre-wire, installation, trim and final.
- 100% of equipment + 50% of labor up front: Expensive one-off equipment like video walls or high-end projectors.
- 60 / 30 / 10: A front-loaded alternative to 50 / 40 / 10.
- 80 / 20: Clients with a history of slow payment.
More integrators are cutting the final payment to 5%, because final payments are notoriously hard to collect when "done" is debatable. Tying that payment to clearly defined substantial completion helps: all equipment delivered and installed, with only final programming, tuning and client training left.
Two more cash-flow tips came out of the conversation. Make wire or ACH the default payment option in your proposal to cut credit card fees. And decide exactly who on your team triggers each invoice, especially at the hand-off from installation to service.
Are change orders good or bad for integrators?
Mostly neutral. Of the change orders in D-Tools' data, 49% didn't change project revenue, usually because a discontinued product had to be swapped for a comparable one. Another 43% added revenue, and 8% cost the integrator money, typically when something was missed in the original proposal.
Knott sees no single right way to handle frequency. Some integrators get a signature on every change, however small. Others bundle changes until they hit 10 items or a dollar threshold.
Griffing's advice for keeping change orders from souring a project: eliminate surprises. Give clients a plain-English summary of what they're buying, not just a list of part numbers. AI tools can now write that narrative from a proposal in minutes.
Watch the full conversation
Jason Knott - D-Tools | How do you stack up? Benchmarks, AI, and the Future of Integration
1NSIGHTS Podcast
Knott and Griffing also cover how D-Tools is using AI to write scopes of work and search its product library.
About 1NSIGHTS
1NSIGHTS by OneVision explores how integrators, operators and industry leaders think, build and adapt in a fast-changing custom integration landscape. Recorded live and shaped by audience questions, each episode goes past surface-level trends to the real decisions and trade-offs behind growing smarter and staying competitive. Explore all episodes →
