Transparency
The Institute publishes its numbers.
A standard you can check is the only kind worth holding.
Certifying bodies earn their standing by reporting on themselves. The Institute publishes its enrollment, completion, and examination data on scheduled publication dates, against metrics defined before the measurement — and reports on the profession itself in the annual State of Remote Closing. This page is where those publications live.
The Framework
What gets reported, and what it means.
Six metrics, defined once, reported every cycle. Definitions do not move between editions.
- Enrollment
- Students admitted to the Certified Remote Closer Program in the reporting period.
- Completion rate
- Share of enrolled students who finish the curriculum and enter the Gauntlet.
- First-attempt pass rate
- Share of Gauntlet candidates who pass the certification series on their first attempt. Retries are unlimited; this number shows the standard’s height, not the odds of eventually passing.
- Merit distinction rate
- Share of graduates earning the distinction tier. Kept scarce by design.
- Median Closer Score at certification
- The midpoint score of newly certified closers, on the 0–1000 scale.
- Verification volume
- Credential lookups served by the verification portal in the period.
The Dashboard
The reporting dashboard.
Public reporting schedule
The Institute makes its current reporting dashboard public on scheduled publication dates. Between public releases, current figures are available to authorized members of the Sterling Sales Institute Employer Network. The next public update is expected September 29, 2026.
Illustrative dashboard — these are not current reporting figures
The Publications
Two documents, every year.
Annual
The Transparency Report
The Institute’s own numbers: enrollment, completion, first-attempt pass rates, distinction rates, and verification volume — reported against the framework above. Editions are published on this page.
Annual
State of Remote Closing
The profession’s data: compensation, hiring trends, and offer quality across the remote-sales market. The report the industry cites, published by the body that measures it.
The Reason
Checkability is the standard’s spine.
A certification whose pass rate is secret is a receipt with a seal on it. The Institute defines its metrics before it measures, publishes on a fixed cycle, and lets the numbers carry the argument. The pass rate is not a marketing figure — it is the published height of the bar.
Press and research inquiries: admissions@sterlingsalesinstitute.org.