Find out why your government proposals win, lose, or win and still lose money.
A hard look at your last two years of RFP responses, debriefs and results, so you stop repeating what isn’t working.
You know your win rate. Do you know what it cost you?
Most firms track what they won. Fewer track what each bid cost to chase, which losses were never winnable, or which wins turned out to be the ones that did not pay.
The answers are usually sitting in your files: past bids, scores, debriefs and project results. They have just never been laid out side by side. Once they are, a few patterns tend to be hard to unsee.
Questions most firms cannot answer today
Try these. Most owners get stuck by the second or third.
- Which type of opportunity do you win most often? Not which one you like. Which one you win.
- Where does the bid effort go? And does it follow the wins, or the losses?
- Which buyers do you keep losing to, and how close do you get? A near miss and a long way off call for very different fixes.
- Of the contracts you won, which paid what you quoted? And which quietly did not.
- Which bids should you never have submitted? And what made them look worth it at the time.
What a pattern looks like
An illustration of the kind of finding, not a client. The counts are invented.
A firm submits twelve bids in a year and wins three. Laid side by side, the wins cluster in one type of work and one group of buyers. Most of the effort went to a type of work they have never won. One of the three wins paid well below what they expected.
The outcome is not a report. It is three decisions: stop chasing the second kind of bid, put more behind the first, and change how the third kind is priced.
What the review covers
What we look at
- Your last 24 months of bids, proposals and results
- Debriefs, scores and evaluator feedback where you have them
- Where your bid effort went, by type of opportunity and buyer
- How the contracts you won performed against what you expected
You walk away with
- Where you win, where you lose, and why
- What each bid really costs to chase
- Which wins paid and which did not
- A prioritized 90-day plan
How it works
Share your history
A list of your bids and results, and whatever documents you have. Records are rarely complete, and that is fine.
Fixed quote
Scope and fee agreed before any work starts.
The analysis
Three to four weeks. We are clear about which numbers are firm and which are estimates.
90-minute readout
We walk through the findings and agree the next steps.
Is this the right fit?
Best for
Companies submitting eight or more proposals a year, especially after a losing streak or a run of wins that did not pay as expected.
Not the right fit if
You have only bid a handful of times, so there is not much history to learn from. A Bid Economics Assessment on your next live opportunity is a better use of money.
Questions
What if we do not track our bid costs?
Most firms do not. We work with what exists, estimate the effort where we have to, and mark which figures are estimates, so you are not given false precision.
What do you need from us?
A list of the bids you submitted in the last 24 months with outcomes, the submissions or summaries if you have them, and any debrief notes or scores. We confirm the exact list when we quote.
How is it priced?
A fixed fee agreed up front, not hourly.
Related
- Bid Economics Assessment: the same economics lens, applied to a live opportunity.
- Capture Planning: point the next 12 months at the opportunities that suit you.
- Fractional Bid Manager: a quarterly win/loss review is included.
- All services
Bidding a lot and not sure what is working?
Book a free Bid Health Check and we will tell you whether a review is worth it for you.