There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over an RFP team when win notifications slow down and people keep working, but the energy shifts. Leaders begin to ask pointed questions about “what changed.” In the often thankless role of an RFP writer, this is a devastating time when they question every move, wonder if they will have a job, and feel pretty miserable. Unfortunately, most RFP Teams are only valued by the measure of their last win.
When your win rate drops, it is tempting to look for a single explanation: the market got tighter, the competition got better, the evaluators misunderstood your strengths. These are all valid roadblocks, and leaders must consider this before blaming a perceived incapable team. The good news is, RFP Teams can take action to analyze market fit, internal alignment, and the day-to-day discipline of how responses are planned and executed.
For teams that already understand the basics, such as compliance, deadlines, checklists, and clear formatting, it is an opportunity to move beyond answering questions and treating RFP performance as a strategic system that can be diagnosed, adjusted, and improved.
A decline in wins nearly always reflects issues in one or more of these areas:
- Volume: You are responding to too many low-probability RFPs.
- Fit – You are pursuing opportunities that do not match your strengths, or your solution has become misaligned with buyer priorities.
- Quality – Your narratives do not differentiate you, and basic compliance may not be enough.
- Product: Your offerings require an internal review because they do not meet the scope of work. Missing gaps may need to be addressed before wins increase.
Research on complex B2B selling and RFP strategy underscores the importance of selective bidding: without a strategic approach to which RFPs you pursue, teams burn resources on low-fit opportunities and default to price competition.
At the same time, classic sales research points to familiar reasons for losing deals: inadequate discovery, weak differentiation, lack of customer understanding, and failure to present clear, credible value. These issues show up just as strongly in proposals as they do in live sales conversations.
Crunching the Numbers
Before rewriting a single paragraph, the first step is to understand what “wins are down” actually means for your organization. Industry benchmarks suggest that average RFP win rates tend to hover around the mid-40 percent range. Teams that invest in more rigorous capture and qualification processes frequently see higher win rates, while those that chase volume tend to experience volatility. RFP-focused research emphasizes that win/loss analysis is one of the most potent ways to improve bid strategy, but only when it is structured and consistent. Collecting award data and presenting it to the finance team is a valuable tool in providing senior leadership with clarity into competitor pricing and what may need to be done to become more competitive.
Rather than treating each loss as an isolated disappointment, aggregate at least 12–18 months of data and look at:
- Win rate by segment (K–12 vs higher ed, state vs district, region)
- Win rate by product or service line
- Loss analysis related to pricing and competitor proposals
- Advancement rate (how often you are shortlisted)
- Average deal value for wins vs losses
- Time and cost invested per bid
When win rates drop, proposal teams often tighten their focus on content. That is necessary, but not sufficient. In many organizations, sales teams and CEOs are having rich conversations about partnerships, pilots, and strategic direction that never make their way into the RFP function.
Research on B2B sales and marketing alignment shows that when go-to-market teams share insight, jointly define target segments, and align on messaging, revenue growth improves significantly. APMP and other proposal organizations similarly emphasize the need to bridge capture and proposal work so that themes and messaging stay consistent from early conversations through final submission. The structure of collaborative diagnosis includes:
- Sitting down with sales leaders to review which deals are being prioritized outside the RFP channel and why.
- Asking for summaries of key discovery calls and partnership discussions, so that your narratives reflect the real language and concerns of decision-makers.
- Clarifying which products or services the organization intends to scale in the next 12–24 months and ensuring your content library and positioning reflect that roadmap, not last year’s focus.
Strategic Win-Loss Analysis
1. Formal debriefs with the buyer
- Request written or verbal debriefs within 30–90 days of the decision; research suggests that interviews conducted later than three months lose accuracy as memories fade.
- Ask specifically about compliance, clarity, differentiation, pricing, and perceived risk.
2. Internal narrative review
- Re-read your submitted responses as if you were on the evaluation committee.
- Ask: Does this document make it unambiguously clear what we do, why it matters to this buyer, how we will deliver, and how much it costs? Salesforce’s own guidance on winning RFPs emphasizes directly addressing the prospect’s desired outcomes, the path to get there, and the role you play, rather than summarizing your internal view of the work.
3. Competitor and tabulation analysis
- Where available, obtain tabulation sheets, scoring matrices, and board minutes through public records or procurement postings.
- Study the winning vendor's scores relative to yours by criterion. Are you consistently behind on “implementation plan,” “data reporting,” “local presence,” or “price”?
- When competitor proposals are accessible, review them in detail. Look for differences in structure, clarity, and directness. Notice how they connect features to outcomes and how often they anchor claims in evidence.
4. Coding and tagging insights
- Create a simple taxonomy for reasons: price, fit, missing capability, unclear value, compliance, reference quality, local presence, and so on.
- Tag each outcome with one or more reasons, based on both external feedback and internal analysis.
