Over half log a debrief after major pursuits, but only 9% feed win/loss data back into Go/No-Go criteria, and nearly half track win rates anecdotally. The guide sets out one move per stage, with a test you can run in 90 days to see whether it landed.
Guide
The RFP Lifecycle Benchmarks Guide
Most proposal teams think they’re further along than they are. The RFP Lifecycle Benchmarks Guide shows where GovCon proposal, capture and contracts teams actually sit, based on assessment results and live webinar polls from across the VisibleThread community. The full guide breaks all ten practices down question by question, with what the data found, what the live room said and what Kyle Peterson sees in the field. It also gives one concrete move for each stage, with a test you can run in 90 days to see whether it worked. Read it to find out where your team really stands, and which gap is costing you the most.
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In this guide we cover
Five stages, six dimensions
Ten questions, each scored 1 to 5, place your team in one of five stages, from Ad Hoc to Strategic. Three dimensions sit at a point in the lifecycle and three run across all of it. It is a benchmark, not a scorecard: the question is whether what you do is deliberate, repeatable and proportionate to your scale.
Where the field actually sits
The average score is 30.2 out of 50, and nearly two thirds of teams land at Stage 3 or Stage 4. Nobody has reached Stage 5, because shaping opportunities before the RFP costs money most organizations will not release until they can prove which capture investment moves win rate.
Strong on proposals, weak on contracts
Review is the strongest practice, with most teams running structured compliance checks or Pink and Red team stages. Contract redlines are the weakest by a clear margin. Over half still email Word tracked changes back and forth, and the audit trail usually stops at submission.
The loop most teams never close
