Average Proposal Win Rate by Industry and Deal Size: 2026 Data

Proposal win rates range from 14.6% in hotel and venue sales to 55.3% in nonprofit sales, and proposals under $10K win 31.5% of the time, compared with 17.2% for proposals over $100K. Buyers shortlist 3.5 vendors per purchase, so the average shortlisted proposal wins 28.6% of the time.

Teams that screen out weak bids report higher averages: 42.9% for formal requests for proposal (RFPs) from 2021 to 2025, and 35.5% for sales proposals from 2023 to 2025. We studied proposal win rates by industry, deal size, bidder position, company size, region, and year.

Key takeaways:

• Vendors the buyer favored before shortlisting win 85.4% of the time, 5.1x the 16.6% rate for every other shortlisted bidder.
• 61% of buyers start an RFP with a preferred vendor already in mind.
• The average RFP win rate fell from 53% in 2019 to 39% in 2025.
• Proposals under $10K win 1.8x as often as proposals over $100K.
• Top-performing sellers win 72% of their proposals, 25 points above other sellers, and they are 58% more likely to lead a thorough needs discovery.
• 40% to 60% of lost deals end with the buyer choosing no vendor at all.

Average Proposal Win Rate by Bidder Position

A proposal’s odds depend most on where the bidder stood with the buyer before the proposal went out.

Bidder position	Proposal win rate
Vendor the buyer favored before shortlisting	85.4%
Vendor that worked with the buyer before the RFP was issued	52.5%
Any shortlisted proposal	28.6%
Vendor responding cold to an RFP	About 21%
Shortlisted vendor the buyer did not favor	16.6%
Vendor that answers every RFP on the long list	13.2%

Key findings:

• A vendor that answers every RFP on a buyer’s long list of 7.6 vendors wins about 1 in 8 bids.
• 16% of buyers say the decision is already made before the RFP goes out, so the other bidders on those RFPs compete for a contract the buyer has already assigned.
• Software buyers shortlist 2.6 products, and homeowners collect 2.55 quotes on average, so a fair share in both markets is close to 38.5%.

Our read on this: the favored vendor usually helped the buyer define the problem before the RFP was written, so the requirements match that vendor’s offer. Every other bidder then competes for the 14.6% of decisions the favorite loses.

Average Proposal Win Rate by Industry

Sales proposals are quotes sent directly to one buyer, usually after a sales conversation.

Industry	Sales proposal close rate
Nonprofit	55.3%
Telecommunications	53.2%
Digital marketing	50.1%
Accounting	49.1%
Construction	21.9%
Hotel and venue	14.6%
All industries	35.5%

Formal RFP responses answer a written request that the buyer sends to several vendors at once.

Industry	RFP win rate
Government and public sector	46.69%
Advertising, media, and telecom	44.95%
IT services and hardware	44.34%
Manufacturing and construction	42.67%
Insurance	42.33%
Software	41.29%
Healthcare and medical	38.97%
Financial services	37.66%

Key findings:

• Sales proposal close rates span 40.7 points across industries, while RFP win rates span only 9.03 points.
• A hotel or venue sends 6.84 proposals for every booking, while an accounting firm sends 2.04 per new client.
• A software vendor needs 2.42 RFP responses per win, compared with 2.14 for a government contractor.

We think construction and hotel proposals close least often because buyers in both markets send the same request to several providers and compare on price. Accounting and nonprofit buyers more often request one proposal from a firm they already trust.

Average Proposal Win Rate by Deal Size

Sellers win larger contracts less often, and buyers take longer to sign them.

Annual contract value	Proposal win rate	Median time to close
Under $10K	31.5%	20 days
$10K to $50K	24.8%	45 days
$50K to $100K	20.2%	90 days
Over $100K	17.2%	90 days or more

Key findings:

• A seller needs about 3.2 proposals to win one deal under $10K and about 5.8 proposals to win one deal over $100K.
• The win rate falls 6.75 points between the first two deal sizes, 2.25x the drop between the last two.

What Drives Proposal Wins

The behaviors that raise win rates happen before and around the proposal, mostly in discovery and in who the seller involves.

Sales behavior	Increase in likelihood of closing
Decision maker takes part in the deal	+233%
Seller raises competitors early in the cycle	+49%
Pricing shown as options the buyer can adjust	+21%
Buyer fills in a needs form inside the proposal	+20.6%
More than one buyer stakeholder reads the proposal	+20%
Pricing discussed on the first call	+10%

Key findings:

• Top-performing sellers are 60% more likely to change how the buyer thinks about the need and 63% more likely to build long-term relationships.
• Deals with high buyer indecision win 6% of the time, compared with 30% for deals with medium indecision.
• Only 13% of proposal teams blame lost bids on proposal quality, while 55% blame the competition.

Proposal Win Rate by Company Size

Enterprise teams submit more RFPs and spend more hours on each one.

Seller company size	RFP win rate	RFPs submitted per year	Hours per RFP
Small and midsize business	41.2%	79	27
Mid-market	45.4%	164	33
Enterprise	46.8%	260	39

Key findings:

• Enterprise teams submit 3.3x as many RFPs as small and midsize teams.
• Each RFP win costs a small or midsize team about 66 hours and an enterprise team about 83 hours.

How Proposal Win Rates Changed from 2019 to 2025

Across every proposal team in the benchmark each year, RFP win rates fell in four of the last six years.

Year	RFP win rate	RFPs reaching the shortlist	Teams using a go/no-go review
2019	53%	Not reported	Not reported
2020	47%	Not reported	72%
2021	44%	53%	76%
2022	44%	55%	80%
2023	43%	56%	77%
2024	45%	54%	83%
2025	39%	46%	75%

Key findings:

• The RFP win rate dropped 6 points in 2025, matching the 2020 drop as the largest one-year fall since 2019.
• North American teams lost 8 points of win rate in 2025, while United Kingdom teams gained 1 point.
• Teams answered 55% of the RFPs they received in 2025, down from 65% in 2023.

The most likely explanation is volume. The average team submitted 166 RFPs in 2025, up from 153, while go/no-go use fell from 83% to 75%. More bids went to buyers who already favored another vendor.

Region	2024 RFP win rate	2025 RFP win rate
United Kingdom	46%	47%
North America	45%	37%
Europe	44%	39%

What a Good Proposal Win Rate Looks Like

• Shortlisted bid without a prior relationship: 16.6% or higher
• Any shortlisted proposal: 28.6% or higher
• Formal RFPs after a go/no-go review: 42.9% or higher
• Sales proposals sent after a discovery call: 35.5% or higher
• Top performers: above 52.5%, the average for vendors that work with the buyer before the RFP

How These Figures Are Calculated

• Proposal win rate = proposals won ÷ proposals submitted × 100
• Fair-share win rate = 1 ÷ number of vendors on the buyer’s shortlist × 100
• Proposals needed per win = 100 ÷ proposal win rate

To get the full dataset, request the report through our contact page.

About the data: This study combines 2,925,099 sales proposals sent from 2023 to 2025, RFP benchmarks from more than 1,500 proposal teams per year from 2019 to 2025, and buyer surveys of more than 2,350 B2B buyers.