Smaller budgets, more projects, more proposal load
Projectworks platform data shows the average project budget has halved over the past two years, while the average number of in-flight projects has doubled. That shift changes everything. You need more wins to hit the same revenue, which means proposals become a throughput problem, not just a sales problem.
Proposals are a hidden utilization leak
One of the sharpest stats in the episode: an average firm produces 91 proposals a year and spends roughly 24 hours on each... that's over a year's worth of someone's time. Even if those numbers feel conservative, the point stands. Proposal effort quietly eats a huge chunk of your best people’s time, often pulling delivery leaders into pre-sales, then pushing that work into nights and weekends.
If you want to win more work without burning people out, you have to manage proposal effort like you manage delivery effort.
“Personalized” means relevant proof, not swapped names
A proposal has one job: give the customer confidence you can do what you say you’re going to do.
That confidence comes from relevance:
- Proof that matches their industry and problem (not generic case studies)
- Clear understanding of their constraints and stakes
- A believable plan for what happens first, and what “good” looks like
If your proposal is packed with impressive work that is not similar to their situation, it does the opposite of what you want.
The new differentiator is showing, not telling
Words are cheap now. What cuts through is evidence that you understand the problem and have a real approach to solving it.
In the episode we talk about creating a simple “movie trailer” for the engagement. Not a full solution, just something tangible that makes the buyer think, “They get it”.
That could be:
- A short walkthrough video
- A quick prototype or workflow sketch
- A first-week plan with risks called out
AI will make proposals faster, but the advantage is where you spend the saved time
LLMs are great at large blocks of language, which is most of a proposal. So speed alone will not differentiate you for long.
The edge is using AI to remove admin, then reinvesting human time into the parts that actually win deals and protect margin:
- Qualification and positioning
- Scope clarity and risk control
- Commercial shape and pricing discipline
- Relevant proof and a confident delivery plan
A simple “do this next” checklist
If you want to improve proposal outcomes in the next 30 days:
- Set qualification gates before you pull delivery leaders into pre-sales
- Cap pre-sales hours per opportunity and track it
- Build a proof library tagged by industry, problem, and outcome
- Add one “show it” asset to every serious proposal
- Run a proposal retro: what we under-scoped, what we over-promised, what we’d price differently
Join the Projectworks Proposals waitlist
We’re building new proposals capability in Projectworks to help firms move faster, lift quality, and connect proposals to delivery and financial reality.
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Client acquisition cost is the number no one measures but everyone should. Most firm leaders can quote utilization and margin, then go quiet when you ask what it costs to win a client. We'll work through how to measure it, what healthy looks like, and the leadership question underneath it: who you hire, and what an AI-forward exec team needs to be.
Every proposal, pitch, and scoping call is overhead you carry before a client says yes, and the faster you grow the more it stacks up. In the AI era that's changing, with cost per proposal dropping by as much as 75% at firms using the right tools and workflows. We'll dig into what those leading firms are running, and how to keep this cost from blowing out as you scale.
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Every firm is being told AI changes everything. Few can tell you what it's actually worth to them. We benchmark over 700 consulting firms, and our data puts revenue per employee near $160K today. Over the next couple of years, we expect the leading firms to double it, by turning the tools and data they already run on into an intelligent ecosystem that drives action across the firm. Season 3 opens on the question that defines the rest of it: what does healthy growth and profitability actually look like in the AI era?