How to Win More Work | A Consultant's Guide to Growing Profitably in 2026
In this practical guide, you'll uncover industry benchmark data.
In this practical guide, you'll uncover industry benchmark data (including how many proposals your peers are sending and their win rates); a targeted Proposal Maturity Model you can use for self-assessment; and a new operating model you can adopt to start winning more, faster.
- Benchmark Your Firm Against Services Industry Data
- Diagnose Your Bids with the Proposal Maturity Model
- Discover How AI Can Help You Win More Work in 2026
By the numbers
Professional services firms are submitting an average of 91 proposals a year, but win rates vary sharply by industry. Our research puts the average win rate at 47% across 45 firms, with architecture firms winning less often (32%) and management consulting winning more (48%).
On average, firms spend 24 hours per proposal. Senior staff (partners, principals, directors) account for 47% of that time.
These figures combine two sources. Projectworks surveyed 45 professional services firms (architecture n=3, engineering n=17, management consulting n=13, software services n=2) on proposal volume, win rate, and hours spent per proposal.
We paired this with third-party benchmarks from Loopio's State of RFPs in 2025, which surveyed a wider base of RFP teams across industries.
Want the full breakdown?
Download the guide to get the full breakdown of proposal benchmarks by industry, the Proposal Maturity Model to diagnose your own bids, and the operating model to start winning more work.
.svg){kind=small}
Explore similar resources from Projectworks
The best consulting sales people win new clients and grow the ones you already have, at a margin worth keeping. Build a sales incentive plan that pays them for both. Answer five questions about your firm and the role, and the sales incentive plan calculator gives you a one-page plan with your numbers in it, ready to download. Built for consulting and professional services firms of 10 to 200 people.
A step-by-step cheat sheet showing consulting firms how to build a Skill in Claude or ChatGPT that turns project data into a client status deck.
Based on a survey of 100 high-growth US consulting firms, this whitepaper breaks down how firms responding to the pricing, AI, and tech-stack pressures reshaping the industry right now. It covers the five places every firm needs to act, and what the firms pulling ahead are doing differently.