Most GovCon firms don't lose because they write bad proposals. They lose because they pursue the wrong opportunities — and don't find out until they've spent $50,000 to $200,000 finding out. Enter your numbers and see your real cost in under 3 minutes.
1
Enter your team's actual numbers — headcount, rates, and hours across 4 cost categories
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See your fully-loaded cost per bad pursuit — built from your inputs, not industry averages
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Understand your annual pursuit waste — and what it would take to stop it
⏱ Takes under 3 minutes · No commitment required
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CaptureLens
Capture Intelligence · GovCon Decision Support
Pursuit Cost Avoidance Calculator
What Is a Bad Pursuit Actually Costing You?
Enter your firm's actual headcount, hourly rates, and hours invested per pursuit. The calculator builds your fully-loaded cost from the ground up — using your numbers, not industry averages.
① BD & Capture Staff
$0
Covers all BD and capture activities before proposal writing begins: opportunity identification, solicitation review, customer research, competitive landscape assessment, teaming outreach, Go/No-Go gate reviews, and capture plan development.
Fully-loaded rate = salary + benefits + payroll taxes + overhead + G&A. A $75,000/year employee typically costs $110–$130/hour fully loaded. Multiply annual salary by 1.4, then divide by 2,080.
$
Total hours your BD/capture staff spend on a single pursuit from identification through Go/No-Go. Typical range: 80–300 hours depending on opportunity size.
— × $—/hr × — hrs = $0
② Proposal Writing
$0
Captures internal proposal staff, contracted proposal support, and all color review cycles (Red Team, Gold Team, final review). Contracted proposal writers charge $100–$250/hour at market rates. Every hour spent writing a losing proposal is a direct, unrecoverable cost.
For internal staff, use their fully-loaded hourly rate. For outside consultants, use their billed rate. If a mix, estimate a blended average. Typical range: $85–$250/hour.
$
Total writing hours across all staff for one proposal — drafting, reviews, revisions, and final production. Simple responses: 100–200 hrs. Large IDIQs: 600–800+ hrs.
— × $—/hr × — hrs = $0
③ Subject Matter Expert Time
$0
Technical professionals pulled from billable project work to write proposal sections and participate in review cycles. SME time carries a dual cost: direct labor plus the opportunity cost of lost billable revenue. This is the most underestimated cost category in GovCon.
SME fully-loaded rate = salary + benefits + overhead. Note: if your SMEs bill clients at $150–$250/hr, their time off-project also represents lost revenue not captured here.
$
Total hours across all SMEs for one pursuit — technical writing, approach reviews, and color team participation. Typical range: 40–200 hours.
— × $—/hr × — hrs = $0
④ Management Review & Oversight
$0
Executive and management time invested in proposal oversight, gate reviews, pricing approvals, and final submission decisions. At executive fully-loaded rates of $150–$300/hour, even 40 hours of management involvement represents $6,000–$12,000 per pursuit — a figure that rarely appears in any post-bid loss analysis.
Executive fully-loaded rate = total compensation + benefits + overhead. For a CEO or VP earning $150,000–$250,000/year, the fully-loaded hourly rate is typically $175–$300/hour.
$
Total management hours per pursuit — strategy reviews, pricing approvals, color team participation, and final sign-off. Typical range: 20–80 hours across all leaders involved.
— × $—/hr × — hrs = $0
Optional Category
⑤ Outside Counsel & Teaming Agreement Costs
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Include this category — Enable if your firm incurs outside legal or teaming costs per pursuit
Attorney fees for teaming agreement review and negotiation, NDA drafting, subcontractor agreement review, OCI analysis, and compliance review. For competitive full-and-open pursuits involving multiple teaming partners, legal costs of $5,000–$20,000 per pursuit are common.
Attorney cost to draft or review a single teaming agreement. Typical range: $1,000–$2,500 per agreement.
$
OCI analysis and regulatory compliance review required before submission. Typical range: $1,500–$5,000 per pursuit.
$
$
(3 × $1,500) + $2,500 OCI + $1,000 other = $8,000
⑥ Annual Pursuit Volume
How many total proposals does your firm submit per year, and what percentage were poor-fit pursuits? Industry research suggests firms with immature capture processes misallocate 25–40% of their pursuit budget on unwinnable bids.
The percentage of your annual bids that — in hindsight — you probably should not have pursued. If you don't track this, start with 33%, the industry average for firms without a formal capture process.
— pursuits × —% = — bad pursuits/year
Estimated Cost Per Bad Pursuit
$—
Fully-loaded cost built from your actual inputs · capturelens.ai
Click to reveal your number and full breakdown →
Cost Breakdown
① BD & Capture Staff—
② Proposal Writing—
③ Subject Matter Expert Time—
④ Management Review & Oversight—
⑤ Outside Counsel & Teaming (optional)not included
Annual Pursuit Waste (— bad pursuits)—
Why CaptureLens
CaptureLens doesn't write proposals. We work upstream — before your writers, before your SMEs, before your leadership spends a single hour. We give you a human-reviewed Go/No-Go recommendation based on competitive intelligence, opportunity fit, and your specific position in the market. One avoided pursuit pays for months of our service. You make the final call. We make sure you're making it with the best possible information.
Investment amounts are customized to your engagement scope and pipeline complexity. Schedule a consultation at capturelens.ai to receive a tailored proposal.
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Methodology Note: Cost avoidance estimates are derived from a fully-loaded labor cost model across four core categories (BD/capture staff, proposal writing, subject matter expert time, and management oversight) plus an optional fifth category for outside counsel and teaming agreement costs. Inputs reflect user-provided headcount, fully-loaded hourly rates inclusive of salary, benefits, overhead, and G&A, and estimated hours per pursuit. Legal and teaming costs reflect direct out-of-pocket expenditures. Actual costs vary based on firm size, opportunity complexity, labor structure, and legal engagement scope. These figures represent decision-support estimates only and are not a guarantee of savings. CaptureLens LLC provides capture intelligence and bid/no-bid decision support. Proposal writing is expressly out of scope. Pricing for CaptureLens engagements is customized to your scope and pipeline complexity — schedule a consultation at capturelens.ai to receive a tailored proposal.
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