The Cost of Maybe
What happens when Pursuit Decisions Lack Strategy
here’s a very specific kind of chaos that happens in AEC and Commercial Real Estate Firms when the economy is questionable or taking a downturn. We used to call it “Pursuit Season” but now it seems that every season is pursuit season, so we’re retiring that phase.
You know the timing though:
An RFP hits a Business Developer's inbox and they sit on it for a week. Somebody says, “This could be a good one!” and another person says “We should probably go for it…” and just like that the train is rolling, you’re in. No strategy. No positioning. No real conversation about whether you could even win, just a quiet agreement to burn 40+ hours of 4+ team member’s time and hope for the best.
Respectfully: You’re doing it wrong.
Let’s actually put the math behind this decision, because it’s rarely treated like the investment it is. Using common AEC pursuit roles and national average salaries, then converting those into loaded hourly rates (salary + around 30% for overhead, benefits, and true cost to the business), you start to see the real picture.
Here’s who’s typically involved in an RFP response at a minimum:
Business Developer: ~$150,000/year = $125-$165/hr
Subject Matter Expert / PM/ Principal: ~$130,000/year = $100-$145/hr
Marketing Manager: ~$105,000/year = $80-$120/hr
Senior Marketing Coordinator: ~$75,000/year = $60-$90/hr
(Based on national averages)
Now let’s layer in the typical hours for a fairly basic RFP response:
Business Developer: 8-12 hours
Subject Matter Expert / PM/ Principal: 12-20 hours
Marketing Manager: 20-30 hours
Senior Marketing Coordinator: 30-50 hours
That puts your direct internal labor between $6,000 and $13,000. Now let’s add in the inevitable: leadership reviews, rewrites and iteration cycles, formatting back and forth, last-minute fire drills. That layer alone typically adds about 30%-40%, bringing a standard, basic level RFP response into the $10,000-$15,000 range.
And that’s still conservative. It doesn’t include interview prep (which more than doubles the cost), nor does it account for opportunity cost in the pursuits your team didn’t go after because they were buried in this one.
So we’ll say it louder for those in the back: Every pursuit you say yes to is a five-figure investment.
(We can already hear it: “yeah well we’ll just have AI help us write the content.” Sure… That might save you a few hours, and it might even sound polished. But if your strategy isn’t there, and if your positioning is weak, you don’t actually understand the client as a person, you’re just producing a faster, prettier version of something that was never going to win. We get more into this in our blog “Selling vs. Sharing” because there’s a big, and obvious difference between putting info on a page and actually persuading someone to choose to work with you)
The problem that we see many firms have is that they treat the Go/No-Go meeting like a formality. But the Go/No-Go is your safeguard against overspending and wasting everyone’s time (Including the reviewers!). The Go/No Go is the moment where you collectively decide whether you are positioned to win. Not whether you like the project. Not whether it would be “nice to have”. It’s to determine what your odds are at winning, and if you should take the bet.
A good go/no-go forces you to ask the hard questions:
Do we have a real relationship here?
Do we know what the client is trying to achieve?
Do we understand what this client really cares about?
Do we understand what the stakeholders are interested in?
Do we even know how to do this work?
Have we done this work before? Can we prove it?
Do we have capacity to do the work?
Can we articulate why we’re different and why that should matter to them
If those answers feel unclear you're chasing work, not pursuing it, and that's when your proposal process starts to feel like less of a steady stride and more of a mad dash across the finish line.
If you like the chase, that's great! But if you're looking for opportunities to be more strategic with your team's time (and, not to mention, a hell of a lot more profitable), it's time to assess your Go/No Go discipline. And who better than to guide you along this path than a team who thrives on strategic pursuit?
At The Marketing Department, we're able to do more than just make your write-ups "look pretty". We help you decide whether you should pursue in the first place. We help lead smarter Go/No-Go conversations that help you evaluate your real chances of winning, position your team so that when you decide to "go", you're not just another submission in the stack, but a serious contender with a story to tell.