How fast can your proposals go out with the time you have?
Your fastest turnaround, in weeks, is the hours one proposal takes divided by the spare hours someone can give to proposals each week. You reach that floor only when nothing else is waiting. The tool also sets your proposal hours a month against your spare hours a month and shows the work that carries over. Every number is yours.
Where your proposal hours go
Your proposals take 32 hours a month and the spare time for them comes to 26 hours a month, so the queue grows by 6 hours every month.
| Proposals × hours on each = proposal hours a month | 8 × 4 hours = 32 hours |
|---|---|
| Spare hours a week × fifty-two weeks over twelve months | 6 hours a week = 26 hours a month |
| Hours added to the queue each month | 6 hours |
| How much longer the wait gets each month, in weeks of spare time | 1 week |
| Shortest wait for one proposal with nothing ahead of it, in weeks of spare time | 0.7 weeks |
| Proposals × your close rate = clients won a month | 8 × 25% = 2 clients |
| Proposal hours behind each client you win | 32 hours ÷ 2 clients = 16 hours |
If proposals in your business wait for one person's free afternoon, I can go through with you where they wait and what it would take to send them sooner.
How this is calculated
- Proposals a month times the hours each one takes gives your proposal hours a month.
- The spare hours a week someone can give to proposals, times fifty-two weeks over twelve months, gives the spare hours a month.
- Proposal hours a month divided by spare hours a month gives the load. Below half, there is room to spare. From half up to the full amount, most of the spare time goes to proposals, so a busy month tips it over. Above that, proposals arrive faster than they can be written.
- When proposal hours a month are more than spare hours a month, the difference is the backlog that carries into the next month. The backlog divided by spare hours a week gives the weeks each month adds to the queue.
- The hours one proposal takes divided by spare hours a week gives the shortest turnaround, in weeks of spare time, when nothing else is waiting. On your numbers, no proposal goes out faster than that.
- Proposals a month times the share that become clients, divided by a hundred, gives the clients won each month. Proposal hours a month divided by clients won gives the proposal hours behind each won client.
- When nobody has spare hours for proposals, there is no week to measure in, so the turnaround and the weeks added read as no spare time set.
Assumptions and limits
- The inputs are yours, and the starting values are an example. There is no benchmark for how long a proposal should take.
- The turnaround is a floor. It leaves out review rounds, questions back to the buyer and waiting on the client, so a real proposal takes at least this long.
- It treats the spare hours as landing every week. A week that client work eats pushes the whole queue back.
- It counts hours only. What a won client is worth is left out, and the calculator for slow replies to leads puts a figure on revenue at risk.
- It shows where the hours go now. How many of them a system could take over depends on the work itself.
Questions
What counts as an hour on a proposal?
Every hour from the end of the call to the moment it's sent: rebuilding the notes, working out scope and price, writing, formatting and checking. Count the hours of whoever writes it, and add anyone who reviews it from the same spare time.
How long should a proposal take to write?
There is no fair benchmark, because scope, price and the buyer change it every time. What decides how fast one goes out is the hours it takes against the spare hours someone has for it each week. Put in your own and the tool gives your floor.
Why spare hours instead of total working hours?
Proposals get written in the time left over after client work, and that leftover time decides when they go out. A full week of working hours would make the queue look shorter than it is. Count only the hours someone can give to proposals in a usual week.
What do I do when the queue keeps growing?
The queue only shrinks when there are more spare hours or fewer hours in each proposal. I'd look at which of those hours need you. Scope and price always do. Rebuilding the call from memory doesn't, once someone writes the inputs down as the call ends.
Why does the tool show hours per won client?
A proposal that doesn't win still took the hours. Dividing all your proposal hours by the clients they win shows what each new client costs in writing time, and that is the figure to weigh against the spare hours you have.
Related
- The proposal bottleneck: why proposal turnaround is slowProposals wait for one person's free afternoon. Capture the inputs as the call ends, draft in your template, and keep scope and price with the owner.
- What does coordination cost your business each year?Turn your leads, proposals and active projects into the hours your people spend coordinating each month, and what that time costs you in a year.
- Should I hire an operations coordinator or install a system?What an operations coordinator costs a year, set against installing a system: where each one fails, and which to pick first when your agency is growing.
- The follow-up bottleneck: why follow-ups fall through the cracksFollow-ups slip when the next step lives in someone's head. They hold when every open lead carries a next step, a date and a drafted nudge a person approves.