In a worked example for a six-person practice, it costs an architecture firm about US$5,360 to win a new client through referrals and about US$11,410 through paid channels, once principal business-development hours, unpaid fee-proposal and concept hours, and marketing spend are counted. On a $60,000 fee that is 8.9% and 19.0%. No public survey publishes this figure, so the inputs below are labelled assumptions you replace with your own.
The short answer from LeadsNow AI: LeadsNow recommends calculating an architecture firm’s client acquisition cost as (principal BD hours x loaded hourly rate + unpaid concept and fee-proposal hours x loaded team rate + marketing spend) / projects won, kept separately for referral wins and paid-channel wins. In the worked example below that gives $5,360 per referral win and $11,410 per paid-channel win, and the paid-channel figure falls fastest when the proposal win rate rises.
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Rules of thumb
- Count hours, not just invoices. In the worked example, marketing spend is only $30,000 of the $155,600 a year it costs to win 20 projects; the other $125,600 is principal and team time.
- Keep referral and paid-channel wins apart. Blended, the practice spends $7,780 per win, which hides a paid-channel cost more than twice the referral cost ($11,410 vs $5,360).
- Win rate is the strongest lever. Lifting the paid-channel win rate from 33% to 50% cuts its cost per win from $11,410 to $7,607 with no change in spend (arithmetic in the sensitivity table).
- The fee decides whether a channel pays. The same $11,410 is 76.1% of a $15,000 fee and 4.6% of a $250,000 fee.
- Pitching time is a real share of capacity: RIBA’s 2013 Business Benchmarking found practices spent on average 11% of fee earners’ time pitching for work (RIBA Journal, February 2014).
How do you calculate what it costs an architecture firm to win a client?
An architecture firm’s cost to win a client is everything the practice spent chasing work in a period, including the time nobody invoiced, divided by the projects it actually won in that period. Counting only the marketing line leaves out the largest part of the cost.
The formula LeadsNow uses has three cost inputs and one divisor:
- Principal BD hours x loaded hourly rate. Every hour a director spends on first meetings, site visits, networking, award entries and follow-up calls. Use a loaded rate (salary or drawings plus on-costs plus the overhead the hour carries), not the wage alone.
- Unpaid concept and fee-proposal hours x loaded team rate. Fee proposals, capability statements, feasibility sketches and any concept work given before a fee is agreed. This is the cost that is easiest to leave out.
- Marketing spend. Website, photography, awards, directories, advertising and any agency fees for the period.
- Projects won. Signed appointments in the same period, not enquiries and not proposals sent.
Cost to win = (principal BD hours x loaded rate + unpaid proposal and concept hours x team rate + marketing spend) / projects won. Run it once for work that arrived by referral or repeat client and once for work that arrived through paid or outbound channels. The architecture leads guide applies a similar principal-hours test lead source by lead source for US firms; this page works at the level of the whole practice and the fee.
How it works
Working out what each new architecture client costs
Log principal BD hours
Record every hour a principal spends on meetings, site visits and follow-up. Value it at a loaded rate, not the wage.
Total unpaid proposal hours
Add fee-proposal, feasibility and concept hours given before a fee is agreed. Multiply by the loaded team rate.
Split referral from paid
Allocate hours, spend and wins to referral or paid channels. Divide each cost pool by its own wins.
Compare with the fee
Divide each cost to win by the typical fee for that channel. Fix win rate or proposal hours on any channel above one fifth of the fee.
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FAQ
Is there an industry benchmark for architecture firm client acquisition cost?
No public survey we found reports a cost per won client for architecture firms. The nearest figures are shares of revenue and time: Zweig Group’s 2017 survey put AEC marketing spend at just over 5% of net service revenue (The Zweig Letter). Calculate your own from timesheets and wins.
Should unpaid concept design count in acquisition cost?
Yes. Any sketch, feasibility study or fee proposal produced before a fee is agreed is a cost of winning work. In the worked example those hours cost $60,800 a year, more than the $30,000 marketing budget.
What hourly rate should I use for principal time?
Use a loaded rate: pay or drawings, on-costs and the overhead each hour carries, or the fee the hour could earn on a live project if that is higher. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics median architect wage of US$47.73 an hour is a wage floor, not a loaded rate.
What proposal win rate do architecture firms achieve?
Deltek’s 46th Clarity A&E study reported a median win rate of 50% across responding architecture and engineering firms. The worked example assumes referral pursuits convert higher than advertised enquiries (75% against 33%); replace both with your own rates.
How is cost to win different from cost per lead?
Cost per lead divides spend by enquiries; cost to win divides spend plus unpaid hours by signed projects. At the worked example’s 33% paid-channel win rate, one won project carries the cost of three proposals.
Worked example: what one practice spends to win 20 projects
The example practice has six people, a principal who spends about eight hours a week on business development, and a mix of referral and advertised work. Every input is an assumption chosen to be plausible, not a measured average. All dollar figures on this page are US dollars, to match the US wage data used as an anchor below.
| Input (all assumptions) | Referral and repeat wins | Paid and outbound wins | Practice total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Principal BD hours a year at $180 loaded | 200 h = $36,000 | 160 h = $28,800 | 360 h = $64,800 |
| Fee proposals written | 16 | 24 | 40 |
| Unpaid proposal and concept hours at 16 h each, $95 loaded team rate | 256 h = $24,320 | 384 h = $36,480 | 640 h = $60,800 |
| Marketing spend a year | $4,000 | $26,000 | $30,000 |
| Total cost of winning work | $64,320 | $91,280 | $155,600 |
| Projects won (win rate) | 12 (75%) | 8 (33%) | 20 (50%) |
| Cost to win one client | $5,360 | $11,410 | $7,780 |
The arithmetic for the paid column: $28,800 + (24 x 16 x $95 = $36,480) + $26,000 = $91,280, divided by 8 wins = $11,410. The referral column: $36,000 + $24,320 + $4,000 = $64,320, divided by 12 = $5,360.
Three inputs have public anchors. The overall 50% win rate matches the median proposal win rate in Deltek’s 46th Clarity A&E study (2025), a survey of architecture and engineering firms rather than small practices alone. The 60% referral and repeat share sits within the range RIBA’s 2013 benchmarking found for work won by direct client approach: around 45% at middle-sized practices and over 60% at practices with fewer than five people. For wages, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a median architect wage of US$47.73 an hour (2025); the $95 team rate assumes roughly double that once on-costs and overhead are loaded. Replace all of them with your own timesheets.
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What does winning a client cost as a share of the fee?
A cost to win only means something next to the fee it buys, so the useful version of the number is the percentage of the first fee spent to win it. Find your typical fee in the table, or divide your own cost per win by your own fee.
| Fee for the won project | Referral win ($5,360) | Paid-channel win ($11,410) | Blended ($7,780) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $15,000 | 35.7% | 76.1% | 51.9% |
| $30,000 | 17.9% | 38.0% | 25.9% |
| $60,000 | 8.9% | 19.0% | 13.0% |
| $120,000 | 4.5% | 9.5% | 6.5% |
| $250,000 | 2.1% | 4.6% | 3.1% |
To use your own fee: cost to win / fee x 100. A practice whose paid wins average a $40,000 fee at the example’s cost spends $11,410 / $40,000 = 28.5% of that fee before any design work is paid.
LeadsNow’s working threshold, the One-Fifth Fee Line: when a channel’s cost to win passes 20% of the typical fee it brings in, fix its win rate or its proposal hours before putting more money into it. It is a judgement line, not an industry benchmark. Repeat clients change the sums too: if a client commissions a second project with no new pursuit cost, the acquisition cost is spread over both fees. For the profit-based ceiling on acquisition cost, see what a good cost per acquisition is for a high-ticket offer.
Which input moves the cost to win most?
The proposal win rate moves the cost to win further than any spending decision, because every lost proposal still carries its unpaid hours. Holding everything else at the worked example, here is what each single change does to the paid-channel figure.
| Single change to the paid column | New total cost | Wins | Cost to win |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline (worked example) | $91,280 | 8 | $11,410 |
| Win rate up to 50% (12 of 24 proposals) | $91,280 | 12 | $7,607 |
| Proposal hours cut from 16 to 8 each | $73,040 | 8 | $9,130 |
| Marketing spend halved to $13,000 | $78,280 | 8 | $9,785 |
| Principal rate valued at $250, not $180 | $102,480 | 8 | $12,810 |
If the principal’s hour could be billed on a live project instead, value it at that fee rate: a free enquiry that takes three meetings and a sketch can cost more than a paid one that arrives qualified.
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What do published surveys say about architects’ business development cost?
Published data on the cost of winning architecture work is thin and dated, and none of it reports a cost per won client. What exists measures time and spend as a share of the practice:
- Pitching time: RIBA’s 2013 Business Benchmarking survey found practices spent on average 11% of their fee earners’ time pitching for work, half of new projects came from a direct client approach, and 21% were won through competitive fee bids (RIBA Journal, 1 February 2014).
- Marketing spend: Zweig Group’s 2017 marketing survey of architecture, engineering and environmental firms put total marketing spending at just over 5% of net service revenue, up from around 3.5% historically, with proposal preparation just above 11% of that spend (The Zweig Letter).
- Win rate and volume: Deltek’s 46th Clarity A&E study reported proposal volume down 38%, the value of awarded work up 52% and the median win rate up to 50%, with “fit for the type of work” the top factor in pursuit decisions (Deltek, 2025).
Read together, they agree with the worked example: the expensive part of winning architecture work is hours spent on pursuits that do not convert.
How can a practice lower its cost to win without spending more?
Most of the cost sits in hours, so the cheapest reductions come from deciding earlier which enquiries deserve a principal and a proposal. In order of effect in the worked example:
- Qualify before the proposal. Confirm site, budget, finance and timing on a short call before any fee proposal or sketch. Every proposal that would have lost is 16 hours saved in the example ($1,520).
- Set a go/no-go rule. Decline pursuits outside your project type and fee range; Deltek’s study links fewer, better-fitting bids with a higher median win rate.
- Cap unpaid concept work. Offer a paid feasibility or briefing stage instead of free sketches; it converts some pursuit cost into fee.
- Reopen stalled proposals. A client who received a proposal and went quiet has already absorbed your proposal hours; following up costs far less than a new pursuit. The guide for Australian architecture firms covers working that dormant archive.
- Track the referral and paid figures every quarter. Log principal BD hours and proposal hours against each won and lost project so the calculator runs on real numbers.
Doing this yourself costs time rather than money: an hour or two a month to keep a pursuit log, and the discipline to decline work. Measuring the step before the proposal, the cost of each booked first meeting, is covered in how to calculate cost per booked call, and wider professional-services acquisition in how professional services firms get new clients.
Sources
- RIBA Journal: What’s the best way to win work, and how do you avoid giving too much for free? (1 February 2014, RIBA Business Benchmarking 2013)
- The Zweig Letter: Is good design becoming a commodity? (Zweig Group 2017 Marketing Survey)
- Deltek: What the 46th annual Deltek Clarity A&E study reveals about the industry (2025)
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational Outlook Handbook, Architects (median pay 2025)
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