A good proposal acceptance rate is roughly 34–50% for businesses that send written proposals. Proposify’s dataset of 742,137 proposals averages 34%, RFP teams in Loopio’s 2026 survey won 39%, and Deltek Clarity reports a 50% median win rate for architecture and engineering firms. By industry, Proposify’s published rows run from 14% (hotel and venue) to 53% (non-profit).
- Widest industry split: Proposify, 742,137 proposals across 30 industries: non-profit 53%, telecommunications 51%, digital marketing 48%, accounting 47%, construction 21%, hotel and venue 14%.
- Formal tenders: Loopio’s 2026 report, 1,500+ response teams: 39% won this year, 45% averaged across 2019–2026. North America 37%, Europe 39%, UK 47%.
- Architecture and engineering: Deltek Clarity (May 2025, nearly 700 US and Canadian firms): median win rate 50%, while proposal volume fell 38%.
- Cross-industry, proposal stage: RAIN Group, 472 sellers: 47% average, 62% for the top 20%.
- No credible benchmark exists for Australian businesses or for trades and home-services quotes. We looked, 25 September 2026.
- The rule that matters: an acceptance rate means nothing without the share of enquiries you chose to quote.
What does “proposal acceptance rate” actually measure?
Proposal acceptance rate is proposals accepted divided by proposals sent, counted on the proposals sent in a period and given a fixed window to land. Every benchmark on this page is a version of that fraction. None of them uses exactly the same one, and that is why their numbers differ.
Three denominators turn up in the published data. Proposals sent through software (Proposify), which includes quick quotes emailed in minutes. Formal RFP submissions (Loopio, Deltek), where a buyer has invited a bid and a team has spent days answering it. Opportunities that reached a proposal (RAIN Group), a seller-reported figure that also covers deals quoted verbally. A 21% construction figure and a 50% engineering figure are not the same kind of number. One counts quotes, the other counts tenders the firm chose to enter.
The quotable version: a proposal acceptance rate is a statement about which enquiries you chose to price, as much as about how well you sell. For how this stage fits with the stages either side of it, see our guide to sales pipeline stages and what each one costs.
How it works
How to benchmark your proposal acceptance rate
Cohort the proposals
Take every proposal sent in a fixed quarter. Count acceptances within 90 days, not by calendar month.
Add quote coverage
Divide proposals sent by qualified enquiries received. Report the two numbers together.
Match the denominator
Compare quotes with quote datasets and tenders with tender datasets. Never average different kinds.
Read the threshold
Place your rate in its band and check the first thing that band points to, whether that is coverage, follow-up or price.
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Proposal acceptance rate by industry: every figure we could trace
These are the only proposal-stage figures we could trace to a named publisher with a stated sample, checked at source on 25 September 2026. Each row is shown with its own denominator. Do not average them together.
| Source | Industry or segment | Published rate | Denominator | Sample | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proposify, State of Proposals 2026 | Non-profit / Telecoms / Digital marketing / Accounting | 53% / 51% / 48% / 47% | Proposals sent through Proposify that closed | 742,137 proposals, 30 industries, $3.06bn in sales value | Anything about businesses that don’t use proposal software. Only six of the 30 industries are published as text |
| Proposify, same dataset | All 30 industries / Construction / Hotel and venue | 34% / 21% / 14% | As above | As above | Deal size within each industry |
| Loopio, RFP Response Trends 2026 | RFP teams, all industries | 39% this year; 45% across 2019–2026 | RFPs submitted that were won | 1,500+ teams worldwide, self-reported | Industry rows are in the gated report, not the public summary |
| Loopio, same report | By region | UK 47%, Europe 39%, North America 37% | As above | As above | Australia or Asia-Pacific |
| Deltek Clarity, 46th A&E study | Architecture and engineering | 50% median | Competitive proposals won | Nearly 700 US and Canadian firms, May 2025 | The same year proposal volume fell 38%, so the rate rose partly because firms bid less |
| SMPS Foundation, via BD+C | Engineering / Construction firms | 44.2% / 37.9% | Proposals submitted to projects won | 303 US AEC firms, reported January 2017 | Anything recent. This is the oldest row on the table |
| RAIN Group Center for Sales Research | Cross-industry B2B | 47% average; 62% top 20%; 40% the rest | “Opportunities proposed or quoted” that were won | 472 sellers and sales executives | Industry detail. RAIN reports that win rates across industries “were similar” |
Two patterns hold across the table. Formal bids that a firm chose to enter sit near 40–50%. Quick, competitive quotes in construction and hospitality sit at 14–21%. The biggest driver of a published acceptance rate is how selective the sender is, not which industry it is in. RAIN’s finding that industry makes little difference to win rates at the proposal stage points the same way.
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Where no credible proposal acceptance benchmark exists
Some gaps are worth saying out loud, because a made-up number fills them faster than a real one:
- Australia. We found no Australian proposal or quote acceptance dataset from the ABS, an industry body or a vendor. An “Australian benchmark” you come across is a global figure with an Australian label on it.
- Trades and home services. Proposify’s construction row (21%) is the nearest published figure, and it covers only businesses that pay for proposal software. Nothing credible covers plumbers, electricians, pool builders or landscapers quoting from their job-management tools.
- Your job-management software may not be measuring acceptance at all. Jobber’s help centre says its quote conversion rate compares “the number of quotes with a sent date in a calendar month against the number of quotes with a conversion date in a calendar month”, and that “you could have a quote conversion rate that is greater than 100%.” That number is useful for tracking cash flow. It is not an acceptance rate.
Worked example of the calendar-month problem: in March you send 20 quotes. In the same month, 6 February quotes and 4 March quotes are accepted. The calendar-month figure is 10 ÷ 20 = 50%. The March send cohort, checked after 90 days, might come out at 7 ÷ 20 = 35%. A quote conversion figure from a software dashboard should not be compared with a published benchmark until it has been rebuilt on a send cohort. The cohort method is set out step by step in how to increase proposal acceptance rate.
Is a higher proposal acceptance rate always better? The coverage pair
No. Deltek’s 2025 study shows the trade-off clearly: architecture and engineering firms cut proposal volume by 38%, and their median win rate rose to 50%. The rate went up because the denominator went down.
Here is a worked comparison with round numbers. Two businesses each receive 200 qualified enquiries a quarter.
- Business A quotes 150 of them (75% coverage) and wins 30. Acceptance rate 20%, enquiry-to-win 15%, 30 jobs.
- Business B quotes 50 of them (25% coverage) and wins 25. Acceptance rate 50%, enquiry-to-win 12.5%, 25 jobs.
On a benchmark table, B looks two and a half times better. A has more revenue. The coverage pair: never report proposal acceptance rate without quotes ÷ enquiries next to it. The pair tells you whether a high rate comes from good selling or from careful choice of what to quote, and whether a low rate comes from poor selling or from quoting everyone who asks.
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How to read your own proposal acceptance rate: a threshold table
This is our decision rule, built from the published ranges above. It is a way to read your number, not a benchmark in itself. It assumes a send cohort with a 90-day window and at least 40 proposals. At 40 proposals and a 35% rate, the 95% margin of error is already about ±15 points, as wide as a row; below 40 it is wider (why small samples mislead is covered in our sales close rate benchmarks).
| Your rate (send cohort, 90 days) | Where it sits in the published data | What to check first |
|---|---|---|
| Under 15% | At or below the lowest industry figure Proposify publishes in text (hotel and venue, 14%) | Coverage. You are probably pricing enquiries that were never qualified, or losing quotes to silence rather than to competitors |
| 15–30% | Below the 34% Proposify average; matches construction (21%) | Normal in markets where buyers get three quotes. Compare against your own industry row, not the average |
| 30–50% | Covers every cross-industry figure: Proposify 34%, Loopio 39–45%, RAIN 47%, Deltek 50% | Healthy. More gain now comes from quote volume and follow-up than from the proposal document |
| 50–62% | Above every average; reaches RAIN’s top-20% figure (62%) | Strong. Check coverage: are you turning down enquiries you could have won? |
| Above 62% | Above RAIN’s top-20% average | Either excellent or underpriced. Try a price increase on the next 20 quotes before you celebrate |
Above about 62% acceptance, the usual question is price, not skill. Of course, some firms at that level are simply excellent.
How to build your own proposal acceptance benchmark, and what it costs
Since your industry probably has no public figure, the only benchmark that holds up is one you build. The method takes four fields per proposal: date sent, job type or client industry, whether it was accepted inside 90 days, and whether the enquiry was qualified before you quoted it.
- Export every proposal sent in your last three complete quarters.
- Tag each one with the four fields. At about a minute per record, 300 proposals take about five hours, once.
- Calculate acceptance rate and coverage for each job type. The split between job types usually tells you more than the overall figure does.
- Compare each row against the matching row in the table above, if there is one, and against its own trend from quarter to quarter.
Keeping it going takes about an hour a month. The hard part is the follow-up that moves the number. In our own client work, doubling the contact rate on a cohort of quoted prospects typically roughly doubles what comes out of it. That is an operator observation, not a study. Much of that gain goes to the quotes nobody followed up at all. At a few dozen quotes a month, one person can do this by hand. At several hundred, it is a job in its own right. We run that follow-up on a pay-per-result basis for trade and construction businesses and home renovators. Quotes already past 90 days need a different approach, set out in reactivating dead trade quotes.
Frequently asked questions
Is a 20% proposal acceptance rate bad?
Not necessarily. In Proposify’s dataset, construction closes at 21% and hotels and venues at 14%, against a 34% average across 30 industries. A 20% rate in a three-quote market is normal. In accounting (47%) it would be low. Check how many enquiries you quote before judging it.
What is the average RFP win rate?
According to Loopio’s 2026 RFP Response Trends report, which covers 1,500+ response teams, teams won 39% of RFPs this year, and the average across 2019–2026 is 45%. The UK leads at 47%, with Europe at 39% and North America at 37%. The figures are self-reported.
What is a good proposal win rate for architecture and engineering firms?
About 50%. The 46th Deltek Clarity study (May 2025, nearly 700 firms) reported a 50% median win rate, while proposal volume fell 38%. An older SMPS Foundation survey of 303 firms put engineering at 44.2% and construction at 37.9%.
Is there a proposal acceptance rate benchmark for Australia or for trades?
No. As of 25 September 2026 we found no Australian dataset and no credible trades or home-services dataset. The closest figure is Proposify’s 21% for construction, which covers only businesses that use proposal software. Measure your own send cohorts instead.
Is proposal acceptance rate the same as close rate?
No. Acceptance rate divides by proposals sent. Close rate usually divides by all qualified opportunities, including those that never got a price. The same team can truthfully report 30% acceptance and 12% close rate in the same month.
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