ROI · break-even calculator
Run the numbers on done-for-you bidding.
Put in your own figures and see the break-even — margin per win, break-even in wins, ROI, and payback. It opens on the conservative, compliance-only floor: the value of the bids you stop losing to technicalities.
Your numbers
The break-even calculator
A simulation with assumptions you'll replace. Nothing here is a quote or a guarantee of award.
Conservative floor: counts only bids recovered from disqualification at your current win rate — not the lift a stronger, scored proposal adds.
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How the bid ROI break-even point works
The calculator above is for you; this section is the plain-English version of the same math, for anyone weighing the Canadian construction bid preparation cost against what it returns. The principle is simple: done-for-you bid preparation pays for itself the moment it recovers a single contract you would otherwise have lost — most often a low bid disqualified on a technicality.
The four numbers that set your break-even
Your RFP break-even point is driven by four figures from your own business: how many bids you submit a year, your average contract value, your gross margin, and your bid-to-win ratio (win rate). Multiply average contract value by gross margin and you have the margin a single win contributes. Divide the annual fee by that margin-per-win and you have the break-even expressed in wins — usually a fraction of one.
A worked example
Take a contractor submitting 20 bids a year at an average contract value of $1.5M, an 8% gross margin, and a 25% win rate, who loses roughly 10% of bids to technicalities. Margin per win is $120,000. The two bids a year lost to technicalities would have converted at the normal 25% win rate — about half a recovered win, or $60,000 in margin. Against a $24,000 annual fee, that is a net gain of $36,000, a 150% return, and a payback period under five months — before counting any uplift from a stronger, better-scored proposal.
Why this is the conservative floor
This model counts only the bids you stop losing to missed requirements — the compliance-only floor. It does not assume your win rate improves, even though writing to the evaluation criteria is designed to do exactly that. If a managed, scored proposal lifts your win rate by even a point or two, the return climbs well above the floor. The honest version is the one above: replace the assumptions with your real figures and read the break-even for your firm.
Get a free bid audit to see the compliance risks on a live tender, or read the seven-step method behind the numbers.
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