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- your proposal team spends 260% of their working hours a year on RFPs
your proposal team spends 260% of their working hours a year on RFPs
How is that possible? If you work on a proposal team, you know that's how it is.
Christina Carter
April 09, 2026
THE STARGAZY SIGNAL
09 APRIL 2026
THE LATEST NEWS IN BIDS
Your proposal function consumes more operational hours than most CROs realise.
Loopio's latest data puts it at 33 hours per RFP across 1,500+ teams. At 166 submissions per year, that is 5,400 hours directed at a single revenue function. If those hours produce a 35% win rate instead of 55%, if that is hitting your revenue in a serious way, that gap could be difference between a record year and a restructuring conversation.
That spread is the starting point for the 2026 Proposal & Bid Software Report, which I have spent the past 7 months building.
One finding I will preview here is most revenue and proposal teams misdiagnose their constraints and issues before they buy proposal technology:
They purchase a content library when the constraint is workflow.
They adopt AI before their content foundation can support it.
They buy a platform built for a 10-person bid centre when they run a team of 2.
The full report covers 50+ vendors across five market segments, with an evaluation framework and maturity model. We’re releasing it April 21st.
PODCAST SPOTLIGHT
PROPOSAL & BID SOFTWARE SIGNALS
The most interesting moves in proposal tech right now are coming from adjacent software expanding inward.
SiftHub, which started as a knowledge discovery tool for presales teams, has shipped bid qualification, RFP checklist automation, and end-to-end project management.
1up, originally a sales knowledge chatbot, is now one of the fastest-growing tools for infosec teams automating security questionnaires. Neither started in proposals, but they’re now working on workflows that sit within a proposal team. When sales enablement and compliance tools start absorbing response work from both sides, the proposal function either becomes the orchestration layer or it gets carved up.
We’d love to hear your opinions on this trend if you have them, so send them our way.
PROPOSAL BEST PRACTICES
Gartner's latest B2B buying survey (March 2026) found that 67% of buyers now prefer a completely rep-free experience and 45% used AI tools during their most recent purchase. Buyers who reach what Gartner calls value clarity, which is essentially understanding how a solution improves outcomes in their specific role, are twice as likely to report a high-quality deal. The implication for proposal teams is that your proposal may be the deepest engagement the buyer has with you before signing. If it reads like a capability statement instead of a decision-making tool tailored to each stakeholder's role, you are losing to teams whose proposals do that work.
Before your next submission, map every section of the proposal to a named role on the buying committee and ask whether that person would find their question answered in the first two sentences.
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
Content library types are diverging massively from the legacy to the new. What are the differences? What is best for your team? How do you need to update your content workflow?
THE REPORT
The 2026 Proposal & Bid Software Report launches 21 April to a controlled distribution list. If you want early access, register here: https://stargazy.io/offers/2026-proposal-and-bid-software-report
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Keep stargazing,