Every submission asks the client to trust evidence: quantified claims, verified referees, data over adjectives. Then the same team decides which pursuits to chase on instinct. We always do well with that client. We never win cold. That sector is heating up. That's feeling with tenure, not evidence.

The fix isn't a dashboard project. It's five numbers, and your finance system and debrief letters already hold most of them.

Track five numbers

  • Win rate by stage. Track EOI and RFT separately. A healthy EOI rate can hide a poor RFT rate, and a blended number hides exactly where the work is falling down.
  • Win rate by relationship. Split contests where you knew the client and shaped the opportunity from those you entered cold. It's the most useful split most teams never make.
  • Cost per pursuit. Count it honestly, including the operational people borrowed from live projects. A no-bid call without a cost number is a guess.
  • Debrief scores by criterion. Across your last dozen tenders, they turn polite procurement letters into a map of where marks leak.
  • Time of first involvement. How long before lodgement the pursuit team really engaged, tracked against the result.

Plot the uncomfortable chart

Put the last two together. Plot debrief scores against how early you engaged, across two years of pursuits. At most firms the pattern is obvious straight away: the criterion that keeps losing marks is the one nobody owns, and the losses cluster where the start was late. Anecdote can't show you that, because it's curated by whoever tells the story, and they were usually in the room.

Bring them to the gate

The numbers earn their keep at go/no-go. A conversation that opens with “our win rate on cold entries is eleven per cent, and this is a cold entry” ends differently from one that opens with enthusiasm.

Try this: pull your last twelve debrief letters, log the scores by criterion, and see which one keeps leaking marks.

Count first. Instinct gets better once it has something to argue with.

Free tool: Pipeline metrics. Fill it in online with your team, then save it as a PDF.

Free download: Pipeline metrics tracker (Excel). Log your pursuits and the five numbers calculate themselves, plus a debrief heat map.