From Response Factory to Revenue Engine. Rethinking Proposal KPIs...

Do you think your CEO gets asked by the board, “How quickly to you respond to that RFP?”

No. Absolutely not, because they don’t care.

But do you think your CEO gets asked, “Did you win that multi-million dollar deal that is the difference between making or missing Q3?”

Yes, absolutely. But probably in a more blunt way than that.

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What the board cares about is what your CEO cares about. And what your CEO cares about is what your CRO cares about. And what your CRO cares about is what proposal teams care about.

Right?

KPIs are what everyone is graded on. It’s what solidifies if they get a raise or even keep their job.

So when you give your team a KPI, they’re going to do whatever they can to make those KPIs look good.

That makes KPIs a powerful tool,  and they need to be used wisely.

So if you want your proposal team to drive real impact, start with what leadership actually cares about:

What the CEO cares about:

• Revenue growth
• Market share expansion
• Customer acquisition costs (CAC)
• Forecast accuracy

They want to know: Did we win the right deals? Are we scalable? Are we efficient?

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What the CRO + Sales Leader cares about:

• Win rate (especially on strategic deals)
• Sales cycle length
• Deal velocity
• Pipeline coverage and conversion
• Forecast consistency

(Source: Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Benchmark, Challenger’s Sales KPIs Report)

They want to know: Are we winning competitive deals? Are we qualifying well? Are we getting stuck late in the cycle because of bad proposals or compliance gaps?

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What Proposal Teams should care about:

If you reverse-engineer from those executive KPIs, here’s where proposal teams make the biggest impact and therefore where their KPIs should focus:

• Strategic Win Rate. Not just overall win rate, but win rate on qualified, high-value, must-win deals. (Yes, this is a hot take! And we understand why; that’s why we want proposal teams to be the team qualifying deals, as it helps you be seen as a revenue-driven, not a cost center!)
• Proposal Influence on Pipeline. How many deals were advanced, accelerated, or won due to a tailored, high-quality proactive proposal?
• Response Quality Score. Qualitative reviews or internal (and customer) scoring on how well a proposal aligns with buyer needs, deal strategy, and messaging.
• Qualification Alignment. Are we saying yes to the right RFPs and no to the wrong ones? Proposal teams can track % of responses that passed a strategic qualification matrix.
• Cross-functional Satisfaction. Legal, InfoSec, Product, and Sales Ops don’t want chaos either. Use an internal partner satisfaction or “ease-of-collaboration” score to track friction.

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Anchor Helps Teams Optimize for Outcome KPIs

At Anchor, we believe proposal teams should stop being measured like production lines.

You were not hired to write more documents, but you were hired to help the sales team close revenue.

That’s why we help you:

• Qualify smarter
• Write buyer-aligned responses faster
• Reduce rework and chaos
• Focus your energy where it will actually help win.

Because when proposal teams chase outcomes, the whole revenue team wins.

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