WINNING TOO MANY BIDS IS A MARGIN PROBLEM.
A healthy bid win rate for a commercial subcontractor on competitive work is 20 to 35%. Win rates above 40% are a warning sign rather than a success metric. If you're winning more than one in three competitive bids you're probably bidding below market. You're winning on price, and cheap means thin margins, so the growth you're generating is producing losses nobody has recognized yet.
Commercial construction is competitive bidding, so the market sets the price and your number either sits inside it or below it. Winning more than a third of what you chase means you're consistently the low number, and there are only two explanations for that. Either you're cheap on purpose with full knowledge of your cost, or your cost model is wrong and you don't know it. The second is far more common, and the usual culprit is an overhead rate carried forward in the bid model that no longer covers what the office costs to run.
WHAT IT MEANS.
A bid win rate is the share of the competitive bids you submit that you're awarded, and above 35% it's telling you your price sits below the market.
The win rate is the cheapest diagnostic in the business because you already own the data. Two causes account for most high win rates: an overhead rate that hasn't been rebuilt from real financials, and cost categories missing from the estimate entirely. Both produce the same result, which is a bid that reads competitive because it's incomplete.
SAME SYMPTOM, DIFFERENT MISSING COST.
Concrete, winning on buried costs
Concrete subs winning 50% or more of their bids are usually missing real costs rather than beating competitors: small tools, pump time, finishing labor at overtime, and washout fees. The bid reads lean because the estimate is incomplete. The 30% to 40% profit they think they're making comes in at 3% to 5% once the buried costs surface.
Civil, the equipment subsidy
Civil contractors with high win rates are often subsidizing bids with unpriced equipment, either machines billed to jobs at rates below true cost basis or idle time absorbed silently in overhead. Every win at a subsidized rate digs the hole deeper. The market isn't validating the price. It's accepting a donation.
Electrical, the work type blind spot
Electrical subs commonly win everything in one work type and lose everything in another, taking rough-in at a loss and losing trim bids they would have profited on, because both carry the same blended markup. A lopsided win rate by work type is the diagnostic on its own. It means the cost model is wrong in opposite directions at the same time.
SWPPP and service trades, the utilization trap
T&M and service trades win too much when their rates are built on busy month math. A rate that pencils at 90% utilization loses money at the 60% the year averages out to. A high win rate, a full schedule, and an empty bank account together are the signature of a utilization blind rate sheet.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Below 15% means you're bidding too high or chasing the wrong market. 20% to 35% is the healthy competitive range. 35% to 50% is the watch zone where the overhead rate needs checking, and above 50% you're almost certainly bidding below cost.
After one client corrected their overhead rate and repriced, win rate fell from 41% to 28%, squarely into the healthy band, while gross margin climbed from 19% to 26%. The bids they stopped winning were the ones priced below cost. Losing those was the profit.
A $6.7M civil contractor was bidding 10% overhead against a real 30%, which means losing 1% on every job before mobilization. Corrected to a real 18% overhead with competitive profit on top, the same bid volume produced 11% net. Same market, same competitors, different math.
A verified concrete client at $4.9M was bidding off a 5% book overhead against a real number of 12%, winning constantly and netting 3.3%. The correction started with collecting $203K of overdue AR in week one, then repricing the forward work. The next year brought $1.3M less revenue, more profit, and $130K in first ever profit sharing.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE RATE GETS CORRECTED.
The first step is total annual overhead divided by annual revenue, pulled from real expense data and not from what the bid model has always said. The second step is comparing that figure to what's sitting in the estimates today. Most growing subcontractors find the estimate uses 10 to 12% while the real rate is 18 to 24%, and that difference is the margin disappearing on every job.
Some of the work stops coming in, and that's the goal rather than a side effect. Work won at prices that don't cover overhead and profit is worse than work you never won at all. A subcontractor who wins 22% of competitive bids at correct margin makes more money than one who wins 55% at margin that doesn't cover the office.
A blended win rate hides the diagnosis. Winning nearly everything in one work type while losing nearly everything in another means the cost model is wrong in both directions, and the blended markup is what conceals it. Splitting the win rate by work type points straight at which part of the estimate is off.
Win rate is the smoke and margin is the fire. The rate tells you to go looking, and the gross margin on the jobs you won tells you what you find. A subcontractor tracking both together stops guessing about whether the last repricing worked.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
