The Pursuit Capacity Model

What does pursuing business actually cost your agency?

Four inputs from your own P&L. The model shows your annual pursuit spend, the billable hours leaking into proof reconstruction, and the capacity delta against flat-seat pricing. Every formula is on this page. Both assumptions are yours to adjust. No hidden multipliers.

Your shop

Model assumptions (adjust them)

These two are the only assumptions in the model. Both are visible here and printed with every export.

Share of response hours spent reconstructing proof35%
Hours reclaimed with an encoded knowledge base20%
Annual pursuit spend
$0
what chasing the work costs today
Billable hours leaked / yr
0
worth $0 in senior time
Net capacity reclaimed / yr
$0
after the Pitch Box subscription
Pursuits per year0
Cost per pursuit$0
Cost per win (at your win rate)$0
Pursuit spend per employee$0
Pitch Box tier for this volumeStudio · $8,388/yr
Hours reclaimed per year (at your assumption)0 h
Subscription pays for itself in0 months

Why flat seats change this math: per-seat pricing quietly punishes the fix. The moment you add people to a pursuit, the tool bill climbs, so teams keep pursuits thin and knowledge stays in one person's head. Every Pitch Box tier includes unlimited seats: the whole shop works the pursuit, and the price does not move.

Methodology (the whole thing)

Auditable math, not a vendor number.

This model computes only from your inputs. The two assumptions are the sliders above, both shown on every export. If you disagree with one, move it: the model is the argument, not the conclusion.

1. Cost of a pursuit

Loaded hourly rate is the senior day rate over an 8 hour day. A pursuit costs its hours at that rate. This treats all response hours at the senior rate; if juniors carry real share, lower the day rate to your blended rate.

hourly_rate = day_rate / 8 cost_per_pursuit = hours_per_response x hourly_rate annual_pursuits = rfps_per_quarter x 4 annual_spend = annual_pursuits x cost_per_pursuit cost_per_win = annual_spend / (annual_pursuits x win_rate)

2. Billable-hour leakage

Some share of response hours is not strategy or writing. It is senior people hunting for the case study, the metric, and the deck from three years ago, then rebuilding it. That share is assumption one (default 35%). Those hours were billable.

leaked_hours = annual_pursuits x hours_per_response x reconstruction_share leaked_dollars = leaked_hours x hourly_rate

3. The flat-seat delta

Assumption two (default 20%, deliberately conservative) is the share of response hours an encoded, retrieval-ready knowledge base gives back: proof that is found instead of rebuilt. The reclaimed hours are valued at the same rate and set against the published Pitch Box price for your volume. Tier selection is mechanical: up to 3 compiled RFPs a month is Launch ($3,588/yr), up to 15 is Studio ($8,388/yr), beyond that Agency OS ($17,988/yr). All tiers are flat: unlimited seats.

reclaimed_hours = annual_pursuits x hours_per_response x reclaim_share reclaimed_dollars = reclaimed_hours x hourly_rate net_reclaimed = reclaimed_dollars - pitch_box_annual_price payback_months = pitch_box_annual_price / (reclaimed_dollars / 12)

What this model does not do

It does not claim a win-rate lift, does not price the pitches you decline for lack of capacity, and does not count the cost of a senior departure taking the pitch brain with it. All three are real; all three would make the number bigger. We left them out so every figure on this page survives a CFO's red pen.

The engine behind the math

Now put that capacity on rails.

Pitch Box is the pitch operating system for agency new business: it encodes your proof and voice, drafts every section from your own evidence, and keeps the knowledge when people move on.

Request access See how it works

Pursuit Capacity Model

Inputs (from our own operations)

Agency headcount
RFPs pursued per quarter
Senior day rate (loaded)
Hours per response
Current win rate

Current state

Annual pursuit spend
Cost per pursuit
Cost per win
Billable hours leaked to proof reconstruction (assumption: of response hours)

With an encoded knowledge system (assumption: of hours reclaimed)

Hours reclaimed per year
Value of reclaimed hours
Pitch Box tier at this volume (flat, unlimited seats)
Net capacity reclaimed per year
Subscription payback

Prepared with the Pitch Box Pursuit Capacity Model. The calculation methodology is public, and every assumption above is adjustable: pitch-box.ai/pursuit-cost. The model makes no win-rate claim; it prices only the hours our own inputs describe.