Why is advisory pursuit different?
Inventory is people’s time. A contractor can sometimes park a bid team. A consultancy cannot park a principal without parking revenue. The pursuit competes with the work that funds it. That is why an RFP is not “just a proposal.” It is a utilisation event.
Cost it at billing rate when that is what you lose. Loaded cost understates the trap. The calculator lets you type either. Type the one that would have been on the timesheet.
What is the trap?
The people who would deliver the work are the people writing the response. Every poor-fit pursuit is a client you already have, delayed. Win, and you have two problems: the week you spent, and the delivery you resented. Lose, and you have only the week, which is already too much.
Pipeline reviews that count live pursuits as health make it worse. Killing a bid looks like shrinking. It is not. It is returning hours to live work. Count no-bids made in week one. Count hours returned.
How many hours is a principal’s week?
Enough to matter. Four partner hours at $350 is $1,400 in the default model and a diary that does not come back. Sixteen specialist hours at $220 is a consultant who was supposed to be on a paying job. Add the bid lead. Forty hours is a floor. Panel refreshes and transformation RFPs run over.
If two principals are at 90 percent, the capacity axis is already a caution. Starting anyway is how utilisation dies in silence. Name them on the gate page.
What should the firm do?
Put utilisation on the gate. Question 5 and 8 on the scorecard are this trap in two lines. A twenty-minute slot that is not allowed to become a drafting meeting. The bid/no-bid guide is the call. This page is why the call is expensive to skip.
Software does not create spare principals. It makes the read cheap enough that the principals are not the ones doing Ctrl+F at midnight. That is the whole of the product sentence on the consultants page.