The bid-to-win ratio measures the success rate of a company’s attempts to win sales. Bid-to-win is an important metric for businesses where substantial costs are incurred before a contract is awarded. This is often the case for sales of high value capital goods (for example, production machinery), engineer-to-order businesses (for example, power generation equipment), and project oriented businesses (for example, heating and ventilation installation).
The sales cycle can include extensive planning, design and configuration work, often with multiple versions to track changing specifications. To manage risk, selling companies can treat custom design work as a paid service, and can structure products for configuration.