Mapping the RFP Timeline: Benchmarking Response Speed in 2025

TL;DR - Key Takeaways

• Most B2B teams spend between 20 and 40 hours per RFP on manual tasks like searching for past answers and coordinating reviews.

• The baseline for a manual, high-quality response is often 5 to 10 business days for medium-complexity bids.

• Using AI-powered proposal management tools can reduce response time by up to 80% by automating initial drafting from a knowledge base.

• Bottlenecks usually occur during internal subject matter expert (SME) reviews and the search for technical security information.

The Reality of RFP Response Timelines

How long should an RFP response actually take? This is the most common question for sales and proposal managers trying to balance quality with a high volume of opportunities. While every bid is unique, industry data shows that the average team spends roughly 25 to 30 hours per response when working manually. For enterprise-level questionnaires, that number can easily double.

Understanding the difference between clock time (the number of days from start to finish) and effort time (total person-hours spent) is essential for scaling a growth-stage team. If your team is taking more than 10 business days to turn around a standard response, you are likely losing a competitive advantage to faster-moving competitors.

Breakdown of the Proposal Lifecycle

To understand where the hours go, we have to look at the three primary stages of the response process:

1. Discovery and Qualification (2-4 Hours)

Before writing a single word, teams must find the right opportunities and decide if they are worth the effort. Manual bid searching on government portals or procurement sites is a notorious time-sink. Tools like Settle help automate this process by providing a continuously refreshed feed through RFP Hunter, allowing teams to find high-fit opportunities in minutes rather than hours.

2. Drafting and Knowledge Retrieval (10-20 Hours)

This is where the majority of time is lost. Writers often dig through old Word documents, spreadsheets, and sent emails to find the 'latest' version of a technical answer. Building a centralized proposal knowledge base ensures that a single source of truth exists for all past answers, security responses, and product details.

3. Collaboration and Review (5-15 Hours)

Assigning questions to Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), following up via email, and managing version control can add several days to the clock time. Enterprise-grade collaboration features, such as those found in Settle, allow for structured review workflows and threaded discussions directly within the document, eliminating the back-and-forth email chains.

Strategies to Reduce Response Time by 80%

If your current process feels slow, you are not alone. Most teams suffer from 'RFP sprawl,' where information is scattered across the company. Here is how modern teams are accelerating their timelines:

• Leverage AI for Bulk Drafting: AI proposal software can now ingest an RFP and automatically draft answers based purely on your approved Library content. This moves the writer from a 'blank page' to an 'editor' phase instantly.

• Centralize Your Library: By using a structured format for Q&A, teams avoid the 4 hours typically wasted just searching for information.

• Automate Review Queues: Instead of manual check-ins, use a centralized inbox to track assigned tasks and approvals.

Tools like Settle help automate this process by grounding AI-generated smart answers in your own approved content, ensuring that speed does not come at the cost of accuracy.

Why Speed is a Competitive Advantage

In mid-market and enterprise procurement, being first often means setting the standard by which all other vendors are judged. Growth-stage teams that use automation can compete at an enterprise scale by responding to three times as many RFPs without increasing their headcount. This increased 'bid capacity' directly impacts the bottom line and pipeline growth.