The Blended Bid: Synergizing the Written Proposal and the Oral Presentation

A speech delivered on May 23, 2007 to the Association of Proposal Management Professionals of the National Capital Area (APMP-NCA)

Thank you, Michael, and thanks to the Board of the APMP of the National Capital Area for inviting me to speak this evening. As I look out at row upon row of filled tables, I remember something a friend told me about a speech he attended at Princeton University, when he was a Grad student.

William F. Buckley, Jr. was the speaker, and the turnout was overwhelming. When Mr. Buckley walked on the stage, he gazed at the audience virtually hanging from the rafters and said “I am humbled, deeply humbled, that so many of you have come to listen to my speech--exquisitely wrought though it is.”

I cannot promise that my presentation will be “exquisitely wrought,” but I am indeed humbled that so many have chosen to attend this evening, and also reassured that the topic I chose to speak on resonates with you, proposal managers and writers.

Before going into tonight’s subject of having proposal writers and presenters working hand-in-glove, let me answer a question you probably all have as a result of Michael’s introduction: How did a retired Army colonel, now a presentation skills coach, wind up in the April 2007 issue of MAXIM magazine, euphemistically described as a Men’s Lifestyle” publication?

It all started last December, when I was called by a MAXIM writer who said he was doing an article on career development, had reviewed my website, and thought I was ideally suited to provide advice to MAXIM’s three million readers, many of them professionals with a median income of 70 thousand dollars a year. Thinking of the commercial possibilities of those demographics, I readily agreed to a lengthy interview.

When the April issue hit the newsstands, I found the article quite different from what I had expected. The “Career advice” included “Arm wrestling,” “Curing a hangover,” and concluded with “Belly flopping.” Ensconced among these secrets of career success was my advice on making “Boardroom presentations.” The writer actually did an excellent job of reducing a 90 minute interview into about 50 words. I had thought I would sell thousands of books, but apparently those three million readers are still looking at the photos. But at least I can say I have the distinction of being the only retired Army colonel/speech coach to be “featured” in MAXIM.

With that pressing question out of the way, let’s turn to the subject of tonight—winning federal contracts by the synergy created by fusing the talents of those who write proposals with those who deliver oral presentations. That subject grew out of a conversation over lunch with a member of your Board, Chris Stahl, CEO of GovG4i.
I mentioned to Chris that I thought it strange, more than a decade after Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 15 had been revised to make the orals a more robust part of the contracting process, that there was an unfortunate tendency among firms bidding on federal contracts to consider the oral presentation an afterthought. Far less attention and resources seemed dedicated to the orals than to the written proposal, even though the government evaluators may use the oral presentation as the “tie-breaker” among the companies vying for the contract. Chris emphatically agreed, suggesting I speak on the subject to the APMP Roundtable, and so here we are.

The thrust of my presentation tonight is simply this: Proposal writers and oral presenters must realize that their efforts are not separate elements of the bidding process, but instead are joined at the hip. The proposal and the oral presentation are not ends in themselves but instead interdependent means to achieve the end of winning the contract, especially as the oral presentation can often be the deciding factor when the competing proposals are virtually identical in solving the Government’s RFP-expressed problem.

In one of the promotional emails for tonight, your President Michael Scruggs used a most accurate metaphor to describe the relationship of the written proposal and the oral presentation—that they are treated as distant cousins when they should be thought of as brother and sister. That is so good, Michael, I am stealing it.

Just like siblings, there can be tension between writers and presenters. But the well being of the family, the company bidding on the contract, depends on cooperation and collaboration of its various members. Having used the family metaphor, let me assure you that my presentation tonight will not an inspiring call for writers and presenters to hold hands, give group hugs and sing Kumbaya. Instead, it will be practical and tactical, providing a methodology to optimize your company’s capabilities in order to increase the chances of winning federal contracts.

I’ll outline a four-phase approach to the challenge of winning government contracts through the mutual support between the proposal writers and the oral presenters. It is my contention that any wall separating these two groups must be torn down so they can work in tandem.

Some may be asking “Why?” “We are writers. They are presenters. We do our job, and then its up to them to do theirs. The proposal and the presentation are two distinct elements of the bidding process.”

My response to that question is this: You, proposal managers and writers, must be a part of the presentation process for your own self-interest. You are the creators of the intellectual project known as the proposal. You have burned the midnight oil; you have written under deadline pressure; you have had to interpret the obtuse writing of the Government’s Request for Proposal.

Why should you consider your job complete when the Proposal goes out the door, or even celebrate when you have “made the cut,” or, in the Government’s language, been judged to be in the “Completive range?” To protect that intellectual investment, be involved in the entire process, including the orals. If you don’t, you are shooting yourselves in the foot. No matter how well written the proposal, a lost contract is a lost contract.

A very apt warning comes from Professor Robert Garda, of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. His advice is not merely from the ivory tower of academia. He is a former Senior Partner in the famous McKinsey Consulting firm. In the book The Mckinsey Way, Garda is quoted as saying

 “I’ve put half-baked ideas into great presentations, and seen them soar, and I’ve put great ideas into bad presentations, and watched them die.”

I imagine that some of you may have said something similar after your company has lost a contract. You believe you have written a brilliant proposal, filled with “great ideas.” Isn’t it frustrating for you to expend all that intellectual energy and creativity, then see it wasted because of a “bad presentation” by the orals team? Doubly frustrating, perhaps, when you know your proposal was superior, but the winning company had a more adept orals team. I find it inconceivable why you would not want to make sure your proposal received the high quality oral presentation it deserved.

The revision to FAR Part 15 recognized the writing the proposal would continue to be the domain of professional writers, but sought to make sure that the oral presentation would not be the domain of professional speakers. Consequently, RFPs began to stipulate that the “key personnel” who would be working on the contract, especially Project Managers, would deliver the orals. This was obviously intended to permit government evaluators to have an “eye-to-eye” meeting with those with whom they would be working, thereby resolving issues and questions before awarding the contract.

The government recognized that inferior products and services could be hidden by an elegantly written proposal—the “lipstick on a pig” factor. With the “key personnel” who would be working on the contract now required to deliver the oral presentation, astute government evaluators, it was hoped, would be able to look beyond the lipstick and be able to determine which proposal was more likely to solve the government’s problem.

A consequence of this change, of course, was that the economic future of companies seeking government contracts would not be riding solely on the demonstrated ability of you proposal managers and writers, but to a great extent on the verbal skills of engineers and technicians who had not been called on in the past to make marketing presentations. Under the new government rules, the “doers” had to become “sellers.”

George Clemenceau, French Prime Minister in World War l, famously commented “War is too important to be left to Generals alone.” As a professional presenter and coach of presenters, I say emphatically to you that the oral presentation is too important to be left to presenters alone. You, masters of the art of writing proposals, must protect your writing investment by working closely with the engineers and technical experts who will make the oral presentation.

Let’s take a look at two assumptions before going to that four-phase approach I mentioned. First, RFPs are written to solve a need but their clarity sometimes appears a cross between the musings of the Oracle of Delphi and the prophecies of Nostradamus. Interpret correctly, you are gold; interpret incorrectly, you are dead. Second, the written proposal is the objective marshalling of RFP-requested capabilities, but the oral presentation is much more subjective, and poor presentation skills, distracting non-verbals, and any appearance of a lack of “team unity” can negatively influence evaluators.

Now, let’s turn to that four phase method to get writers and presenters to play well together:

Phase One: Writing the Proposal. Phase Two: Drafting the Oral presentation. Phase Three: Simulating the Oral Presentation with a series of intensive “Murder Boards.” For those of you not familiar with that macabre term, I’ll explain its origins in a few minutes. And finally, Phase Four: Showtime: The Oral Presentation.

In Phase One, I will, understandably, not be so presumptuous as to tell you how to write. Although a writer myself, I claim no expertise in the difficult task of writing a proposal. But, to start the process of developing a blended proposal, fusing the talents of writers and presenters, I urge you to invite those who will be making the oral presentation to participate with you from the outset. They

can, in effect, “look over your shoulders” as you start writing, extracting “nuggets” of information, which can be the building blocks for their own initial draft. They will learn the discriminators your are building into the proposal so they can verbalize these important distinctions. Having the presenters involved from the outset will facilitate having a consistency between the proposal and the oral presentation.

These technical experts can also alert you what is not technically feasible, thereby reducing the modifications and “re-writes” to the proposal. As you are devising the graphics to be included in the proposal, which are understandably detailed and complex, these would-be presenters can start conceptualizing how to simplify these graphics into visuals more appropriate to an oral presentation.

A word of caution. As proposal managers and writers, you are accustomed to being “king of the hill.” You may not like these engineers “looking over your shoulders.” But remember, the worm will soon turn, with primacy shifting to the orals team. So my advice is to practice the “Golden Rule:” Be nice to the presenters, don’t treat them as interlopers. This well assure you are treated the same way when the oral team is “King of the hill.”

Now to Phase Two. While you are putting the finishing touches on the proposal, the engineers/technical experts can start to develop their presentation simultaneously. They will have seen the approach you are taking, and have probably contributed to it in Phase One. Having observed you develop the theme of the proposal will assist the oral team to follow the same path as they develop their initial draft. They will now expand on the “nuggets’ they extracted while observing the proposal-in-process, especially the all-important discriminators separating you from your competition. The conversion of the detailed graphics of the proposal into the more easily grasped visuals of the oral presentation begins here as well.

The final selection of the orals team will be taking place during this phase, presenting a dilemma for many companies. The RFP may say that the lead presenter will be the project manager for the project. Let us say your company has two potential project managers. One has an excellent past performance record, but is a terrible speaker. The other is an excellent speaker, but has a less-than-sterling record with similar projects. Who get the nod?

That’s a tough call. My advice is to go with the excellent project manager with less-than-eloquent speaking talent, and get him or her “trained up” by bringing in an orals coach early in the process. Have some sympathy for this project manager, as “public speaking,” in survey after survey, is viewed as one of the leading phobias in the United States. The best known of these surveys listed “speaking before groups” as the number one fear, ahead of even “death.” This led Jerry Seinfeld, in the opening of one of his television programs, to quip that this meant that most people would prefer to be in the coffin than required to deliver the eulogy. When millions, perhaps billions, of dollars are on the line, this “fear of speaking” of the project manager will be exacerbated.

Developing the visuals consistent with the proposal’s graphics presents another difficult problem. My advice is to bring in a professional graphics company, certainly for creation of the visuals for the orals and even better if you can have them develop the graphics for the written proposal as well. You will then have a greater consistency between the proposal and the orals.

Now let’s move to Phase Three—simulating with a series of intense Murder Boards. The message you received about this presentation advised you would learn a “fun’ way of simulating. That is the first time I had seen the word “fun” associated with the Murder Board. Yes, the term sounds like something Tony Soprano might convene, but it has nothing to do with a criminal act and everything to do with helping people become better and more persuasive speakers.

For those not familiar with the term, it has its origins in the U.S. military. Being an instructor at a service school, say the Infantry School at Ft. Benning, Georgia, is a career-enhancing assignment. Before you can teach a class, however, you must attend an “Instructor Training Course,” where you learn techniques for training adults. To graduate, you must teach a 50-minute class from the curriculum of the school.

Your audience is composed of your classmates, the instructors of this course, and, when possible, instructors from the School who have recently undergone their own Murder Board. It is a grueling experience, I can assure you from personal experience, but so useful it has now permeated the government and industry. It goes far beyond a “dry run.”

Simply stated, the Murder Board is the presenter’s version of the actor’s dress rehearsal, what lawyers do in preparing a witness to face cross-examination in a trial, and what the flight simulator is to the pilot. Just as with the actor, the witness, and the pilot, this simulation permits presenters to learn from their mistakes, so that the actual presentation is (1) more responsive to the informational needs of the audience, (2) answers are developed for likely questions to be asked, and (3) overall speaking confidence and competence are enhanced.

The key is to have knowledgeable colleagues role-play the anticipated audience. This is where you, as proposal manager and writers, play the vital role. You are the experts on the proposal. You can role-play the government’s evaluators, who will have read your proposal. Listen carefully to see if the presenters are faithfully translating your written document in their presentations. Put yourselves in the shoes of the evaluators, thinking of what questions might be in their minds as the listen to the oral presentation.

Evaluators from the government have a responsibility to get the “best buy” for the taxpayer’s dollar, and may, at least subconsciously, see a correlation between the effectiveness of the team’s presentation and how the company will accomplish the requirements stipulated in the RFP. They may view a disjointed and unclear presentation as an indicator that this team will be unable to perform the terms of the contract.

Specifically, listen to the practice presentation with concerns evaluators are likely to have, such as

• What is the chemistry between and among team members?
• Does the team have a clear vision of what the Government wants accomplished, or does the presentation suggest the team is still trying to figure out what is required by the RFP?
• Do the skills of the different companies and individuals complement or clash?
• Is the prime contractor really in charge, or do there appear to be some Prima Donnas among the sub-contractors, suggesting later friction?
• Does the presentation demonstrate that the consortium has the experience to accomplish the project required by the RFP?
• Is there a willingness of team members to accept Government oversight, or an attitude of “give us the contract, then get out of the way?”
• Does the company/consortium seem genuinely interested in, and demonstrate proven capability to solve, the Government’s RFP-expressed problem?

The Murder Board for an oral presentation to government evaluators is quite different than one you may be accustomed to for an internal presentation, say to your Board of Directors, or for an external presentation to potential private sector clients. Such audiences will interrupt, ask drill down questions, raise objections and concerns. That is how you should conduct a Murder Board preparing for these audiences.

Not so for the oral presentation for a government contract.

Oral presenters to government evaluators may think they are speaking to inanimate objects. These evaluators will probably avoid eye contact with presenters, and those who do will avoid any facial expression, which could indicate support. They will, of course, remain silent during the presentation, lest they engage in the dreaded “discussions” which are forbidden by FAR Part 15. Their questions will take place in a separate session and that will, at least theoretically, be for clarification of points the presenters made in the oral presentation.

When you play the role of government evaluators in the Murder Board preparing the orals team for their big moment, remain silent and non-responsive so the presenters will be accustomed to this unusual reaction. Each Murder Board session must then be followed by an intensive critique with positive elements praised, questions asked, problem areas discussed, and recommendations made for the next Murder Board.

The RFP will generally call for a Q&A session for clarification purposes after the formal presentation. Consequently, a separate Murder Board should be conducted with you, the creators of the proposal, playing the role of the evaluators, and asking questions you believe will be asked. The team leader from the prime contractor should quarterback this session, directing questions to team members according to their respective expertise. The stress level will probably be less on presenters during the actual Q&A session because it will take place within the more familiar conversational context. But remind them in this Murder Board Q&A that in the “real thing” they will still be on stage, so they should not be lulled into a false sense of comfort.

When a small company, which is responding to a “small business set aside,” has a large corporation as a sub-contractor, evaluators may use the Q&A session to ask if the small firm is actually “fronting” for the big company, thereby allowing the bigger company to get a piece of the lucrative “set aside” pie. The small prime must be prepared to document convincingly that it sought the larger firm to sub-contract a portion of the RFP, and that it was not “recruited” by the large firm. My recommendation is to bring this information out in the actual presentation, not allow it to fester in the minds of the evaluators. Having this relationship can actually work to the advantage of the small company bidding on the contract, as evaluators may see the leveraging advantage of having a corporate giant’s “reach” being applied to the “small business set aside.”

In the first Murder Board session, don’t use video cameras. There will be understandable nervousness on the part of the presenters, and the presence of cameras will just add to their “performance anxiety.” In subsequent Murder Boards, use two cameras: One to record each individual presentation, thus permitting presenters to review and improve upon their “performance” privately; the second camera should record the entire presentation to see how the various presenters “fit” together. Having a video of the entire presentation will also aid in staying within the RFP-imposed time limit and provide a “game film.”

Let me address the matter of oral coaching. I differ from most in my field in that I do not believe effort and time should be expended to convert engineers into actors. Too much attention on correct gestures, movement, extended eye contact, developing a pleasing voice with vocal exercises, coordinating gestures with vocal inflection, etc. places unnecessary pressure on these technical experts. An analogy is a golfer who concentrates on all the swing thoughts—left arm straight, head still, ratio of shoulder turn to hip turn—and then misses the ball.

It is the substantive knowledge of these experts which will carry the day. I have never heard of the government awarding a contract to a company because its orals team had wonderful gestures and mellifluous voices. If technical experts are excessively worried about their body language and voice, it may hinder their ability to tell the story of how their company can carry out the terms of the contract better than the competition.

What I do believe is the vital role of an oral coach is not the development of these thespian qualities, but instead--and I admit this may seem to be a difference without a distinction—the elimination of negative non-verbal “obstacles” that get in the way of the technical message being conveyed. Such negative body language and vocal characteristics can be so irritating and distracting to evaluators that they impede communication, and the evaluators miss the vital technical knowledge being conveyed.

Let’s look at some of these obstacles. First, the boring monotone of most men--which I blame on fictional Sergeant Joe Friday of the old TV program “Dragnet.” A generation of men learned to speak that way, and fathers passed this habit on to sons. A few minutes of a monotonic presentation is a cure for insomnia. Men, with the aid of an orals coach, can overcome this tendency by placing emphasis on verbs and other words which connote action and movement. They must then listen to themselves on a tape recorder, seeking to continually put inflection in their voices at appropriate times. I note many women in the audience smiling and nodding. Not so fast, ladies. I am an equal opportunity offender, and now it is your turn.

Women, while having a natural inflection, sometimes speak at a pitch beyond the comfort zone of the human ear. For women with this problem, my advice is to practice, again with a tape recorder, lowering your pitch. Three role models to emulate are the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, the late UN ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, my former professor and a friend for 30 years, and, of course the “Voice”—Maya Angelou. All three of these women spoke with a lower than normal pitch, but retained their essential femininity.

What are some other vocal distractions? Perhaps the most egregious are the phrases “Uh” and “You know.” Speakers improve in direct proportion to the reduction of these abominations of the English language. In my workshops--and you can do this in working with the orals team--I conduct “Greek Chorus” drills. Speakers with the tendency to utter those sounds are greeted with a chorus of high decibel “Uh’s!” from their colleagues when make that sound, and equally loud “No we don’t!” when they say “You know.” A few such behavior-modifying sessions will at least reduce this tendency.

Some body language obstacles are poor posture, hands in the pocket or in the “fig leaf” position (I refer to those who move and back and forth to that position as “Flashing fig leafers.”). A slouching posture suggests indifference, and robs a presenter of projecting an image of really caring about winning the contract. (Remember those concerns of evaluators I mentioned a few minutes ago.) A passion for the company’s capability can be conveyed not just by words, but how presenters look and sound saying them.

One of the greatest speaking errors of people not accustomed to presenting is to read from a script or from the PowerPoint slides on the screen. Little eye contact is made with the audience, and the chances reverting to the dreaded monotone is increased. Note cards--3x5 cards are best because their size precludes writing too much--with memory joggers can certainly be used, but speakers should show they “own” the material.

Glancing at the slides on the screen is certainly permissible, but remember that the evaluators are literate and do not need you to read the words to them. Few things alienate people more in any audience than to have the speaker read verbatim the words on the visuals. Reducing to a minimum the text on the visuals during the various Murder Boards will help presenters avoid the “reading from the screen” trap. Presenters should place their laptop in such a position that they can glance at the visuals on its screen, then to the evaluators, avoiding turning to the large screen.

There is no rule that the screen must always be filled with Power Point slides. To give the evaluators an occasional break, presenters can hit the “B” key, and the screen will go black. When ready to return to a slide, hit the “B” key again, and presto, on comes the slide. Similarly, if you wish to return to a previously-viewed slide, or to jump ahead, hit the slide’s number (which means you must have a paper copy of the slides, with each one numbered) and on comes that slide.

Now on to Phase Four, or Showtime: the Oral Presentation. You will not have a direct part in this, but how you have interacted with the presenters in the various Murder Boards will have a direct impact on how they present. Lockheed Martin had a commercial on television recently that showed two fighter jets maneuvering, with a dramatic voice intoning, “If you train the way you’ll fight, you’ll fight the way you trained.”

That is solid advice for presenters—practice the way you will present, and you will present the way you practiced. So, as proposal managers and writers anxious to see an oral presentation faithfully reflect your brilliant proposal, here is some final advice to give to your team as they go out the door.

• They should stay at a hotel the night before the presentation. Why run the risk of a traffic delay, or arriving tense from a rush hour drive?
• They should have done a reconnaissance of the room in which they will present, checking the location of electrical outlets. If the room has a fixed screen which may be impacted by sunlight, the team should bring its own screen.
• They should arrive as early as the government will permit to set up, and should have backup laptops, bulbs, and extension cords. Being so attentive to detail sends a psychological message that the team has its “act together.”
• Assure that the team points out clearly the key discriminators which separate your company from competing firms. Perhaps you have proprietary software or some other unique capability which will greatly enhance accomplishing the requirements of the RFP. The presenting team must articulate the message “if you don’t give us the contract, the government will not have access to this capability.” This, of course, must be done in a subtle, non-threatening way.
• After the presentation, the team should conduct an immediate “post-presentation analysis,” focusing on the reactions of the evaluators and their questions in the Q&A session. This can set the stage for the next proposal/orals the company will make.
• After this grueling experience, advise them to go out and have a drink together, and join them. You are, after all, a team. You have worked together, now celebrate together.

Let me close with an observation on what is the end result of any oral presentation which comes to us from the land where the oral presentation originated--Ancient Athens.

Demosthenes was the greatest speaker of his time, and people would come from miles around to listen to his speeches. They marveled at his stentorian voice (which he had trained buy putting pebbles in his mouth to improve his projection), his dramatic gestures, his unique turn of phrase, and his overall presence. But 60 years earlier, there lived another great orator, Pericles. He was not merely a magnificent speaker; he was also a great leader. So the people of Athens, in comparing these two remarkable “oral presenters,” said

    “When Demosthenes speaks, people say ‘How well he speaks,’but when Pericles spoke, people said,
    ‘Let us march!’ ”

My advice to you, proposal managers and writers, is to tear down any walls separating you and the orals team, so that, when the team completes its presentation, the evaluators will say, “Let us march with this company!”

Thank you.

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Larry Tracy is a retired Army colonel who formerly headed the Pentagon's top briefing team, responsible for daily intelligence presentations to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense. He was later detailed to the State Department, for which he participated in hundreds of presentations, debates and panels throughout the country in front of skeptical, often hostile, audiences. He was called "An extraordinarily effective speaker" by President Reagan. He now conducts presentations training seminars, to include preparing companies for oral presentations for Government contracts. He has been cited in several publications as one of the top speech coaches in the U.S. His website has been #1 on Google since September 2004 for "Persuasive Presentations." His book, The Shortcut to Persuasive Presentations, has been selected as the textbook for Academic Year 2006-7 for the "Oral Presentations" Course at the Center for Leadership Education at Johns Hopkins University.

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