Successful Oral Presentations for Government Contracts
I. Introduction
Over the past decade, the Federal Government has placed increasing emphasis on the "oral presentation" in awarding contracts. Additionally, many Government agencies, in their Request for Proposal (RFP), are stipulating that only those who will be working on the contract, to include Project Managers, are to be involved with the oral presentation. This is obviously intended to permit Government evaluators to have an "eye-to-eye" meeting with those with whom they will be working, thereby resolving issues and questions before the contract is awarded.
This new emphasis on the oral presentation
was not initially greeted with universal acclaim by companies. Most of them had developed a skilled cadre of proposal writers, and probably felt a bit uneasy about having their economic future riding not on the demonstrated ability of these writers but instead on the verbal skills of engineers and technicians who have not been called on in the past to make marketing presentations. Under the new Government rules, the “doers” had to become “sellers.”
Although the oral presentation is now an accepted fact of life in the Government contracting world, the apprehension has not lessened. Contributing to this is that “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 be required to deliver the eulogy.
Such anxiety is intensified when millions of dollars are resting on the speaking skills of people making oral presentations for Government contracts. Uncomfortable and unsettling as they may be, however, oral presentations are a fact of life for companies vying for Government contracts.
