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Tips for a Winning Presentation—Part One
By Dan Safford
The best way—the only way, really—to make sure your proposal is giving
the client what he wants is to have it reviewed by an objective panel
that have been briefed to think like the client. This type of review is
often called a Red Team Review.
The idea is to assemble a group of people who will read your proposal
from the client's perspective. You will ask your reviewers to read your
proposal as if they were evaluating it. This means that they will not
be looking at the draft as friends-as someone who will say, "Oh, guess
I see what they mean," and give you the benefit of the doubt. Quite the
contrary. Ideally, if they don't get what you're trying to say, they
will say, "I do not see what you mean," and they give your section a
failing grade. That's what the customer would do.
This review is arguably the most important in the entire cycle. In
fact, if you do no other reviewing prior to this-if your staff is small
if the schedule won't allow it or if you just don't see the need for
this entire review process-you should leave time in the schedule for
the Red Team review.
Who should be on a Red Team?
Pick at least three people to serve on the Red Team (if it's a long
proposal, the number could range to up to ten). Ideally, you will have
as many reviewers as you have major sections of the proposal.
The people you select should be knowledgeable in the areas they are
reviewing. If, for instance, you have a section on how you will design
the HVAC system for a facility, you better have a person who
understands HVAC systems for the type of facility you're proposing to
design.
Your reviewers should also have understanding of what the client wants.
You should brief the Red Team before the review about what you think
the client is looking for. That way the team can be looking to see if
your proposal hits the right buttons.
In addition, they should be dedicated to spending the time it takes to
give the proposal a thorough review. This is an extra-curricular
activity; it takes time out of your team's busy schedule, and the
chances are good they will have to work after hours or on a weekend to
conduct their review.
Finally, each person needs to be able to play hardball; you're going to
ask them to be very critical, to step on toes if necessary, and to pull
no punches. A Red Team member who holds back honest and incisive
criticism because of a fear of hurting someone's feelings is not
helping the effort.
When should the Red Team review occur?
The second draft is the best time to conduct the red team review. To
get the most out of the review, the draft should be as fairly complete.
The first draft is too loose and unfinished, and if you wait until the
third (final) draft, you don't have enough time to incorporate the Red
Team's input.
Yeah, yeah, now you'll say, "We never even have enough time to do a
third draft; the second draft is usually what goes to the client." I
hear that a lot. And here's what I say:
Number 1: the client usually gives you enough time to do more than two
drafts of a proposal; it's just that you usually procrastinate long
enough that you never give yourselves the time to do a third draft.
Number 2: If you don't take the time to review the second draft, you
will likely lose to the team that does. My experience tells me that
winners review their proposals from the standpoint of the client;
losers make excuses for not doing it.
What should the Red Team do during the review?
During the review, each member will evaluate his/her assigned sections
(or the whole thing, as the case may be) for the following in order of
importance:
1. Responsiveness to the evaluation criteria and other solicitation requirements.
2. Convincingness of the proposal, including technical accuracy, substantiation of claims and clear client benefits.
3. Clarity of the writing and the graphics.
During the review, the team members should do the following:
- Identify any problems, errors or omissions connected with the solicitation requirements.
- Identify the strengths of the proposal.
- Identify weaknesses and resolutions to them.
- Emphasize how the proposal stacks up against the evaluation criteria.
- Emphasize how persuasive-or not-the proposal is.
- Recommend solutions. This is a critical element of the job.
Pointing out errors is one thing, and it is the easy part. The hard
part comes when the reviewer has to come up with plausible, useful ways
of resolving problems with the proposal. This is the true value of the Red Team review.
- The Red Team DOES NOT spend time correcting punctuation and grammar or wordsmithing the document. This is not the time for it.
When you write a proposal you
run the considerable risk of becoming so enamored with the elegance of
your solution-both your technical solution to resolving the client's
need and your solution for presenting it in your proposal-that you grow
less and less capable of being a good judge of the most important
aspect of any proposal: Will the client feel so strongly that it meets
his needs that he simply can not eliminate it from the competition?
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