Blog
Feb 27, 2018
Three Key Tips to Winning at Orals
by Kevin A. Switaj
On 22 February, the National Capital Area chapter of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals hosted a roundtable discussion entitled “Winning Orals: Tips and Tools for Effective Oral Presentations.” Today’s federal marketplace is at a crossroads. Some clients still require traditional oral presentations. Others have moved to the “demonstration” approach, in which you develop a solution and present it in a short period of time. Finally, some have gone “hi-tech” and request video presentations.
The panel, moderated by Jim McCarthy of The Bridge television program about Government contracting, included three experts in the field. Ben Rowland, Hillary Frederick, and Dan Shyti all provided great insight, anecdotes, and suggestions throughout the hour-long presentation. In this post, I am providing my top three takeaways from the evening.
tip 1: orals is a performance.
Orals can be nerve-wracking on an individual and a team. Orals for the proposal are, in effect, an interview. Usually companies are selected to present at orals after a downselect. The client already knows you can do the work. Orals provides the team a chance to make a connection with the evaluators.
As such, presenters need to focus on presenting not just the material but themselves. Dan provided some great tips and ideas on how to make the most of your time in front of the audience:
- Project sincerity – making eye contact can help presenters make a connection and come off as honest and trustworthy
- Sync your body language – there is a clear connection between your body language, how you feel, and how you present. If you feel confident in yourself and believe in what you are saying, it will come through
- Sync your mind with your mouth – your brain works faster than you can speak. By slowing your mind down with deep breaths and pauses you can calm yourself and keep yourself focused
tip 2: your team needs to be prepared to connect.
The orals presentation is to see the capabilities of the technical team and if they can work together. However, orals also provide a chance to persuade the evaluators. As Hillary made clear, if you don’t make a connection with the evaluators you are finished.
Given the need to connect and persuade, it is important to put together a presentation that projects confidence and connectivity. Your presenters should appear as though they know and trust each other. They should be able to seamlessly transition from one topic and presenter to another.
The key to this, as Ben stated, is to practice, practice, practice. He recommends practicing the first 2 minutes of one’s presentation repeatedly. For example, do it in different accents, different volumes, and different moods. Practicing those 120 seconds repeatedly allows the presenter to be confident and start on the right foot.
tip 3: orals need to tell a story, but within a structure
I recently wrote a blog post about how proposals are not about telling a story but, instead, about scoring maximum points. Oral presentations walk the line between the two. All oral presentations need to meet the basic requirements of the solicitation. However, the level of detail in those requirements varies dramatically.
For example, as Ben noted, FEDSIM oral presentations often serve as the technical volume. Therefore, you need to include a lot of material and ensure you meet all typical compliance measures. Other opportunities provide very limited instruction and specification about what you need to address. As Hillary rightly pointed out, these types of opportunities give the team the chance to minimize bullets on the slides. Instead, the team focuses on ways to elicit the right emotions in the reviewers.
In either case, oral presentations have the benefit of being a personal presentation. As such, there are plenty of opportunities to weave together a story built around your central theme or themes. That core narrative allows presenters to make a clear connection with the evaluators. For example, Dan made a great point to include not just corporate substantiation but personal anecdotes from the presenters.
conclusion
This panel discussion provided a great number of ideas and actionable tips to apply to one’s own oral presentations, or even just general speaking engagements. I would highly recommend finding additional opportunities to see and learn from these three great experts at future events (for example, Hillary is part of a panel discussion at the 2018 APMP Bid and Proposal Conference in May in San Diego).