As an orals coach, one of my happier experiences is going to a win party. Which I did last week. A team I had coached in the spring finally got notified that they had won the bid on a job that’s worth 35 million dollars over the five year-term of the contract.
If you’re not familiar with the process, this is how it works. The customer—in this case the Department of Homeland Security—puts out a request for proposal (RFP). Companies submit proposals. Some of them are chosen—it’s called being down selected—and are asked to send in a team to make an “oral proposal.” Depending on the customer’s specifications, the oral proposal can be a one-hour to two-day presentation. I work with teams that are sent in to make the oral proposal.
At the win party the program manager told me what the customer representative said he liked about the team’s oral proposal. The reps comments sum up what I consider to be three of the most important aspects of a successful technical presentation.
Clarity
Clarity is the most important quality of any technical presentation. Being clear doesn’t always win you the audience’s approval or cooperation, but being confusing will inevitably win you their resistance. (A friend of mine puts it this way: “A confused mind always says no.”) Being clear isn’t about “dumbing down” your content. It’s about constructing a logical argument and presenting only as much evidence as necessary to illustrate, explain, or substantiate your points. When it comes to presenting information, less is more. (If people want more information or more detail, they can ask for it during the Q&A.
Audience Centric
“Most presentation teams come in,” the customer representative said, “and tell us all about themselves and how good they are. Which is a real turn off. Your team had clearly taken the time to learn what we want, and they told us what they could do to help us achieve it.” A presentation is NOT about what you know. It’s about using what you know to help your listeners solve a problem or achieve a goal.
Human
“Your people were real,” the rep said. “They weren’t slick or robotic. And they didn’t have a love affair with their slides. They spoke to us, not at us.” An oral proposal is a strange type of presentation. It is both a technical presentation and a job interview. The customer wants to see and hear the people who will actually be doing the work. (That’s why the customer always says to send in the technical people who are bid as part of the job, not to send in sales people.) So for an oral proposal you definitely want your presenters to be as real as possible. They are as much a part of the presentation as is their material. And the same is true for any technical presentation (or for any presentation at all). Who you are—your character, personality, experience, knowledge—is an integral part of any presentation. Don’t make yourself invisible. Don’t stand off to the side in semi-darkness. Don’t act as if the material on your PowerPoint slides is the real stuff and you are its adjunct. Let your personality come through in what you say and how you say it.
What are the qualities you look for in a technical presentation? Are any of them more important than clarity?
I’ve just returned from working with over 80 sales reps of a high-tech firm. They sell contracts (consulting, installation, products, and maintenance) that are worth many, many millions of dollars. Their sales process, which is remarkably well thought out, requires them to give several presentations. Their final presentation is often a formal oral proposal made by a team.