Direct to Phase II season is coming up, and will be quickly followed up by the TACFI/STRATFI rush. Below are some tips to help sharpen your proposal. 

1. FOLLOW THE SOLICITATION

The solicitation will have a flow for what they want you to include in your proposal. They will have instructions for each section describing what they want you to include. It will be a bit redundant, and it may not follow the flow you prefer when giving your pitch. FOLLOW IT, ANYWAY. 

In many cases, not following the flow/order is actually a disqualifying offense.  Even if that isn’t specified as a “rule” in the solicitation, there’s another really good reason to follow the flow. It was designed to help the evaluators do their job, and you will be evaluated best if the answers to their questions are where they expect them to be. This is true for any solicitation, and the advice holds for any proposal you’re writing.  

For the open topic SBIR/STTR program, I’ll argue that it’s even more important. In this case, you will have a set of evaluators review your proposal covering the three main criteria for SBIR/STTR program evaluation - technical viability, commercial viability, and military utility.  In some cases, the evaluation process is actually scored independently - so one evaluator is looking at technical viability, one at commercial viability, and so on.  The solicitation is structured to support that process. 

That also means, if the requests are redundant, be redundant. There may be a question that is highly relevant to more than one evaluator, and therefore repeated with slightly different wording in a different section of the proposal. Don’t skip out or skimp on your answer just because it was covered elsewhere! It may be that evaluators are focusing their time on the portion of the proposal that was structured for their segment of the review.

2. EMPHASIZE IMPACT 

The second most important metric the SBIR/STTR program team cares about is mission impact. Odds are, most will tell you this is #1, though the incentive structure isn’t necessarily aligned for that. In either case, it’s important! If you are working on a phase II contract award and you’re demonstrating your tech by helping a small unit improve mean time between failure on a component of flight line equipment, that’s awesome! But your intro should be elevating that impact - talk about the aircraft that equipment supports and the people who fly it.  In fact, go further! Extrapolate and envision how you could impact the entirety of OSD if they adopted your technology across multiple platforms.   Your impact statement needs to go way beyond your demo, and really describe your vision of success in the defense market! 

I am not asking you to be disingenuous. You’re helping the evaluators see beyond this stepping stone to the broader implications of your technology. The SBIR/STTR program is meant to be introductory, and they want to choose winners that will have a broader impact. Help them understand what that can be.  

When you point to high level impact, connect the dots from your demo to the vision so the pathway to success is obvious to the reader.

It’s always helpful to lean on the strategic documents that are relevant to the agency you're working with. For defense, products like the most recent National Defense Strategy and the relevant services current focus areas or strategic objectives derived from that are always winners! There is usually some good content in the most recent defense budget products, as well.  A great source for quotes is to seek out leadership keynotes at major events like the Air Force Association Symposium (or other service or agency equivalent events).

3. A PICTURE IS WORTH 1000 WORDS

It’s well known that using images, plots, and tables to break-up your writing makes it easier to process. That’s highly relevant for proposals which can become monotonous to review, especially when reviewing many of them. That said, common knowledge is not always common practice.  Don’t underestimate the value of well-placed visuals. 

The best time to use an image is when it can save you space from a lengthy explanation.  Do you have a chart that can explain your major breakthrough in a quarter of a page rather than a 20 page thesis?  INCLUDE IT!  It may also be a great way to demonstrate a use-case that would otherwise require a lengthy description.

Images are also really useful if the section requires a PhD to understand. If an image can very clearly depict a technology breakthrough or advantage, use it. While you will have at least one technical expert reading your proposal, and they’ll be responsible for evaluating technical viability, you can generate more interest in your other evaluators by making sure they get that it’s a big breakthrough too!

In general, review your whole proposal and consider areas where text seems to drag on - strategically place images, reformat content into tables when possible, or make other modifications to make sure the reader doesn’t start to glaze over and skim! While evaluators do their best, remember they are reviewing HUNDREDS of these.  Make yours memorable. 

4. COMPARE AND DIFFERENTIATE

Writing an overly technical proposal often doesn’t serve you. If it’s too dense to understand and doesn’t clearly walk from technical to common language and mission impact, it won’t perform well. But there are a few places where highly technical input is valuable: 

• Your “Uniqueness”: Yes, I understand that you want to protect your secret sauce. I always recommend you mark your proposal as proprietary, but if you can’t communicate why your offering is differentiated without it, then you’ll have to get into the proprietary details. Be clear and be specific about why you are better, different, or unique. 

• Comparisons to the Existing Solution: You’re solving a problem for your customer. What are they currently doing to solve that problem, if anything? Talk about why your solution is better.
• Comparisons to Competitors: Do you have known competitors on the market that aren’t on the list of “current solutions”?  Be sure to compare yourself to these, and show how you stand out.

When making comparisons, use numbers whenever possible. If they aren’t direct comparisons, that’s okay. Numbers tied to the impact of your solution relative to others may hit home better. Another approach to numbers is to identify the numbers or metrics that an organization uses to assess impact, value, or effectiveness. 

5. SPEAK DIRECTLY

At no point in your proposal should the reader need to make assumptions or extrapolations to know what you mean. They also shouldn’t need to work in your niche to follow your terminology.  

Use common language as much as possible. Try to weed out vernacular.  Did you talk to one customer and pick up a hot phrase from them? Be cautious when including that, as well. Know that even the language used across the Department of Defense or within a service may differ from unit to unit.  It’s great to use the language from the solicitation, but otherwise be wary, and pick the easiest to understand vocabulary available.  

“Write it so your child or grandmother can read it” is the common advice I’ve heard.  I don’t fully agree with this. It IS a technical proposal and the technical volume should be technical. But it’s ideal to take every idea and spell out why someone might care in no uncertain terms. The better advice is “Write it so your child or grandmother will understand it.”  They may not understand every line or section, but they should be able to walk away understanding the big ideas. 

With that, do not assume any a priori knowledge, and be very detailed in your proofreading. Consider enlisting help. When you are close to a subject, it’s easy to unintentionally leave a thought unfinished. The implications are so obvious to you that it doesn’t cross your mind that more needs to be said, when in fact your actual written words are one or two ideas removed from the bottom line impact. Make sure the logic on paper follows all the way through to the end! 

6. SELL YOUR STAKEHOLDER STORY

I would argue that the thing the SBIR/STTR program cares most about is the likelihood of transition. The metric by which they are most heavily assessed is their transition rate. That transition may be commercial or it may be defense. The TACFI and STRATFI programs are designed to support transition into defense use, so selling the story on how that is going to happen is critical. 

Begin identifying your “ideal” stakeholders early, and work to align them. This means you should have identified all of the stakeholders critical to your transition, from the organization that will do the development work, to the organization that will buy it, to the operators who will use it and maintain it. The closer to the ideal team you come, the better your story will be! 

The open topic phase I award is meant to pay you, at least a little bit, to do this leg work. The sooner you do it in the process, the better your odds become.  If you’re on a phase II marching towards STRATFI, this should be taking up some of your focus and time. Succeeding with your tech is important, but so is finding the teams who are going to bring it in. Technology transition in the federal market is all about timing, so the earlier your stakeholders are aware of you, the better odds you have of synching. 

If you don’t have the ideal stakeholders, that’s okay! You can still sell a good transition story. There’s no one path to success, and while your solution may have an ideal or “textbook” pathway, a story can likely be told with any set of signatories.  Make sure your commercialization plan and transition strategies back your story up.

I’ll be expanding on selling your stakeholder story in detail next week!  

Would you like to deep dive into these and other great tips? Join our FREE webinar, Hot Tips for a Successful TACFI/STRATFI on Wednesday 17 April 2024 at 9AM PT/12 PM ET, and join Auxo live for some further advice and Q&A!

Any specific questions on this topic, or any other topics you’d like us to cover? Please share in the comments! 

Your Fan,