An article I saw via twitter reminded me of one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made this year.
It was my first SBIR proposal I ever wrote as the prime, and it was sent to the US Army. The person who was a decision maker on the project knows me, and I felt I had a good idea what they needed. My proposal was technologically detailed, and my main goal was to convince the reader that I knew how to solve a specific technical problem.
I didn’t get the award, but I did have a chance to meet with the Army about it. I was shocked to hear that they didn’t think it was a strong proposal. They said they had no doubt we could do good things for them, but they felt we didn’t focus on solving the problem that was important to them. See, I focused on the technically difficult part of the RFP, and that was the less important thing to them.
They wanted to know that we would work with them to provide value to them. They didn’t need convincing that there was a good technological solution for them. They wanted a teammate.
As it happened I ended up teaming with one of the companies that did win that SBIR, and they shared the winning proposal with me (we’re all good friends even though we compete with each other at times).
The winning proposal had very little technical focus, but really hammered on the idea that they were going to help solve the customer’s problems.
I certainly felt I was trying to solve the customer’s problems too, but my proposal was centered around what my team could do, and what we knew. The winning proposal was focused on the customer!
After hearing I didn’t win the SBIR I read the book Powerful Proposals: How to Give Your Business the Winning Edge. One of the exercises in the book is to read how many times your proposal uses the words “we” and “our”, compared to how often it says “you” and “your”. Looking over my failed proposal I certainly got that part wrong.
So I’m trying to remind myself to be more customer focused. Rather than trying to sell my expertise or experience, I’m going to try to sell my interest in, and ability to help the customers. That might mean that I don’t get to propose some cool idea, but I’d rather have the customer than the idea anyway.