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This is blog 11 of the 16-part blog series on Orals Coaching. To see the previous blogs, click here. In this blog, I’m joined again by Trident’s Lead Deck Developer, Morgan Over, to cover part 2 of the static presentation deck development tips. In the last blog, we discussed Roles and Responsibilities for the deck development. In this blog, we’ll cover how to develop a compliant outline for your static presentation.

Developing a Compliant Outline 

The process of creating a compliant annotated outline for your presentation is much like preparing for any written proposal. Because of space limitations, there is no perfect outline, and trades must be made based on the solicitation and the client's knowledge. As with any proposal document, the static presentation outline is complete only when you have the company leadership and stakeholder agreement. Get agreement early and often.

Don’t Fall Into the PowerPoint Trap 

 We have countless stories of being given "draft" presentations with titles and some bullets that are the starting point. These rarely meet the solicitation (or request for proposal) requirements. From the start, this means they aren't compliant. And these are often not yet compelling enough to win. The root cause is nearly always the same: they went right to PowerPoint and started building slides.

Instead of launching into slide development, start with a simple text document outline and conduct a “Blue Team” or initial review. When you hire Trident, we always ask for this outline and validate it. When you don’t have one, we take a step back and develop the outline ourselves, conduct a compliance check on the deck, and keep the outline up to date as a quick reference to validate content in the future. This centers on the fact that your deck should not only be compelling, but it must always be compliant. Just as we recommend to our clients that they develop a comprehensive outline for a written technical response, the same applies to an oral presentation deck.

Get Into The Shoes Of Your Evaluators 

An important consideration for presentation development is how the presentation will be graded. The government will typically grade the stand-alone presentation in conjunction with the oral presentation. In other words, they’ll grade your static presentation and your talk track (what you say during the live presentation).

A common solicitation requirement is that the government will only grade the parts of the presentation that were presented. In this scenario, the government may have a printout of the static presentation with them during the oral presentation and tear off the slides that were not presented orally so that they will not be graded. In this case, the number of slides is typically not fixed, whereas the presentation time is. Solicitation requirements may also set limits on the number of slides and the allotted presentation time (e.g., not to exceed 45 slides with 60 minutes to present).

Our approach to static presentations is to assume that the written response/tech document is evaluated separately from the oral presentation, unless the solicitation specifically says otherwise. This means each static presentation should fully address the government requirements without necessitating a talk track. Taking a “stand-alone” approach means that if the technical evaluation board reviews a slide, they know which question you are answering and which solicitation requirements are met. This makes it easier for evaluators to compare the keywords and requirements with their grading criteria.

If the solicitation states that the oral presentation should “complement” your tech volume, we recommend you take a holistic review of your response and ensure that you’re not only meeting the requirements for the presentation (which are often different than those for the tech volume) but that collectively they tell the whole story. You should always adjust this approach as needed based on the specific requirements of the RFP.

Develop a Compliant Outline 

When developing the compliant outline, I start with the requirements section (Section L) or the equivalent section that tells us what must be provided or presented to the government. First, cut and paste the relevant part of Section L/requirements section for the static presentation into the document where you will develop your outline. In the outline, major bullets will be the slide headers, and minor bullets will be the slide content. Work through Section L, creating a new major bullet after each phrase or separate requirement. Distill Section L down to its smallest parts.

Often, after outlining Section L, you will not have very many slides. That is normal. We often color-code direct language from Section L, so we know what the requirements are, separate from the parts of the outline that amplify or add information to answer them.

The next step is to navigate to the evaluation criteria or Section M/equivalent, which the evaluators will use to grade the presentation. Section M often mirrors Section L and gives you keywords that describe the extent to which the TEB will grade the content. For example, consider the following Section M requirement:

“The Government will evaluate the breadth and depth of the offeror's recent, relevant experience providing similar work, including scope, complexity, length of performance, number of tasks, and magnitude (value). Direct experience providing professional support services to XXX commands will be considered more favorably than non-Navy experience.”

This example Section M requirement directs us to add our specific experience with similar work to the presentation outline. In the outline, I would add a section to every slide for specific relevant experience, or a separate slide at the end of each section that lists specific relevant experience. For every experience cited, I would add a section to my outline stating how the experience is similar, based on the RFP’s definition of relevant work (e.g., recency, scope, complexity, length of performance, number of tasks, and magnitude/value). Don’t skip over this part. Finding “recent, relevant experience” can take some time to track down. We recommend you start this early to validate your experience.

Once you have the evaluation criteria/Section M incorporated into the outline, your next step is to incorporate the Statement of Work (SOW) or Performance Work Statement (PWS) into the outline. Often, Sections L or M state something similar to the following:

 “demonstrates a thorough understanding of the requirements in the SOW/PWS.”

This is your cue to include the SOW/PWS into the outline in a meaningful way. It may be that every section of your brief must cover the major parts of the SOW/PWS.

If Section M has an “adjectival rating” table, then incorporate the rating language into the outline as well. For example, below is a rating table for an oral presentation: 

Because of these additional rating descriptions, your outline should address “understanding of the requirements,” “strengths of your approach,” and “risks and mitigations.”  Without slides addressing these rating descriptions, you risk the TEB having to remember and find evidence in your presentation to support an outstanding grade for your team.  

There may also be a supplementary document or appendix called “Orals Guidelines” or something similar that may add more requirements to the presentation. In other instances, we have seen the government provide oral presentation instructions separately as part of the  downselect process. We recommend that you integrate any appropriate guidelines into the outline, being careful not to negate requirements in Sections L and M. These sections are the priorities for the presentation; the guidelines are “nice to have.”

To summarize it simply:

• Scrub the requirements section of the solicitation (Section L) and add to the outline
• Scrub the evaluation criteria (Section M0 and add to the outline
• Include the Technical Rating language into the outline
• Add any additional “orals guidelines” or downselect guidelines
• This all forms the basic outline for your static presentation

Add in Win Themes and Differentiators

At this point, your outline is compliant with the requirements directed by the RFP, SOW, PWS, and any attachments. Each major bullet in the outline is a separate slide for the presentation. Now add information that will cue the team to include important details beyond meeting the government’s requirements. Add a spot in each section to address the key win theme or differentiator for that section. Add a list of potential examples that demonstrate relevant capabilities or leave a generic bullet to cue the writer to add examples later. If your requirements are broken down by sections or topical areas, add a recap slide to each section or area to recap what you already said. Many of these slides will be moved around or consolidated as content is developed, but you need to build the outline first, so you have a framework to begin with.  

Finally, add the slide developer’s name and the slide presenter’s name, if knows, so that accountabilities are clear and the presenter knows who to contact about a given slide.  

The outline might also contain information about the transitions between speakers and common experiences that may be useful for all speakers to reference (read Blog 9: Developing Speaker Points and Transitions). This is a good time to consider and estimate timing for each slide based on the importance of the content, the total number of slides, and the total time allotted for the presentation.   

The person building the outline sees the bigger picture as they develop it and can use that bigger picture to give the slide developers context and ideas, including an approach for how the slide might look or what content it might include.

An example slide as a starting framework can be found below:

Review the Outline and Get Agreement

At this point in the process, you should pause the process and get agreement from leadership, the presentation team, and any subject matter experts SMEs that the outline meets the requirements of the solicitation in the order that the solicitation directs. This group will also validate and update the win themes, examples, differentiating capabilities, speaker assignments, and timing. During the outline review and validation, I like to move into an ideation session where the group can start thinking of ways to graphically represent the information in the outline. Not only does this give the deck development team a head start, but it also gives the reviewer early input on the slides to increase the likelihood that they will agree with the first draft.  

Here is an easy checklist to follow for the outline review: 

• Is it compliant?
• Is it in the right order?
• Is it easy to grade?
• Does the content make sense?
• Are the win themes documented, and do they make sense?
• Does the idea for a diagram or slide format work?
• Is the right slide developer and presenter assigned?
• Does the initial timing for each slide make sense?

Beginning with a compliant outline enables the team to start addressing the must and shall statements right away. Incorporating additional content that validates or elaborates on these points can enhance your presentation, but having a compliant outline from the start provides each team with a useful initial advantage advantage for a compliant presentation.

Trident Support 

Our deck developers and orals coaches work with state and federal contractors at every step, from individual pre-work through final team delivery. Buiding the outline and static presentation take time. Contact Trident  today to leverage our expert orals coaching and deck development support. We can help you build a compelling, compliant, and dynamic presentation that sets you up for the win. 

Don’t miss blog 12: Static Presentation Deck Development Part 3: Approach to Developing the Deck 

Written by  Jeff Everage and Morgan Over 

Jeff  is the President and Founder of Trident Proposal Management. As a GovCon Oral Presentation Coach for more than 15 years, Jeff has coached more than 100 teams to success. His insights into oral coaching, gained from the trenches of coaching, are designed to support you and your team in your efforts. As a Navy veteran, Jeff resides in Southern California and provides support to clients worldwide as part of our globally dispersed team. 

Morgan is our marketing manager and a proposal support specialist. When she isn’t handling marketing for Trident, she is tech editing documents and building orals decks for our clients. As a military spouse based in Guam, she supports clients around the world as part of our globally dispersed team.