SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: What To Do When You Get a “Dear John” Letter
Gail
& Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.
Copyright © 2014 by
Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.
Of course, in today’s
world it will probably be a “Dear John” email, but the message is still the
same: the agency to which you submitted your SBIR/STTR proposal has
decided not
to fund it. This month, we’re going to offer some advice if this happens to
you.
First of all, realize it
happens all the time! SBIR and STTR
are highly competitive programs, and getting more so as the agencies’ budgets
get tighter and they make larger awards (which means they must make fewer awards
even if their budgets aren’t shrinking). The
agencies reported to us in 2013 that they only funded 13-25% of Phase 1
proposals, and 30-60% of Phase 2s—so chances are real good that you will face
rejection and may see it repeatedly before you taste success. So the first
lesson is to be prepared for rejection, and be prepared to persevere despite it.
Proposers who give up after their first, second or even third attempt likely
will not succeed in SBIR/STTR.
Second, realize that the
SBIR/STTR programs are specifically structured to give “non-winners”
feedback on their proposals. The agencies are REQUIRED to do this—but you have
to know when/how to request it. Some agencies make it easy, and automatically
send you the feedback (typically
known as a “debriefing,” although NIH like
the term “summary statement”) whether you ask for it or not (USDA, NIST,
DARPA, NIH-Grants, NASA and NSF report that they send your debriefing
automatically). Others require that you request it, and some are very limiting
on when you can do that—for example, the NIH contract program (vs. the larger
and better known NIH grant program) insists that you request the debrief within
3 days of receiving your “Dear John” rejection notice. So the second lesson
is to promptly request the debriefing when the agency is still willing to give
it.
Third, review the
debriefing with as little emotion and ego as possible. Some debriefings are
rude. Some are wrong. Some are vague. Some demonstrate the reviewer didn’t do
his or her job correctly. But most debriefings include valuable information if
you are open to receive it. The information you want to glean:
1. Is there a resubmission opportunity here? Some agencies allow you to resubmit a rejected SBIR/STTR proposal, so if this agency is one of them, you want to read the debriefing for encouragement and any positive response to your innovation.
2.
What can I
learn from this experience that will make my future SBIR/STTR proposals
better? Even if you can’t
resubmit, you can almost always learn something from what is written in the
debriefing. Sometimes you’ll have to dig for that valuable nugget—it may
appear as a harsh criticism or insult that you can avoid next time by saying
or doing something different in your future proposals.
Notice that we didn’t
say you should be looking for evidence that the agency and/or its reviewers are
unfair, biased, ignorant, egotistical, self centered, immoral or have any
similar unfavorable characteristics. Agencies
seldom amend or reverse previous reviews, and they don’t respond favorably to
your efforts to make them look bad, so don’t try to dig up such dirt when you
look over the debriefing. The lesson here is to make the debriefing a learning
opportunity—learn if there’s an opportunity to resubmit, and what you will
do differently next time.
Fourth, after digesting
the debriefing, and calming down if it upsets you, try to have a conversation
with the agency representative to learn more about why your proposal went down
in defeat. Key word here is “try:” you likely won’t have much luck doing
this with agencies that make their SBIR/STTR awards as contracts. But it is
often possible to do it with the grant awarding agencies. Ask for clarification
on the content of the debriefing, and for greater insight into what the
reviewers may have been thinking than what comes through in the debriefing. DO
NOT act threatening (“I thought I’d give you a quick call to gather more
evide
nce that your agency is useless before I contact my Congressperson and ask
my lawyer to sue you”) as this will definitely put a damper on the
representative’s willingness to share anything of significance with you (never
contact your Congressperson to complain about an agency’s SBIR/STTR program).
If this agency allows resubmission of rejected proposals, then you should
test the resubmission idea with the representative—and again, sounding
non-threatening and respectful of the representative’s opinion will help you
get an honest answer here. By the way, at an agency like NSF where the reviewers
who wrote the debriefing are only advisory to agency staff who make the ultimate
win/lose decision, this conversation could help you understand what the staffers
were thinking (in addition to reflecting the reviewers’ comments) when they
sent you the “Dear John” response. So the fourth lesson is to try to
supplement the lessons from the debriefing with insights from agency
representatives.
Fifth, if you decide to
resubmit, make sure you follow any agency instructions for such resubmissions
(such as the one page “introduction” that NIH requires on resubmitted grant
proposals). And revise your proposal to respond positively and constructively to
the comments from the reviewers. Your message should be “we appreciate the
reviewers’ comments and here is how we have improved our proposal based on
them,” rather than “the reviewers are idiots and are wrong and here’s why,
and therefore here’s the same proposal we sent before so you have a second
chance to do what you should have done the first time and give us an award.”
The latter will lead to a “not only ‘no,’ but ‘hell no’”
response to your resubmittal, so avoid it unless you don’t care about getting
your project funded and just want to blow off some steam. You can refute some
things in the debriefing that you think were erroneous, but it should be done
positively and professionally and should not make up the bulk of your response.
The lesson here is that you should show appreciation for and internalization of
comments and feedback received from the debriefing if you want a resubmission of
the proposal to have a chance of success.
Finally, we suggest
getting an outsider’s opinion on all of this. They can look at the debriefing
and offer their interpretation of what the reviewers are trying to say. They can
compare the debriefing with
your original proposal and help you see things that the debriefing is referring
to. You can get this outsider’s opinion from a variety of sources, including
company employees who weren’t involved in writing the proposal, a detail
oriented spouse, a Small Business Development Center counselor, or an SBIR/STTR
consultant or service provider. But don’t shoot the messenger: this person
will (hopefully) help you understand what the agency reviewers are trying to
say, and you should be appreciative of what they are trying to do for you.
The lesson is to gain another person’s perspective on the failed
proposal.
If you are going to
compete for SBIR/STTR funding, you are going to have proposals rejected—maybe
a lot of them. Everyone goes through this, and it may happen even more as these
programs become more and more competitive. Realize it happens, and be ready to
gain as much as you can from the failed proposals, in terms of learning to write
better SBIR/STTR proposals and resubmitting meritorious proposals when able to
do so.