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:  

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.