Gail & Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

Copyright © 2003 by Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

If you’ve ever attended one of our workshops, you know we are big proponents of schmoozing with the agency before you prepare and submit an SBIR or STTR proposal. Schmoozing is the process of getting to know the agency, the topic author, the application, the reviewer, their preferences—basically it is trying to find out everything you can about agency and the topic on which you are proposing.

Schmoozing in the Phase 1 proposal preparation process is very much a "getting to know you" proposition. You may not know a lot about the agency or the topic, and the topic author and reviewers probably don’t know very much about you. The "rules of engagement" are limiting: for example, many agencies that make their SBIR awards as contracts will not allow you to communicate with the topic author once their solicitation has been officially released.

Given this, schmoozing in the Phase 1 proposal preparation period requires that you work hard to identify the folks in the agency with whom you should schmooze, establish credibility for your company and your technology with them, and obeying any limits on agency contact during "black out" periods.

Schmoozing in Phase 2 proposal preparation is another animal. Now you are a Phase 1 contract or grant recipient, and you have a need (and even a duty) to be in touch with the agency representatives to keep them apprised of the Phase 1 work. At the same time, you should be taking the opportunity to schmooze with the agency about your Phase 2 proposal and project—ask the agency, for example, what direction they might like to see Phase 2 take, or any particular experiments or activities that they would like to see included in the Phase 2 project.

If Phase 1 proposal schmoozing is the "getting to know you" period with the agency, then your Phase 2 proposal marketing is "convince us that we want to work with you for another two years." Do you do good research? Are you easy to work with, or are you a whiner or complainer? Are you attentive and stay in touch with the agency but aren’t a pest? As Joe Henebury (SBIR Program Manager at the Department of Transportation) has said, who do you think the agency wants to work with in Phase 2—someone who disappeared and never communicated with the agency during the Phase 1 project, or someone who kept the agency informed and asked for advice during the Phase 1 effort?

We admit that the level or depth of interaction with a granting agency like NIH or USDA may be less during the Phase 2 schmoozing effort compared to contact agencies like DOD, NASA and DOT, because the reviewers for the granting agencies tend to be outside university/federal lab/industry folks and because these agencies are not Phase 3 customers. But contact with staff at these granting agencies is still important. They can provide insights and advice that are critical to insuring that your Phase 2 proposal is right on target and addresses the likely hot buttons of the reviewers.