APMP-NCA Speaker Series: Tips and Tools for Effective Oral Presentations

Jim McCarthy – Moderator

Host and Moderator, The Bridge on TV

Mr. McCarthy’s career spans over 34 years of marketing strategy creation, proposal development, and oral presentation coaching to contractors seeking to expand their market shares or to enter the government contracts market sector. As a founder AOC Key Solutions, he built an organization that, since its inception has played a part in winning over $160 billion in federal contract awards for its clients.

An innovative builder of tools and processes aimed at continuous improvement, Mr. McCarthy created AOC Key Solutions’ approach known as Principle Centered Winning – a collection of proven best practices for market assessment, capture support, and proposal services that help win government contracts.

As an orals presentation coach for the last two decades, Mr. McCarthy guides and trains client teams in the art and science of winning presentations. His orals tool kit includes team building, presentation training, slide and graphic development, question and answer response techniques, key personnel interview training, and value proposition development. He also created the CAPE-B^© process for real time solving of sample tasks and scenarios as part of the orals process.

Mr. McCarthy is the Host and Moderator of The Bridge—the only television program devoted exclusively to bridging the gap between today’s government and the private sector. The show provides its audience with access to the most powerful and influential leaders in the government and private sectors. We achieve this through our weekly network affiliate television broadcast, as well as through 24/7 online streaming, and a robust social media outreach/dialogue.

Ben Rowland – Panelist   

Since 1998, Mr. Rowland has specialized in the development and management of Federal, state and local oral presentations. Mr. Rowland has consulted with dozens of Fortune 500 companies, international organizations, and Federal agencies on more than 300 presentation efforts worldwide (nationwide). With significant resources and contacts inside Washington, DC, he offers creative solutions, industry knowledge, and extensive experience including procurement, interpretation, teaming and team structuring, technical writing, graphic design, color team facilitation and review, constructing lessons learned, scripting, and coaching.

Combining an endlessly creative mind with practical business and technical sense, Mr. Rowland is a master orator. He is often engaged to facilitate the collaborative presentation development cycle involving SMEs, technical engineers, professional writers, teammates, and other internal and external stakeholders. He has managed teams of up to 50 people and oral presentations spanning a maximum of 5‐days. His unique combination of levity, creative skills, and attention to compliance has produced some of the industry’s most successful oral presentations securing billions of dollars in awarded contracts.

Using expert processes and productivity tools, Mr. Rowland guides group development, integration of win themes and messaging to produce engaging slides and scripts for clients. He coaches presenters at all skill levels and builds confidence through videotaped rehearsals, pointed questioning, and meticulous message refinement aligned to capture plans and evaluation criteria to achieve the highest possible scores. Beyond the presentation materials, significant elements of the oral presentation are communicated non‐verbally, or through gestures and emotions conveyed by the presenter. Mr. Rowland works extensively with key personnel to prepare and structure the winning message and team ensuring that compliance, innovations, and strengths are discussed in a focused manner – point by all important point – and that each message is delivered with effective visual materials, gestures, and words for maximum impact on the potential customer.

Hilary Fredrick– Panelist  

Hillary Fredrick is an Associate Director at CHIEF, a full-service marketing and brand agency creating transformative experiences for Federal, commercial and nonprofit clients. Hillary manages the agency proposal team and works closely with the Chief Operating Officer and Partners to oversee business development and proposal management efforts. Hillary is responsible for capture management and planning, bid opportunity analysis and proposal forecasting. She manages the agency in-house proposal team and is responsible for executing the full life-cycle of the proposal process, analyzing RFPs, collaborating with internal and client representatives to gather necessary information to formulate a compelling and strategic proposal response. In addition, she provides orals coaching and training to agency staff members. Hillary is a member of APMP and the local National Capital Area (NCA) chapter.

Hillary was selected to present two sessions at the APMP Bid and Proposal Con in New Orleans. The first presentation titled, “So You Think You Can Pitch? Using Industry Insights from Marketing and Advertising to Secure Your Win at Orals.” the second presentation that was given was “Rapid Response, Turning Around a Proposal in Two Weeks or Less.”  In addition to these two presentations from APMP, Hillary has spoken at company sponsored training academies on Pitches and Presentations, Business Development & Proposal Processes – the “Fundamentals of Structuring a Solid Written and Orals Response” and also exploring Personality Shapes – “The Power of Personality. How to Shape Your Perception of Others.”

Dan Shyti - Panelist

Dan Shyti is a professional speaker, experienced Federal BD professional, and engineer. This powerful combination of skills make him unique and in high demand as an oral presentation coach. Mr. Shyti is also an accomplished author. His book titled, 4 Power Leadership: Your Pathway to Leadership Success, is available on Amazon. He is a former Vice President at L-3, a major technology and defense company. He has held various leadership positions in corporations and the military for more than 30 years. Mr. Shyti is a graduate of Pratt Institute where he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering. When he is not working as an orals coach, he enjoys travel, photography, and home projects.