Selling to the public sector? Know their business(es), not just your products

Former central and local government CIO David Wilde has this plea for tech vendors pitching to the public sector

In my line of work as a former CIO and senior leader across central and local government, now the owner and managing director of my own consulting business, I often get asked by vendors or all shapes and sizes to help them improve their ‘market position'.

These questions invariably start with the following:

  1. Our product is unique in the market;
  2. We can help public organisations achieve significant savings with our product/s;
  3. We enable service transformation;
  4. Who do we need to reach to secure sales?

But all too often our start points are:

  1. Why are you unique?
  2. How can they cash-in those savings and what will it cost to release them?
  3. Who do you think needs to transform and why?
  4. Do you understand how the public sector and, in particular, the various sectors within it work?
  5. What about the customer (residents, businesses - taxpayers)?

In short, to be successful in engaging with the public sector, never assume it's one thing, it isn't.

Learn about the landscapes that make up health, local government, education, central government and so on: what drives them; how they're funded; rules and accountabilities; relationships within and across; and what their resourcing cycles are.

This knowledge will help you build a more compelling business proposition that relates to the sector, time your go-to-market in line with when people are receptive to new approaches (ahead of decision making) and, above all, demonstrate that you know what it is that matters to them and their organisation.

Those suppliers that have impressed me over the years are the ones that have learnt about the business I'm in, and that have come to me seeking to know more and to meet my organisation or sector's business needs.

They are the exception, though. More usual is a request to come and tell me how fantastic and market leading product X or Y is, and how it will make sure I can save £Z. These don't get through the door. I can get product and market information from a wealth of research organisations and one of the things austerity has driven hard in recent years is greater commercial awareness within the buying communities across the public sector.

Savings…..when are they real?

Public services have had their fingers burned over the years by a wide variety of "savings opportunities" and are much more sceptical of such claims, and with good reason.

Shared services, business process outsourcing, revenue generation, business process re-engineering and so on have all promised much, but not always delivered. So, as a vendor pitching to save your customer money, be very sure about how, when and why this will be the case.

Whole-life contracts are the name of the game now so the old days of up-front savings in return for increased revenue downstream are gone - austerity isn't going to go away.

I do believe there is much more that can be done around gainshare - whereby the cost of investment and risk of failure are shared, but with profits/revenue likewise shared if successful - yet trust and transparency are crucial to this type of arrangement, and the gain has to be extractable. Non-cashable savings just don't cut it, especially where investment is needed.

Transformation (and more recently digital transformation) - public services transform all the time

I well remember the seismic transformation of education in 1998-2002, environment, transport and the regions through the turbulent years of 2001-2004, and the last large-scale local government reforms of 1997 and 2000.

In the technology world we've see the complete transformation of taxation and benefits across a number of levels over the past 20 years, some done well and some much less so.

Yet all these transformations have been within the big ‘silos' of health, local government, welfare, tax, national transport, and not people, places, movement, prosperity and well-being. This needs to change and there are early signs of it happening. The vendors that look to whole system transformation, with deliverable and real net benefits, will be the winners as this shift takes place.

So, who do vendors need to reach to secure sales? To answer this you really do have to know your public service sector, how they are made up and what drives them. You need to be clear on the total value proposition for you and the customer, and when pitching transformation think beyond the limits of the organisation today.

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