MARKET REPORT Public Sector
“Take advantage of demo days so your customers can look and feel the technology and experience its impact.”
Jason Welsh, UC Devices Business Manager - Nimans
What are the top tips for sales
success in this sector?
Jason Welsh of Nimans says,
“Take advantage of demo days so
your customers can look and feel
the technology and experience
its impact. Technology is a
lifestyle in the home and work
now. Sell the vision.”
Emily Shimell at
VideoCentric says that when
it comes to getting onto
Frameworks, doing this inhouse,
of course, meant that
they saved circa £20,000.
“Some organisations are
paying to get themselves onto
Frameworks and meant we
had achieved a tremendous
feat when we were nally
accepted. However, approval for
selling on the framework has
just been the start. ere are
hundreds, sometimes thousands
of businesses on a framework,
and being accepted doesn’t
automatically win business –
you still need to stand out from
the rest and market yourselves
as you would do to the private
sector too.”
Ben Ryland of 4net
Technologies advises resellers,
“to be the expert in a specic
public sector eld and get
known as the ‘housing expert’
or ‘health expert’, recognised for
understanding the particular
challenges that sector faces and
knowing its terminology. Don’t
try to be a specialist across all
the verticals.”
“Pick your technology
partners carefully. We choose to
partner with Avaya because they
help us provide the best solutions
for organisations wanting to
undergo digital transformation.
When the public sector goes
for this kind of change, it’s a
long-term journey/commitment
so it’s vital to have a solid partner
with which to deliver technology
solutions.”
Marie Hamilton at Avaya
concludes that the bottom line
is, if you want to sell to the
public sector, you must get onto
the relevant Crown Commercial
Services framework.
“Be proactive and be prepared,
most frameworks have a three to
four-year lifecycle and you need
to get the timing right to be
able to take part in the rigorous
selection process.”
Be sure to carefully answer
all the questions, ensuring
you showcase your nancial
strength, security, that you
deliver value for money etc.
Case studies and references
are also important as they
demonstrate your ability to
deliver.”
ED SAYS…
Selling in the public sector is not something that occurs as a happenchance. It needs
planning, preparation and a lot of thought – it is also very competitive and time
consuming. Therefore, it is not for everyone and clearly vendors and larger resellers
have the inbuilt
advantage of working at a scale that most resellers do not get close to.
held on this equipment.
However, as the pace of
technological change accelerates
and budget cuts are having
a more visible eect – both
from lack of capital to buy
equipment and revenue to
recruit & train sta to manage
the environments, there is a
growing acceptance of the
value of hosted services and the
security that they now provide.”
Ben Ryland at 4net
Technologies continues the
cloud deployment theme
saying, “Cloud-based solutions
are appealing more and more
to the public sector as they
enable a non-traditional pricing
model based on OpEx instead
of CapEx and can easily scale
up or down and also guarantee
future costs for these solutions.”
Encouragingly, Avaya’s
Marie Hamilton says, ““We
are seeing more SMEs
supplying the public sector
than ever before. ese are
specialist organisations that
have proven their expertise by
being accepted onto a CCS
framework and are providing
their knowledge and solutions
directly via the biggest public
procurement organisation in
the UK.”
38 | Comms Business Magazine | February 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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