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Marketing Programs Consultant
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| Five Myths about Selling IT Products and Services in State and Local and Education Markets |
1. The government always buys from the lowest bidder, it’s a low margin business.
This myth can easily be paired with, “Why sell to the government? They never have any money.” It is my humble opinion that
if you hear this frequently from your state and local or education customers, you are either pursuing the wrong customer or
they are trying to get you off the phone or out of their office. Like their commercial counterparts, smart state and local sales
people follow the money to find their customers so “no money” discussions don’t take place.
As far as always buying the cheapest thing from the lowest bidder, when it comes to technology products, this rarely is the
case. State and local procurement is pretty savvy at weeding out the fly-by-night low bidders. For manufacturers, you can
expect to see Gartner Group’s Magic Quadrant, state agency surveys, or meeting installed based thresholds as criteria for
an acceptable brand on a state contract.
Your competition rarely wins contracts because they have a lower cost than you. A more likely scenario is that your
competition had a winning proposal because they knew something about the customer that you didn’t and that gave your
competition a pricing advantage. Most state contract awards are based on having a good prior knowledge of the customer
and a well thought out proposal based on that knowledge.
This myth can easily be paired with, “Why sell to the government? They never have any money.” It is my humble opinion that
if you hear this frequently from your state and local or education customers, you are either pursuing the wrong customer or
they are trying to get you off the phone or out of their office. Like their commercial counterparts, smart state and local sales
people follow the money to find their customers so “no money” discussions don’t take place.
As far as always buying the cheapest thing from the lowest bidder, when it comes to technology products, this rarely is the
case. State and local procurement is pretty savvy at weeding out the fly-by-night low bidders. For manufacturers, you can
expect to see Gartner Group’s Magic Quadrant, state agency surveys, or meeting installed based thresholds as criteria for
an acceptable brand on a state contract.
Your competition rarely wins contracts because they have a lower cost than you. A more likely scenario is that your
competition had a winning proposal because they knew something about the customer that you didn’t and that gave your
competition a pricing advantage. Most state contract awards are based on having a good prior knowledge of the customer
and a well thought out proposal based on that knowledge.