The magic key to make a Purchasing Department to help you prospect inside any big Government Account
The last chapter of Mike Weinberg's podcast has a very interesting part on how to avoid the practice to which we are subdued by procurement or legal departments, that try to standardize value in order to equalize all the offers they receive and make their decisions simpler.
Confront to avoid the commoditization
Mike does a brilliant analysis of the different ways we have to maintain value, not to get into the typical processes (the main way he proposes is to firmly state that you are not willing to be pigeonholed into arbitrary processes. As you have communicated the value to whoever owns the problem, the idea is to force an internal battle to keep you as a provider... in your own rules). What it ultimately comes down to is to avoid falling into the procedural bureaucratic machinery of purchasing departments, that have a very complicated and tedious job (and understandably so) but which at the same time undermines our ability to sell our value at profitable margins. Also, it is often forgotten that the price we intend to charge our customers is an indication of the level of investment the customer is putting into solving their problem or improving the performance of something (lots about this are written by Anthony Iannarino). So how can we use the strict logic of the contracting departments to our advantage? The experience I'm going to tell you about has proven to be effective in government accounts, because there is some of the information needed to make this work that is easier to get in government contracts.
The magic key to reverse engineer it, and commoditize them in your favor
Contracting departments are clogged with work. They have inputs and outputs that have to be dispatched fast. What it comes down to for this to work is using the magic key that unlocks the door. What is the piece of information that can trigger a quasi-automatic process to achieve our objective (that objective being to contact the topmost person responsible of an area we want to help by selling them something)?
An important thing to understand is that the relationship that the purchasing department has with this imput/output style, it also has that same way with all the stakeholders: with its internal customers, with its legal advisors, with the HR people, with its suppliers, and so on. So when the purchasing department requires something from someone, normally that someone is used to simply look for it, respond with what has been required with the objective of unblocking some process, and thus continuing with some kind of contracting file or something similar??????. On the other hand, if you have to make an inquiry to the purchasing department, you are likely to have the information you need come easily back to you if you are able to speak in their own language,
And not only that, but if you can get the purchasing department to circulate your query, leading with the magic key you have obtained to get the information you are so desperately hoping for, it is very likely that it will be even faster to get to your goal. So what does it mean to "speak the language of the purchasing department"? The keyword is (the magic key that unlocks all possibilities) the contract dossier's number???.?
The file number is the single key that accomplishes all of this in one step:
The file number is the lodestar of procurement. If you ask a question regarding this number, its clarified and magnetic power will lead you directly to the target, no questions asked.
If you lead with that precious piece of data, no one will raise any barriers. If you ask about something in that way... they suppose you know what you are looking for, you have information that they don't need to be trying to explain to you, they don't even think about asking you any why's that could slow down your input / output query. They have more things to do! They will not stop, and just deliver your query inside. To the boss. And what will the boss do? Exactly the same from his perspective: obey the purchasing people the way he is used to. Get fast to resolve the enigma, looking to check done something asked for the ever powerful purchasing area.
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What have I done in my case?
Identify the files of all the public administration in my area (the open data initiative or whatever it is called in your country is good for something) related to what I sell and sold by my top competitors. And then,
Send an email as simple as this:
Subject: Related to Dossier # 123456 (whatever in each case).
Message body: I want to make a technical inquiry about that contract. Please contact me with the appropriate person.
Sincerely, JP
And that's it.
The quasi-guaranteed result (I've experienced it, I can prove it) is that in the orthogonal data system of the Purchasing Department, this inquiry will be sent to the CHIEF of the expected area. He will see that Purchasing is asking... and he will do what he is used to doing. Find out what's going on, and.... call me.
4 out of 10 contacts made this way have resulted in offers that I'm preparing this week, plus a booked meeting with the topmost officer in my governments area to speak about something I could really help them solve.
Upon receiving the calls I simply say that I sell what they have purchased in their File # 123456, that I know they have another supplier, but that I want to talk to them about improving so and so....
In my case, my value proposition is really impossible to ignore or fend off. I let you find yours, and test this method.