Helping our digital business community sell to the public sector

On Tuesday we ran our second croydon digital event, on the theme of selling to the public sector. This was a theme that had been raised at our first event, before Christmas, and so we hoped it would generate a lot of interest.

In the end, we were very pleasantly surprised. About a hundred people ended up being packed into the breakout space at our very generous hosts, Sussex Innovation Croydon, all eager to network and makes connections, as well as pick the brains of our expert speakers.

First up was Mary McKenna.

@MMaryMcKenna kicking off with an engaging intro into gov #croydongovtech pic.twitter.com/MEYMb2aKj9

— StreetPin (@StreetPin) February 26, 2019

Mary has a fantastic track record as an entrepreneur and investor, specialising in selling to the public sector, including co-founding the e-learning company Learning Pool. She currently is helping grow companies such as Mind of My Own, PlaceCube and Elemental.

She gave a no-holds-barred pep talk to the businesses in our audience about the commitment needed to make a success of selling to the public sector and what sacrifices are needed. Plenty of reference was made to a really helpful blog post Mary published outlining her 10 secrets to successful sales to public services – do check it out.

After Mary came Rob Miller.

Don't lie, don't take it personally and do network endlessly #croydongovtech @RobMiller31 summarises a Tuesday rant about selling to local government pic.twitter.com/aGebfbepvr

— Ian Michaelwaite (@IanM01) February 26, 2019

Rob is director for ICT at Hackney Council, who are something of an inspiration (and a source of competition!) for our own Croydon Digital Service. Rob shared a number of useful perspectives from the buy-side, including the guide to not being annoying when selling to Councils, how Hackney share their pipeline openly to engage suppliers early, and their blogging, which again provides a window into what their current priorities are.

Next up was Pauline Yau.

When you’re selling into the public sector, establish your targets & narrow your focus down – stay away from the #sprayandpray approach – great point @paulineyau #croydongovtech pic.twitter.com/zQ7Mpdoxs6

— Mary McKenna (@MMaryMcKenna) February 26, 2019

Pauline has been helping companies sell to government for a number of years, including helping to establish Huddle, and then spending time with Microsoft. These days she works with SMEs on a freelance basis to help them nail their sales approach.

Pauline’s effervescent presentation provided numerous great lessons for Croydon’s digital businesses to take away. All those present were furiously writing notes, which is a great compliment to the quality of the advice being given!

Following a break for networking, drinks and nibbles and the odd tour of the building, we had the pleasure of Chris Farthing‘s company.

#croydongovtech @A_C_Chris discusses framework agreements as part of publicsector procurement pic.twitter.com/0paKQGwv0l

— LynleyMeyers (@LynleyM) February 26, 2019

Chris runs Advice Cloud, a consultancy that helps the public sector buy technology through frameworks, such as the Digital Marketplace. These frameworks can make it a lot easier for smaller companies to sell their products and services, without the need for extensive procurement exercises.

Chris gave a really informative tour of the frameworks, what they are and which are best for different contexts, and provided some great advice on what companies need to do to make the most of them. He also provided a really useful reading list for more information, which you can find in the slides from the event, which are shared at the bottom of this post.

Finally we had a panel session, giving a chance for everyone to ask a question of our experts.

I tell you what everyone who was there really should heed the sound advice of these lovely people about selling to local gov they REALLY know us it was quite unnerving listening to how well they know how local gov ticks! #croydongovtech @paulineyau pic.twitter.com/0X5e25lC5v

— Annie Heath (@Annie3H) February 26, 2019

All in all, a successful and useful evening. Connections were made, experiences and knowledge shared and hopefully everybody got something out of it! There was plenty of discussion online too via the hashtag #croydongovtech on Twitter – so check out the conversation there too if you get the chance.

Plenty of people were interested in getting hold of the slides from the event – and so you can download them in PDF format.

We will start thinking now about what we should cover in our next event. If you have any ideas, please get in touch and let us know. We’re thinking possibly something around recruitment and developing our talent pipeline, as we know that’s a hot topic for many. In the meantime, a massive thank you to our speakers who gave up their time to be with us and share their expertise, and to Sussex Innovation Croydon for being such lovely, welcoming hosts.

OMG I love this selfie w @paulineyau @A_C_Chris & @RobMiller31 at this evening’s #croydongovtech event – really important to love what you do – if anyone has any more questions please post them on this hashtag – thanks to @SaundersSaffron @davebriggs & @neillyneil for hosting 💚 pic.twitter.com/2ucc056pm4

— Mary McKenna (@MMaryMcKenna) February 26, 2019