We’ve just finished a project looking at the relationship between councils and innovative companies. There is frustration on both sides. Companies often feel like councils move slowly, don’t understand innovative business models, and resent restrictive procurement approaches.
Top tips for selling to local government
But councils have frustrations with firms, too. We’ve identified a couple of lessons for innovative start-ups and scale-ups to get better at selling to local government.
First, speak the language. Lots of private firms come with a set of buzzwords, jargon, and the latest big concepts from industry. Terms like ‘AI’, ‘Big Data’, ‘The Data Flywheel’ and ‘The Internet of Things’ are common. Being disruptive, entrepreneurial, or radical, is seen as positive.
Establish what the customer wants
But councils don’t want disruption in its literal sense: they want security and reliability. Often a non-specialist is making decisions, and jargon that is familiar in business might be at best unclear, and at worst, deeply unnerving. Companies that approach councils speaking a kind of second-hand Silicon Valley slang can end up eroding trust.
The answer isn’t to throw out the proposition of a new business, or to stop using accurate technical terms. But it does mean thinking hard about what kind of language is really appropriate for council customers, and err on the side of providing reassurance.