Doing business with the government is different from working with commercial customers.

Initially you can win business with the government through standard commercial market approaches. As some point growth will plateau. As a vendor, your offering meets high quality standards and has several successful implementations, yet you are not working with the integrators that can enable the market growth. You need partnerships that can be established quickly. There are three essential characteristics about the government market:

1.   Government buyers are risk averse. Unlike the private sector, there is little upside to taking risk and considerable downside if the approach taken does not succeed. How do you quickly establish trust?

2.   Government is not a single market. Each department in each agency has different missions and operational functions. They operate on different business drivers and interpersonal politics. How do you build a strategy to tackle this market?

3.   The government relies on the integrator community for IT. The projects are intricate. Programs are becoming more complex. The vendor community adds value for portions of a solution implementation and the integrator manages the program’s success. Today the government customer looks for proven past federal experience and organizations they can trust. You need to get to the decision makers and convince them that your offering will add value to their program. How do you contact an integrator when your competitor is better established in federal?