How to prioritise the right sales efforts and grow your public-sector business with modern market analysis

Want to win more public contracts? Need to direct your efforts and prioritise which market segments and customers to focus on?

Selling to the public sector has its challenges – but also its advantages. One of them is the principle of public access to official documents.

In the public market, you can find out exactly which procurements your competitors are bidding on, how much they get paid, which contracts are running and when they expire, and which buyers are active in your market.

In this article we go through how you can use public data to your advantage, and direct your sales efforts where they have the biggest impact.

A brief word on data and analysis tools

Unfortunately, the principle of public access doesn't mean the public sector publishes the data itself in a neat, user-friendly way.

Instead, you have two options if you want to make use of data about the public market.

1. Request the information you're interested in yourself. For example, past procurements, submitted tenders, and award decisions.

2. Use an analysis tool for the public market. This lets you do broader market analyses at an aggregated level.

The first option works for small, targeted efforts – if you want to learn more about a specific customer, for instance. But as soon as you want to do broader analysis, such as looking at your competitors' activity, you need an analysis tool.

With Tendium's Intelligence you can now get flexible filters and advanced analysis capabilities to examine different segments of the public market at an aggregated level – all public procurements, award decisions, contract information, and public sector payments (purchase ledger data).

Analyse different market segments

Maybe you only want to sell one thing to one type of public customer in one way. More likely, there are several market segments you're interested in. In that case it's useful to get to know the different segments more closely.

Here's how:

1. Calibrate your market filters

Create searches based on the different market segments you're interested in. You can of course filter on keywords mentioned anywhere in the procurement documents, such as a technical name for a product you want to supply. You also have advanced search tools, like combining different search terms with "and" logic.

2. Analyse and compare market trends

By applying your market filters you can now get important insights:

• How many procurements are run per year.

• How many buyers and suppliers are active.

• How many tenders are submitted per procurement on average.

• Who your competitors are and how they're doing.

3. Direct your efforts towards the highest-potential market segments

By understanding the different market segments better, you can make informed decisions about what to prioritise. For example, you can ask yourselves:

• Is the number of procurements in a given segment increasing or decreasing?

• Are there fewer bids per procurement in certain areas?

• Are there areas where your top competitor doesn't submit tenders?

• Which interesting market segments haven't you participated in before?

Exactly what's interesting depends, of course, on where you are on your journey – you know that best.

Follow the competition

What your competitors are doing in the public market is obviously highly relevant to you. It can, for example, give you clues about new areas to pursue and how much different contracts are worth.

For example, investigate:

• Which contracts do my competitors hold? When do they expire?

• How much do my competitors get paid out from their public contracts?

• How are my competitors performing in different market segments?

• Who are my competitors' main competitors?

You can also identify new potential partners to team up with as a subcontractor.

Get to know the buyers

Once you have an idea of which market segments you want to pursue, go further and look more closely at the buyers. Review past procurements and current contracts, and ask yourself questions like:

• When did they last procure within your business area?

• What did that procurement look like, what requirements were set?

• Who submitted tenders and who won the procurement?

• When do the contracts expire?

By doing this groundwork you can:

1. Determine which public buyers are most interesting for you to pursue.

2. Decide which potential customers to contact now, and which to wait on.

3. Know what to raise in a dialogue ahead of a new procurement.

Get started with modern market analysis

The Swedish public sector is likely the most transparent market in the world. But to take advantage of that, you need to be able to access and make use of the data.

Book a demo and we'll tell you more about how your company can work with market analysis to grow public-sector sales.