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government itself is is complex uh you need to understand three tiers of government it's from the local level the provincial level and also the national level and every one of those departments and if you count them the number of municipalities as an example there's over 600 municipalities and everyone seems to have their own sort of strategy and I can tell you now there's no cohesive strategy if you look at the transformation that's happening in government today it's a result of this dysfunctional way of doing business we now have TR manual that's not they now figured out that they need uh some sort of a strategy to say what is the instate of government where are we today and do we have a view of this future so one useful bit of information is sometimes to just go into Parliament to listen and uh and then you will and you can sit in the visitor side and you can listen to what has been said and many a time I would approach maybe the provincial level let's say it was uh in Cape Town where I approached one of the M MCS and I said you know what can we do the office he said well I tell you what why don't you come to Parliament and listen so at the provincial level I went in and listen about all the necessary information and then basically having understood what their business was all about what the issues uh and it was about housing very fundamental you know how can we make a difference and then you need to look at what are your own competencies where do you think you can make a difference so one of the first things as a as a as a lesson or as a as an Insight is to understand the the broad-based market to understand the politics to understand different agendas and government all don't think alike you got opposition you got different views but the second most important thing is to understand the budget how is the budget divided who are the key decision makers uh what are their strategic plans what are their short-term goals what are their medium to long-term objectives I think what the small businesses need to understand and I think they need to spend a lot of time uh you need to understand those procurement processes and I mean understand them and in detail um in the in the business that I'm in fundamentally if we go to market and we sort of tend to close a deal and then it has to go to the proc the process of at least getting the order and so on now you're not allowed through that process to call on the procurement department and say you know when are you going to give me my order sometimes you got to draw a fine line in terms of what's acceptable what's not acceptable are you negatively influencing or inappropriately influencing and that's a key word there so the important thing is to understand the process so what you tend to do is when you talk to a customer and you talk about it's always about their pressures it's all all about their timelines it's all about their incentives so you will sit down with a person and say please share with me what you're thinking is about uh achieving the following objective what are your timelines and how can I help you is an urgency behind it so when you tend to put a plan together to either share the solution the product the urgency it is a timeline and a set of plans that is shared between yourself as well as the customer and and and once you have that and when you reach a stage where they agree to the solution you're given them a proposal they're going to take it to an executive committee you need to understand the process of the decision making process until it goes into procurement out the other side so you have to plan up to that level and um you work with the customer to say you know what uh ing to plan you know we falling behind looks like there's some delays on your side is there anywhere you can help you know so it's about finding innovative ways to to Fast Track the process so the first lesson is understand the process talk to the customer up front in the early stages before your proposal is given understand the process the decision making processes the influences and where they could be potentially if they have to take it to their EXO and they need to understand the business case can I help you with the business case selling into to government is is expensive there's no question about that reason is the long timelines the long delays you've got to put very high caliber resources on a government pitch and it's going to take months and in some cases years and if you had to look at all of the the costs associated with pitching against the revenues on that deal although on the operation delivering that deal you may make a bit of money if you put all the pre work and marketing that went into it it's very often a break even to a loss the difference is with government is that it's hard to get in but once you're in provided as Clayton said you're adding value it's equally as hard to get out they you there they know you you've done well they don't want to look around all the time they prefer to be using the same people providing you do good service but I need to distinguish between two types of government sales processes the one is where they inviting a product or a service they go to Tender and they they will send it to selected companies and they say this is what we're looking for that process is a very different approach in how you deal with that it's very closed it's this is we we've got time which we'll ENT in to dialogue with you after that you can not phone us do not talk to us fill in exactly what we want you to fill in in the documentation very little scope for creativity they know how to handle that and they'll manage that and that process takes time but it's pretty much join the dots and there your fight is very much on things like price and and all those things the second type of pitch to government is is around when you go to them with a product or a service or an offering which they didn't send a tender out they ask for it you being proactive I'm going to them that's a very different process they they the individual you speak to may like that and say this is what I'm looking for but that person has very little capability to do anything about it it's not we think about this it's not in the budget we don't know how to consider this but I don't want you to go away I want to keep talking to you I've got to try and get this into the system somehow because we need it so they ra large corporate or businesses are a lot more flexible if you take them a good idea then they're able to do something with it even though it's out budget cycle there's always a slash fund that somebody's got somewhere to do stuff with with government if you're going up to them with something that's Uninvited as appealing as it is it's going to be difficult to get it in you have to wait budget Cycles the Big Challenge the government has today is they do not have the skills they look to ins tions like the universities the technicans to help them develop the skill but also they're looking for people in the industry to partner with so that they can go into partnership in the way they deliver I think you mentioned delivery of the solution it's one thing to sell something but it's a something else to deliver so you need to either if you're an entrepreneur going into business you got to try and find a niche you need to understand that market