Supplier Tips: Getting More Traction From Awarded Contracts
Cooperative contracts are growing in popularity but suppliers aren’t getting traction with public agencies. These tips will help you get in front of agencies and win more business.
As the use of cooperative contracts continues to rise in the world of procurement, suppliers need to up their game. There are plenty of agency buyers out there looking for what suppliers are offering but their methods of searching for and selecting contracts are changing. As a supplier, you might find that you’re putting contracts out there but not seeing the traction you hoped for from public agencies.
Cooperative contracts aren’t going anywhere, in fact, they’re projected to continue gaining popularity in the coming years. Suppliers certainly can’t ignore them. They can actually be a great revenue stream if approached in a strategic, efficient way. In this blog, we take a look at some of the reasons your contracts might not be getting enough traction and how CompareCoOps can help.
Why Aren’t More Public Agency Buyers Selecting Your Contracts?
While there can be several reasons you’re not getting enough traction from public agencies on your cooperative contracts, more often than not it comes down to visibility. Public agencies want to find and select contracts with the best value, but they can’t select your contracts if they can’t find them.
That’s not your fault, it’s more of an industry roadblock—it has taken a while for procurement to catch up to modern technology.
Many public agency buyers are still searching several different websites, monitoring Excel spreadsheets, and even using Google to find contracts. This is not efficient enough.
It is nearly impossible for suppliers and their contracts to be available in every single place agencies are looking for them. It’s even harder for them to maintain control of their brands and ensure contract information is up to date with so many disparate marketplaces and lists involved.
Many suppliers focus their marketing on other channels, leaving their cooperative purchasing functions with less exposure.
Tips For Gaining Traction on Cooperative Contracts
Let’s start with some best practices. The market is always changing and your strategy needs to change with it. These general best practices are a great start to building a more efficient strategy to meet public agency buyers and gain traction with them on your contracts.
1. Have a Marketing Plan for your Cooperative Contracts
Most suppliers focus their marketing efforts on more traditional retail channels. Those will always be important, but as cooperative purchasing becomes more prevalent across certain industries, suppliers who put more effort into reaching public agency buyers will rise to the top.
At CompareCoOps, we understand this pain point. That’s why we view our relationships with suppliers sort of like marketing partnerships. Your free profile puts you in front of public agency buyers who are looking for your contracts and are ready to buy. We do the heavy lifting, freeing your team to focus on other areas of importance.
2. Know Where to Find Public Agency Buyers
If you’re not used to marketing in the public procurement space, it can be a bit of a challenge at first. Buyer behavior is a bit different than on the consumer side, there tend to be different rules and regulations, and marketplaces are often structured differently. There isn’t exactly a one-size-fits-all approach, but the key is to go where your buyers are.
CompareCoOps already has hundreds of agencies representing cities, counties, state governments, school districts, colleges, and universities on our platform looking for contracts like yours. Signing up with us is free and will greatly increase your visibility to potential customers.
3. Leverage the Growing Cooperative Procurement Technology Space
As the cooperative purchasing industry grows, so do the technology solutions available to suppliers and agencies. It’s no secret that limited internal resources and legacy technologies have been creating inefficiencies for some time now. Procurement teams are understaffed, suppliers allocate their internal resources to other sectors, and siloed, antiquated technologies make the process of finding and selecting contracts much more cumbersome than it needs to be.
Fortunately, the world of technology has taken notice. CompareCoOps was built around alleviating these inefficiencies and making it easier for agencies and suppliers to do business with each other.
Here’s what that looks like...
How CompareCoOps Helps You Gain Traction on Cooperative Contracts
CompareCoOps alleviates the visibility issue by putting your contracts directly in front of the public agencies who are ready to buy from them.
In addition to providing a platform where buyers, contracts, and suppliers are all easily connected and able to communicate, we help you market your contracts to the businesses looking for them. Our platform is loaded with public agency buyers who need what you provide and are ready to buy from your contracts.
Suppliers who use CompareCoOps don’t have to hire additional salespeople to reach out to public agency buyers. They don’t have to allocate more of their marketing budget to procurement. They simply host their contracts on the platform and we put them in front of the buyers who need them.
You’ll be notified immediately once a buyer submits a quote request. You can respond to them directly within the platform, ask any questions that need to be addressed, and submit your pricing. You’ll be notified the moment the buyer makes a decision.
Are you ready to get started? Sign up for free to add your contract details and win more business from public agencies, or register for a demo.
