How can small businesses win major contracts? [BT broadband office]

How can small businesses win major contracts?

Posted 7 July 2008 at 8:09AM by Ian Betteridge in Doing business online

For many small businesses, the world of big contracts is completely alien. Yet, at some point, growth-oriented businesses have to take a step up in scale and start working with major companies on bigger deals.

So how do you actually work with larger customers and partners? There are a wide range of things to bear in mind. First, you need to look at your own processes, and see that they satisfy the needs of the customer. For example, when working with public sector bodies, it's very likely you'll need some kind of environmental policy if you want to get the contract.

Second, you need to ensure that your systems - especially technology - can work with those of your potential customer, and cope with their needs. This can include the simple things that you might easily miss out - for example, ensuring that you have the phone line capacity to deal with the business.

There are many more aspects to working with larger customers and partners, which you'll need to consider. BT and Cisco recently hosted a round-table event which brought together experts on small business issues to discuss what large organisations look for when working with smaller companies - and what small business can do to maximise the chances of getting the deal. A video from the event has now been posted on BT Business Insight.

Tags: bt, bt broadbandoffice

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Comments

1. At July 7, 2008 11:02 AM, James Phillips wrote:

This is an interesting and worthwhile video presentation and I think any small business owner out there reading this should watch the video.
Quite often, what I find is that many small businesses don't quite know how to approach the larger prospect and often they waste a lot of time and money in doing it the wrong way.

2. At July 7, 2008 5:32 PM, J G Dawson wrote:

There was a time I remember when to get a contract with a big company involved a whole lotta of butt kissin' and even then you might not get so much as a sniff - then I discovered that if you've got something original to offer at the right price that the world really wants and you can deliver in quantity, on time, then the butt stops here and you can congratulate yourself on a job well done - I know, I've done it...

3. At July 7, 2008 7:41 PM, James Lyon wrote:

Great Video which should be watched and possibly recorded for future reference.

However moving up into larger contracts can cause a great strain on your finances - Talk to your Bank and or a Management Accountant !!!.

With the larger organisation you might have to wait longer for your money, especially with Local Government. Try to arrange stage payments and have it written into the contract or agreement. If there is a high material cost try again to get stage payments from your customer.

One other point to be aware of is not to have all your business with one big customer - If they go down or you lose the contract, you could then be in trouble.

I always work on the basis that one customer should NOT be more that 25% OF THE TOTAL ANNUAL TURNOVER.

4. At July 8, 2008 8:41 AM, Old Wolf wrote:

The thing is that its surprising how little a small company can be thinking about their own abilities.

I did a temporary job for a contractor working on a very large university project, and a small local company was dealing with the IT provision (data networks, etc.).

The main issue was that despite having to send hundreds of megabytes of CAD plans every week, they only had dial-up Internet access. So much for being up-to-date.

(Although they were at least sensible enough to burn the stuff to CD and hand it in as an alternative)

I hate to think what the companies that were turned down had... carrier pigeon maybe?

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