2-part blog series based on a fireside chat with leaders from Orange County (CA), Safeware, and Pavilion
Pavilion’s founder and CEO Mariel Reed recently spoke with Maria Agrusa, County Procurement Officer of Orange County, CA and Rick Bond, Chief Revenue Officer of Safeware to discuss how suppliers can take advantage of trends to generate more revenue from their existing contracts.
Our previous blog post discussed the challenges suppliers have in covering the SLED market with traditional sales and marketing efforts – especially when it comes to finding who’s actively looking to purchase through an existing contract. In this blog post, we share how public agencies use Pavilion to find suppliers with cooperative contracts to purchase from, and how Pavilion has helped suppliers like Safeware sell more off of their existing contracts.
Pavilion is uniquely positioned to help suppliers get in front of public agencies when they’re actively looking to purchase through an existing contract.
- Pavilion is the leading search engine for agencies to find cooperative contracts. Maria says, “Our first stop is Pavilion. It’s about the ability for an end user and the buyer to partner and within seconds, be able to search nationally for any contract that exists for anything of similar nature, even to see what a specific entity is doing. And just having that information at their fingertips. Before, you’d have search CMAS, US Communities, etc – one by one by one. And sometimes you were calling people.”
- Both procurement teams and department end users are now using Pavilion to find suppliers with compliant contracts they can purchase from. Maria says, “We have trained our end users to go and search on Pavilion. We are very comfortable with end users using it across our 22 departments. Our Board also likes to play around in Pavilion to look at what's out there and what others are doing.”
- Pavilion is integrated in existing procurement tools and agency websites. Maria says, “I was directed by my board to initiate a regional procurement alliance that now consists of our 22 departments and our 34 Orange County cities and special districts. We quickly partnered with Pavilion and developed a platform to share our contracts within a week. Pavilion is now on our website, and for the first time ever, it allowed us to upload all of our county contracts and share them across the region. You can only imagine the duplication of efforts we had going on. We're all buying the same goods and the same services. The effectiveness and efficiencies just by collaborating on all of that and consolidating all of those efforts has been mind blowing.”
- Suppliers can be listed on Pavilion for free. Suppliers who want to generate more revenue from Pavilion can sign up to become a Pro Supplier. Mariel says, “It's free to be listed on Pavilion. But for those who are interested in winning even more business from your existing contracts, you can become a Pro Supplier. Pro Suppliers get access to exclusive features that give Pavilion more information about their businesses, products, and services. When buyers search for something that you sell, our search algorithm relies on the data that we have to figure out who's a strong fit. So if we have better data around the products, the services that you offer, it's easier for our algorithm to know that you're a strong match for what our buyers are looking for. And when we show buyers highly relevant, responsive suppliers, that's a better buyer experience for them too.”
It’s about the ability for an end user and the buyer to partner and within seconds, be able to search nationally for any contract that exists for anything of similar nature, even to see what a specific entity is doing. And just having that information at their fingertips." - Maria Agrusa, County Procurement Officer, Orange County, CA
As a Pro Supplier on Pavilion, Safeware has generated recurring business with new customers and deepened its relationships across departments with existing customers.
- Pavilion has helped Safeware generate recurring business with new customers. Rick says, “We've been tracking the customers to see if additional purchases come in when a new customer comes through Pavilion. But not only have we generated leads, but we've actually generated recurring business with new customers, which is so exciting.”
- Within existing customers, Safeware has been able to expand its reach across departments. Rick says, “There are larger cities and counties where we're already engaged with one department or another. But another department doesn't know us. We've actually had some really amazing sales leads from large existing customers, where that user didn't know Safeware – though other people did. Some of these big cities and counties have 20 or 30 different departments.“
- Safeware has seen quantifiable ROI from its Pavilion investment. Rick says, “For us, Pavilion has been very quantifiable, very easy to measure the return on our investment. It's been a great success for us.”
"Not only have we generated leads, but we've actually generated recurring business with new customers, which is so exciting. For us, Pavilion has been very quantifiable, very easy to measure the return on our investment. It's been a great success for us." - Rick Bond, Chief Revenue Officer, Safeware
Click here for the full webinar recording.
For more information on how you can generate more sales as a Pro Supplier on Pavilion, reach out to us here.
