For 12 years, I was the person who got the call after the contract was signed.

Now I'm in the room before there is one. The first thing I noticed is uncomfortable.

Most vendors walk in and sell features. Modules, dashboards, uptime, a slide on AI.

The person across the table is asking something else. Not "is this the best software?" but "if this goes wrong, whose name is on the file?"

A Commissioner or department head isn't only choosing a product. They're deciding whether they can defend that choice in 3 years, to an auditor, a new boss, or an angry citizen.

I know this from the delivery side. The projects that went well weren't the ones with the longest feature list. They were the ones where a senior person felt safe enough to back the team when it got hard.

So pre-sales, as I now see it, is less about proving what the software can do. It's about making the buyer's decision easier to stand behind.

I'm still learning this side of the table.

Buyers: what makes a vendor feel like a safe decision to you? And vendors: where do we get this wrong?

eGovernance #GovTech #PublicSectorIT #Leadership #PreSales #PublicProcurement #DigitalTransformation