How to Win Work on G-Cloud as an IT Services Supplier

To win work on G-Cloud, an IT supplier needs two things.

First, a catalog entry a buyer can award against: a service definition that says who it is for, with public unit prices and clear terms. Second, a buyer who already knows your company when the need lands on their desk.

The framework gives you the entry. You build the buyer's awareness yourself. For most suppliers, that means reaching named buyers before any shortlist exists.

G-Cloud 15 is an open catalog with over 50,000 services from over 4,000 suppliers, according to the official G-Cloud 15 agreement page. A place on it makes you eligible. It does not make the head of digital at a council or the IT director at a government agency think of you.

Below are five beliefs that keep suppliers polishing the entry while no buyer gets to know them.

Does a place on G-Cloud 15 mean work will come?

That is the first belief, and the framework's own rules argue against it.

Public bodies use G-Cloud 15 to purchase cloud services, from hosting to software and support, per the framework's agreement page. It covers cloud infrastructure, platforms, software and cloud support services. It was let under the Procurement Act 2023 and runs for four years starting 6 August 2026.

A buyer has two ways to award a contract through it:

• Award without competition (AWOC). For a simple need, low in value or in complexity, that an existing catalog entry can meet as it stands.
• Competitive selection. For a requirement that is tailored, complex or high value. It can run in two or more stages, and the invitation to tender goes to the eligible suppliers on the buyer's shortlist.

Now read both routes from the seller's side. Under AWOC, the buyer picks an entry that already fits what they know they want. Under competitive selection, you only compete if you made the shortlist. Either way, the buyer has chosen whom to consider before anyone asks you a question.

Suppliers on the framework are pre-assessed for financial stability and viability. Being eligible means you can be chosen, nothing more.

Will a strong catalog entry win the work by itself?

The second belief is that a polished entry sells itself. A good entry matters. But buyers do not decide from one document.

No buyer signs because of an email. They sign once they have audited you, and I hold every B2B sale to that rule, public sector included.

The audit is the part sellers underestimate. Before a buyer asks a clarification question, joins a call or adds you to a shortlist, they look at your website, your case studies, the LinkedIn profiles of the people they would deal with, and your catalog entry.

So your first message has one job: send a named person off to check you. Everything they find has to hold up.

The proof goes inside the message as well as on the website: past clients, results and case studies, with numbers. A simple shape is a before, an after and a deal size in one sentence, for example: 'We cut [problem] from [before] to [after] for a [type of public body] on a GBP [size] contract.'

Your version should come from a public sector project you delivered, or the closest commercial match you have.

If you have nothing like that yet, start with what to say in a cold email when you have no proof and build case studies as you deliver.

Do cold email and LinkedIn work for an IT consultancy?

The third belief is that outbound suits small tickets, and that serious IT buyers ignore cold messages. One UK campaign says otherwise.

Outreach for a UK firm selling software builds and IT consulting ran from 17 April to 17 May 2023. In that window, the firm signed 6 contracts worth GBP 928,800 in total. The two outreach channels below account for 5 of them; the sixth came from a channel outside this article.

Here is how they split:

Four numbers from that month:

• Deal size carries the month. GBP 928,800 / 6 = GBP 154,800 per contract on average. At that size, a handful of signatures changes a firm's year.
• Interest turned into conversations. About 30% of positive replies became sales calls on both channels, 31 of 103 overall.
• Calls turned into contracts. 5 of 31 calls ended in a signed contract, roughly 1 in 6.
• LinkedIn led on every line. More positive replies, more calls and more contracts than cold email in that month.

This was not a G-Cloud sale and not public sector work. I use it because the seller is the kind of firm that sits on G-Cloud: a UK company selling software development and IT consulting at six-figure contract values.

The case data covers replies, calls and contracts. It says nothing about what each prospect looked at first. What it does show is the piece a listed supplier is usually missing: named buyers, contacted on two channels, turning into conversations and contracts inside a month.

Should you write to procurement, or to someone else?

The fourth belief is that public sector work comes through procurement, so procurement is who you contact. Procurement runs the process. The need usually belongs to someone else: the head of digital, the IT director, the service owner whose system keeps failing, the chief technology officer.

My team builds every list on the real titles that sign off in the niche, never a generic manager title.

The fastest way to find them sits in your own history: go back through delivered projects and write down who made the decision on each one.

Then pick one audience. Councils, NHS trusts and central government departments have different needs and different budgets. I would rather a supplier commit to one offer for one of them than write to all three at once.

Run the outreach in this order:

1. LinkedIn first. With a short list of named buyers, open on LinkedIn and let a warm email follow that touch.
2. A warm email. It mentions the connection, names one problem, carries one proof line and asks for a short call.
3. Follow-ups on both channels. My team plans at least 5-6 touches per person across LinkedIn and email.
4. One line about the framework. Mention once that the service is already on G-Cloud 15, so the buyer knows an existing route to buy it is in place.

Every step aims at the audit: a named buyer who goes and reads your entry and your people's profiles before a shortlist is drawn. For how the two channels fit together, message by message, see LinkedIn and email as one outreach sequence.

Plan with honest numbers. Our campaigns usually see replies from around 1% of people contacted, nearer 0.5% once thousands of emails go out daily, and meetings from somewhere between a tenth and half of those replies. Public sector buyer lists are finite, so go deep (several people per organization, longer sequences) rather than wide. Keep an exclusion list and stop the moment anyone asks you to.

What will a buyer check in your catalog entry?

Many suppliers treat the entry as paperwork they file once. When outreach works, it is the page a buyer opens to audit you.

The supplier guidance published on GOV.UK lists three documents per service: a pricing document, a terms and conditions document and a service definition document. An SFIA rate card (a price list built on the Skills Framework for the Information Age) and a modern slavery statement are optional extras.

Pricing has to show unit rates, any volume discounts and data extraction charges. "Price on Application", price ranges and "prices from" are not allowed. Check the current G-Cloud 15 rules before you write yours.

Two things follow for sellers. A buyer can compare your unit price with everyone else's without speaking to you, so publish a price you can defend. And the service definition is the one document where you control the story: write it for one audience, describe the problem in their words, and put a real result in it.

Does a big marketplace mean some money reaches everyone?

The last belief: a channel this size must send a little work to everyone listed on it.

The money is real, and it is measured. Suppliers send CCS a monthly return of what they have invoiced, and the figures after 31 December 2018 are published on the CCS website.

Invoiced is the useful word. Reported sales follow awards buyers actually made, and they are spread across a big field. And the field keeps growing: the official G-Cloud 14 agreement page listed over 46,000 services from over 4,000 suppliers, and G-Cloud 15 lists over 50,000. Read the latest published figures before you forecast anything, and treat your own monthly return as the scoreboard.

If your figure has sat at zero for months, more polish on the entry will not move it on its own. Someone has to put your name in front of the buyer first.

When is the listing enough, and when do you need outbound?

The listing can carry you alone only if every one of these holds:

1. Your service is standard enough to be awarded without competition.
2. Buyers in your niche already know your company by name.
3. Price is the main reason a buyer picks one entry over another.

You need outbound when any one of these is true:

1. Your typical contract is complex, high value or tailored, so it goes to competitive selection and you have to be shortlisted.
2. The buyers you want have never heard of you.
3. You need new contracts at a planned rate this year, and waiting for someone to stumble on your entry will not give you that.

A worked example. An IT consultancy lists a cloud migration support service. Its projects are six-figure and each one is scoped to the client, so they go to competitive selection. It has two public sector references and no name recognition with the councils in its region. Every condition on the second list applies, so the listing is necessary and nowhere near sufficient.

For that firm, the order of work looks like this:

• Rewrite the service definition for councils only, with one delivered result in it
• Finish the LinkedIn profiles of everyone a council IT director might check
• Build a list of named digital and IT leads at the target councils
• Run the LinkedIn and email sequence above for each person
• Read the monthly sales return as the measure of what the listing produces

If the sequence runs and nobody answers, look at the targeting before you touch the copy, because the list, not the email, is often the problem.

Try one exercise this week. Write down the five people who would sign your next public sector contract, by name and title, and ask whether any of them has heard of your company. If the answer is no for all five, start the LinkedIn and email sequence with those five.

If you would rather not run it in-house, see how we work with IT services and consulting firms or read about our cold email agency service.

If your G-Cloud listing is live but the five people who would sign your next contract have never heard of you, book a call and I will help plan the first contacts.