How to Sell to the NHS, From Trust Champion to Call-Off

To sell to the NHS, you sell to a specific NHS body. That can be a trust, a group of trusts buying together, NHS Supply Chain, or the owner of a framework or tender. No single central buyer exists. Trusts and other providers decide for themselves and may buy straight from a manufacturer or distributor, according to the GOV.UK guidance on partnering with the NHS.

So the working answer has three parts:

1. Pick the route to market that fits your product.
2. Find the people inside each target trust who own the problem you solve.
3. Reach them before a formal buy starts, so procurement meets a supplier the department already knows.

The government's guide on how SMEs can work with the NHS says buying happens at national, regional and local level. It also warns that nobody keeps one central list of which body buys which product.

Why is the NHS a market and not one account?

Treat "the NHS" as a market, never as one account. One trust has its own budget, its own procurement team, its own clinical leads and its own timing. The trust next door can be at a completely different stage on the same problem.

A sales plan that says "target the NHS" gives a team nothing to do on Monday morning. A plan that says "heads of procurement and clinical directors in these 12 acute trusts" does.

This guide is for suppliers of goods, medical technology, software and non-clinical services selling into NHS bodies in England.

Narrow it further before you start. A supplier with one product for one specialty will get further than one pitching six products to every department. The reasoning is in why narrowing to one offer and audience pays.

What are the five NHS procurement routes for suppliers?

The GOV.UK guidance lists 5 main routes to market in England: direct selling, NHS Supply Chain, shared purchasing hubs, framework collaborations and contracts, and government tenders and contracts. Here is what each one means in sales terms.

The route depends on what you sell and where it is bought. Company size matters much less. A two-person software firm selling to one specialty can sell direct. A large manufacturer of a common consumable will probably have to go through a national tender, however big its sales team is.

Two rules decide the first move.

If you already have NHS customers, start from them. I pick a market by starting from who already paid, before I write a single email, as I explain in choosing a market from your closed deals. List the trusts that already pay you, then find trusts that look like them in size, services and the problem being fixed. One working reference site makes the next conversation easier.

If you are new to the NHS, start narrow. Pick one region and one specialty, so every reply teaches you something about the next trust.

Who makes purchasing decisions in an NHS trust?

Procurement signs. Procurement rarely starts the purchase. In most trusts the buying chain runs roughly like this:

1. The problem owner. A clinician or service manager lives with the problem. Typical titles: clinical director, consultant in the specialty, head of nursing, matron, divisional general manager, head of operations.
2. The case for change. The problem owner, often with a service manager, writes up why the current way costs time, money or patient outcomes.
3. Digital and information leadership, when software or data is involved: director of digital, chief clinical information officer, chief nursing information officer, head of IT.
4. Procurement. The head of procurement or the category manager for your area decides the route and runs the process.
5. Finance. The director of finance or a deputy, sometimes a finance business partner for the division, confirms the money exists and the business case holds.

The first contact changes with the product:

When I build a target list, I start from past deals and the person who really signed each one. Senior-sounding titles in a lead tool are often the wrong people. For the NHS, ask your existing NHS customers who started the purchase and who approved it.

Then search for the titles NHS staff in that niche actually carry, and skip vague "manager" titles. A list full of "project manager, NHS" contacts burns your sending capacity on people who cannot move a business case. Before anything goes out, run the lead list checks to do before you send a single email.

How does NHS Supply Chain tendering work?

NHS Supply Chain's contract and tender process page sets out the sequence:

1. A product gets into the catalogue only through a compliant tender. No supplier can ask to be added.
2. Tender opportunities are advertised on Find a Tender. Watch for your category there.
3. Bids go through the Jaggaer eProcurement portal. Register before the tender you care about opens, not during it.
4. Certification has to be in place. For relevant frameworks, NHS Supply Chain accepts only UKAS or equivalent accredited certification, to ISO 9001:2015 or ISO 13485:2016. It must cover every segment of the tenderer's and the product's supply chain.
5. A promise does not count. If certification is still in progress, a letter is required, and the page is clear that a commitment to get certified will not do.

The step after the catalogue is the one founders miss. Getting listed means trusts are now able to order your product. It does not mean any of them will. A ward that has used the same product for years will keep ordering it unless somebody clinical decides to switch.

So a listing is the start of the sales work. Someone still has to persuade clinical users in each trust to choose your line.

What is the difference between a framework award and a real order?

A framework is a pre-agreed set of terms with approved suppliers. NHS bodies covered by it can then buy from that list without running a full competition each time. That purchase is the call-off, and it is the first moment money moves.

A framework award gives you access, not revenue. A supplier can win a place, announce it, and then hear nothing for a long stretch, because no trust has a reason to call off from it.

Qualify a framework the way you would qualify any sales opportunity:

• Which trusts in your territory actually buy through it, and which buy direct?
• Is there a named person in several of those trusts who wants what you sell?
• How many suppliers share the lot, and does anything make you the obvious pick?
• What do you need to show at call-off stage: a demo, a pilot, a reference site?

If you cannot answer the second question, the framework is a cost line for now.

A worked example. This is an illustration, not a client. A UK company makes software that cuts the time nurses spend on ward handovers.

• Months 1 to 3. The company contacts chief nursing information officers, heads of nursing and matrons in acute trusts across one region. Two of them reply and ask to see it. A matron at one trust agrees to a small trial on two wards.
• Months 4 to 9. The trial produces before and after numbers for handover time. The chief nursing information officer brings in the director of digital, who asks about integration and data security.
• Month 8. A relevant framework opens. The company bids with its trial results and wins a place alongside several other suppliers.
• Months 10 to 14. The trial trust calls off from the framework for a full rollout. The matron's results then help a second trust in the same region justify its own call-off.

The framework appears in month 8, and the first order lands in month 10 or later. In this illustration, the orders come from the trusts where somebody already knows the product.

Measure your outreach the same way. Contacts reached and calls held matter less than conversations with people who can trigger a call-off. That distinction belongs in any agreement with an outsourced partner, as covered in how to write down what a qualified, held meeting means.

How do trusts decide when the buy is medtech or software?

For medtech, many NHS buyers now score suppliers on value, not only price. The DHSC medical technology strategy puts NHS medtech spending at an estimated £10 billion a year and says the lowest price does not always mean the best value once you look at the whole patient pathway.

The value based procurement national standard guidance turns that into a scoring method. In plain English:

• Buyers get fixed questions and a common scoring method, used when writing the specification and when evaluating tenders.
• It applies at the quality assessment stage. It does not replace the rest of the procurement process.
• The scoring covers 5 domains. They are purpose, efficiency, the supply chain, effects on patients and staff, and social value. Whole life cost is assessed alongside them.
• Social value is always selected.
• Combined, the 5 domains must carry at least 60% of the weighting, and at least 10% must go to social value.
• Recommended response length is 750 to 1,250 words per question, depending on its complexity.

For a supplier, that changes what to prepare. A price list and a brochure will not score. Prepare these instead:

• Whole life cost. Purchase price plus training, maintenance, consumables, disposal and staff time over the product's life.
• Efficiency evidence. Minutes saved, bed days avoided, fewer repeat procedures, with the source of each number.
• Patient and staff evidence. Trial results, user feedback, safety data.
• Supply chain answers. Where the product is made, how you handle shortages, how long delivery takes.
• Social value. A specific local commitment you can deliver and measure, never a paragraph about your values.

Software buyers inside trusts ask many of the same questions about time saved and safety, even where the medtech guidance does not formally apply. The best evidence for any of it comes from a trust that already uses you, which is one more reason the champion work comes first.

What changed on 24 February 2025 for NHS suppliers?

The main provisions of the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025. A 2024 commencement regulation on legislation.gov.uk moved the start date of the substantive provisions from 28 October 2024 to that day. The SME guide adds that contracts awarded before February 2025 stay under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, while new contracts follow the Act.

The government's short guide to the Act for suppliers lists the changes that matter in practice:

• Simpler bidding, plus a new "competitive flexible" procedure that lets buyers design a process around the purchase.
• More open frameworks, so a supplier who missed the first award is not shut out for long periods.
• Find a Tender as the central platform. Notices are free to search and you can set alerts. Suppliers registered under the old system need to re-register, and using the same email address pulls saved searches across.
• Stronger prompt payment rules. Payment within 30 days now applies to more kinds of public contract than before.

The sales angle: the Act itself includes a section on preliminary market engagement. Buyers can talk to the market before they publish a tender. A supplier the clinical team already knows is far more likely to be in that early conversation than one who first hears about the need from a notice.

None of this is legal advice. Before you bid, read the tender documents and take advice on how the rules apply to you.

What does the abolition of NHS England mean for suppliers and local systems?

On 13 March 2025, the government announced that NHS England would move back inside DHSC, the health department. The stated aims are to end the duplication of 2 organizations doing the same job and to cut bureaucracy.

The announcement points two ways at once. It says the NHS will use its centralized model to procure new technology more quickly. It also says local leaders and systems will get more power and autonomy.

For a supplier, that suggests:

• Some national buying may get faster, especially for technology rolled out nationally.
• Local buying does not disappear. Trusts and local systems are meant to have more say, not less.
• People will move. Reorganizations change job titles, teams and budgets, so check every contact list before each campaign.

Do not rebuild your whole plan around a central buyer that might arrive. Keep working the trusts and regional systems in your territory, and watch what gets bought nationally.

How should a supplier build outreach before procurement starts?

The NHS rules above come from official guidance. The outreach rules below are the ones I apply to any small, specific buyer group.

Split the territory before anyone sends a message. For the NHS, give each rep named trusts or whole regions. Two reps messaging the same chief nursing information officer in the same week looks careless, and in a buyer group this small you cannot afford it. On my campaigns I split territories between accounts and reps before launch, so my team never touches the same leads.

Start with conversations. With an NHS champion, the first goal is a reply about their problem. I measure early outreach by conversations started, because the calls grow out of those and the clients grow out of the calls. Give it time: people do not decide fast in every sector, and some pipelines are only getting started when a founder wants to judge them.

Use several channels and several touches. I plan several touches across LinkedIn and email, never one or two messages. Many clinical leads spend much of the day away from a desk, so one channel alone can miss them. The mechanics are in how to build a follow-up sequence across LinkedIn and email.

Expect to be checked before anyone replies. Before an NHS lead answers, they look you up: your LinkedIn headline and About section, your website, any video, and whether your case studies contain real numbers. In my campaigns, I see the reply rate follow the sender more than the copy. No one signs because of an email. They sign once they have audited you.

Send the right thing to the right person before a tender exists.

• Clinical and service leads: one specific problem in their specialty, one result from a comparable trust, and a short question. Never a product brochure.
• Digital and information leads: how the product connects to existing systems, and what it needs from their team.
• Procurement and category managers: which route you can be bought through, the certifications you hold, and the framework places you have.
• Finance: whole life cost and where the saving lands, in pounds and staff hours.

Then check the basics before the first send:

• Territories split by trust or region, written down
• Titles taken from your real NHS deals, generic titles removed
• Every profile and the website telling the same story
• One proof point per buyer type, with a number in it
• A sequence with several touches across LinkedIn and email
• An exclusion list for anyone who asks not to be contacted

Start with five named trusts this month, map the problem owner in each, and send nothing until the profiles and proof are ready.

If you are working out how to reach NHS trusts before a framework opens, book a call and ask me anything about it.