Selling to a government: improving the odds

Companies that do business with the public sector must employ project acquisition strategies that are tailored to the sector. In this thesis, I explore one such situation. BearingPoint Caribbean aims to sell to governments in the Caribbean, tries to build consensus among different departments of a government to ensure project implementation. Using an adapted version of the Caillaud & Tirole (2007) model, I show that they are best off when they face two departments, of which the most favorable one carries a larger share of the potential project losses. In this situation, they can generate a persuasion cascade started by the most favorable member of the committee and thusly increasing the probability of project implementation. A strategic implication of this finding is that they should focus on approaching pairs of departments that fit this profile with their sales offer.