Government / Public Sector · Warm Call
Warm Call Script for Government / Public Sector: Spending 90 Seconds of Borrowed Credibility at a Council
Someone at another council put your name in front of a Director of Corporate Services. Maybe their Records & Information Manager pulled down your FOI backlog guide at an LGPro session and said "you should call Rob at Marrangara, he's got the same problem with councillor requests." Maybe a shared consultant fired off a three-line intro that got skimmed on a phone between an Ordinary Meeting and a briefing. Either way, they picked up. That's the whole gift — and in local government the gift comes with strings the private sector doesn't have. Your prospect may be nine weeks out from caretaker. They may have an EOI live in market that makes this call a probity question. Their budget bid window may have closed in March and not reopen until next February.
That means a warm call into a council has one extra beat that no generic warm call script includes: the probity check. Ask it in the first thirty seconds, before you say anything that sounds like selling. Asking "do you have anything in market right now that touches this?" costs you fifteen seconds and buys you more credibility than any case study you own — because it tells the buyer you know what a probity advisor is and that you have no interest in getting them named in a tender complaint. Reps who don't ask it get politely ended, and the referrer hears about it.
The rest is standard warm call discipline applied to a world that runs on statutory clocks and Council resolutions. You have about ninety seconds of suspended disbelief. Spend it proving you researched them — not the referrer's council — and get out with a diary slot that includes the Records & Information Manager or the CIO, not just a promise to "send something through." A pleasant call with a Director of Corporate Services that ends in "send me some info" is a call you will re-run in eleven months.
The warm call script
Say it in your own words. The structure is the part that matters.
- 1
Pre-call: build the provenance line and check the calendar
Write one sentence you can say out loud: "[Referrer] mentioned you because [small, checkable reason]." Not "Jenny thought you'd find this interesting." Something like: "Jenny Ballard pulled down our FOI turnaround guide in March and said you'd taken Corporate Services at Marrangara after the amalgamation, and that requests were the thing keeping you up." Before you dial, check four things — all public: 1. Is there a Council election in the next six months? When does caretaker start? 2. What's on their tenders page right now? Any RFT, RFQ or EOI touching customer requests, CRM, records or asset management? 3. When did they adopt their annual plan and budget, and does their agenda mention a budget workshop? 4. Their last annual report — FOI/RTI numbers, Ombudsman matters, community satisfaction score for 'ease of contacting council'. Then pre-decide exactly what you're allowed to say the referrer said. If Jenny said "you should call Rob," you say "Jenny suggested I call you." Never "Jenny said you'd be really interested." Records managers in the same state all know each other and they compare notes at conferences.
- 2
The open (target 25 seconds)
"Rob — Sam Whitfield, from Vantage. Jenny Ballard at Kiandra Shire suggested I call. She picked up something we wrote on FOI turnaround and said you'd inherited Corporate Services at Marrangara after the merger, and that service requests were the messy part. She may have been overselling my usefulness. Have you got four minutes for me to work out whether that's actually true, or shall I come back?" Four beats, no deviation: your name, the referrer immediately, the specific reason they thought of you, a permission question with a time box. If they say "yes, Jenny mentioned you'd ring" — that's the warmth budget being handed over. Acknowledge in five words: "Good, she said she would. Then I'll be quick." Do not ask how they know Jenny.
- 3
The probity check (do this before anything else)
"One thing before I go further, because it matters more in your world than mine. Do you have anything in market at the moment — an RFT, RFQ or EOI — that touches customer requests, CRM or records? If you do, tell me now and I'll stop, put the call in writing to your ICT Procurement & Contracts Manager, and come back after award. I'd rather lose four minutes than put you in front of a probity advisor." Three possible answers, three moves: - Nothing in market: "Good. Then I'll be quick." Move to the bridge. - Something in market, different scope: "Different thing, then. I'll still note this call in writing to your procurement manager so it's on the record. Fair?" - Something in market, same scope: stop. "Then I shouldn't be on this call. I'll email your procurement contact, note the call, and come back after award. When's the anticipated award date?" You lose nothing and you have just become the vendor who behaved properly, which they will remember at spec-writing time.
- 4
If they don't remember the referrer
"No reason you would — it was two lines on a Friday. Short version: we work with post-amalgamation councils on the request-to-resolution side. Logging, routing to the depot, and being able to answer a mayoral referral without ringing a works supervisor. Jenny's team was using it for the FOI clock. Worth four minutes or not really?" Fifteen seconds, their language, no product name, no platform tour. Then a permission question again.
- 5
The relevance bridge — where the call lives or dies
Structure: what the referrer's world looked like → the specific difference at your prospect's council → a question that hands them control. "What Jenny was dealing with at Kiandra was the FOI clock — one journalist and a residents' group eating her 1.5 FTE for a quarter, and two determinations blown past the twenty business days. That's her shop, not yours. Kiandra never amalgamated and you've got three former shires' systems to reconcile, so honestly I don't know if the same thing lands here. When a resident reports illegal dumping today — counter, phone, web form — where does that actually end up?" Naming a reason you might be irrelevant is the fastest credibility move available on a warm call. Never say "Jenny was drowning in this so I imagine you are too." Different council, different legislation, different ward structure, and they know it.
- 6
Discovery — three questions, four at the outside
1. Mechanical current state: "Who actually touches that request between the call centre and the works crew? And where does the status live — a system, or someone's inbox?" 2. Cost or friction, in their numbers: "Two things I'd want to know if I were you. How many open service requests are overdue against service level right now, by ward — because that's what a councillor asks for. And what percentage of your FOI or RTI requests got determined inside the statutory period last year, since that one's public." If they can't answer either, that's the finding. Say so gently: "So the honest answer is nobody can produce that number on a Tuesday afternoon." 3. Priority test: "Is that a this-quarter problem, or a live-with-it-for-another-year problem?" This question saves more wasted follow-ups than any other. Optional fourth: "Besides you, who'd care about this — your Records & Information Manager, or is it more a customer experience conversation?" Write their phrasing down verbatim. If they say "it's not the pothole, it's that I can't tell the Mayor what's happening with the pothole," that sentence goes in your follow-up email and your second-meeting agenda.
- 7
The two timing questions you cannot skip
Ask both before you close. They determine whether there is a deal at all. "Two logistics questions and then I'll let you go. First — where are you in the budget cycle? If this became a bid, when does it have to be with the Executive: February, March? Second — what's your procurement threshold, and is there a panel or whole-of-government arrangement we could be listed under, or is anything meaningful going to open tender?" If they're inside caretaker or the bid window has closed, do not pretend otherwise. Reframe: "Then the work between now and February isn't a proposal, it's the numbers for your bid and a spec that survives a hostile question from a councillor."
- 8
Reading the cool-off
Warmth withdraws politely. Watch for: answers getting shorter and more agreeable; logistics narration ("can you send something over?"); price asked before a problem is established; the referrer's name used as an exit ramp ("well, if Jenny rates you..."). Name it, don't push through it: "I'm getting the sense this isn't the live thing for you right now — which is fine, Jenny was guessing. Is it not the problem, or not the moment?" A clean "not the problem" is a good outcome. It protects the referral relationship and stops you burning two quarters on a ghost. A clean "not the moment, come back after the election" is a diarised date.
- 9
The close — a meeting with names on it
Close on their words, not yours. "Then here's what I'd suggest. You said the problem isn't the pothole, it's that you can't tell the Mayor what's happening with it before the next Ordinary Meeting. Give me thirty minutes and I'll show you how Kiandra and one post-amalgamation council in your state produce that view — and I'd want your Records & Information Manager on it, because she'll be the one who tells you what went wrong, and your CIO if he owns the rating systems. Thursday morning, or Monday after your briefing?" Must contain: a date, a length, a reason built from their sentence, and who else attends. If they genuinely can't commit: "I'll send two paragraphs and one screenshot of the overdue-by-ward view. Tell me on Thursday whether it's worth thirty minutes." Diarise it on your side, not theirs.
- 10
Close the loop with the referrer — same day
"Jenny — spoke to Rob, thanks for that. His issue is a bit different to yours; less the FOI clock, more that mayoral referrals disappear between the contact centre and the depot. He's got an EOI in market on asset management so I've noted the call to their procurement manager. Meeting him and his records manager Thursday. Appreciate the intro." Three jobs: thanks them, tells you whether you can use their name again, and it's the only reliable way a referral source produces a second referral. In local government the referral network is small, state-based and it talks — a source who never hears back stops referring, and tells others you didn't follow up.
How the call actually sounds
Prospect on the left, the rep on the right.
Rep
Rob — Sam Whitfield, from Vantage. Jenny Ballard at Kiandra Shire suggested I call. She picked up something we wrote on FOI turnaround and said you'd taken Corporate Services here after the merger, and that requests were the messy part. She may have been overselling my usefulness. Four minutes to check whether that's true, or shall I come back?
Buyer
Jenny did email me, I think. I skimmed it. Before you go any further though — we've got an EOI in market at the moment, so I'm honestly not sure I should be having this conversation with a vendor at all.
Rep
Then let's settle that first. What's the scope of the EOI? If it touches customer requests or records, I'll stop, put this call in writing to your ICT Procurement & Contracts Manager, and come back after award.
Buyer
It's asset management. Different beast. But Kerry in procurement would still want to know I'd taken the call, and our probity advisor is fairly interventionist at the moment.
Rep
Fine. I'll email Kerry today with the date, the duration and what we discussed, and copy you. Then I'll be quick. What Jenny was dealing with at Kiandra was the FOI clock — one residents' group and a journalist consuming her records team for a quarter. That's her shop, not yours. Kiandra never amalgamated. When someone reports illegal dumping here today, where does it actually end up?
Buyer
Depends which of the three former shires they ring. North side it goes into the old request module. South and east, it's a spreadsheet in the depot — and I mean that literally, it's on a shared drive and the works coordinator updates it when he's back from site. We've got two rating systems and the addresses don't match, so the same ratepayer exists about four times.
Rep
That's the normal starting point, not the exception, for what it's worth. Two numbers I'd want if I were sitting in your chair. How many open service requests are overdue against service level right now, broken down by ward? And what percentage of your FOI requests were determined inside the twenty business days last year?
Buyer
The FOI one I can tell you, because it's in the annual report and it wasn't good. The overdue-by-ward number, nobody can produce. That's actually the problem. A councillor asks me at a briefing how many outstanding tree requests are in her ward and I have to say I'll come back to her, and then someone spends two days building it in Excel.
Rep
So it's less the pothole and more that you can't answer the question in the room. Is that a this-quarter problem, or a live-with-it-another-year problem?
Buyer
It's an every-week problem, but that's not the same as being able to do anything about it. We're six weeks out from caretaker. Election after that. Realistically nothing is being decided by this Council, and anything new is a budget bid — which was due to the Executive in March. So you're talking about July after next.
Rep
Agreed on caretaker, and I'm not going to push a decision into it. But caretaker's when your team actually has capacity for the unglamorous work — mapping how a request moves from the call centre to the depot, quantifying the hours your records officer spends on FOI, drafting the functional spec. Do that now and you're ready the week the new Council's sworn in, instead of starting from a blank page in November.
Buyer
Maybe. But I'll tell you what will actually decide it, and it isn't a spec. I'm not signing off on anything hosted offshore, and before I take this to the Executive I want to speak to a council my size, in this state, that's post-amalgamation and live. If you can't give me that, this is a next-budget conversation and I'd rather be honest about it.
Rep
All data onshore, no offshore support access, and I'll send the hosting attestation before we talk again rather than after. On references — three: one post-amalgamation authority with roughly your headcount, one in this state so the legislation matches, and one that went through an open RFT so they can tell you what the process was really like. And talk to their records manager, not just their CIO. The records manager will tell you what went wrong.
Buyer
The records manager is the one I'd believe, yes. Send it through and I'll look at it.
Rep
I'll do better than send it through. Thirty minutes, and I'll show you the overdue-by-ward view your councillor asked for — from a council running two rating systems that don't reconcile, so you can judge whether it's real. I'd want your Records & Information Manager on it, and your CIO if he owns the property data. Thursday morning, or the Monday after your briefing?
Buyer
Thursday, 9:30. Bring the hosting document and the reference list, and copy Kerry in procurement on the invite so nobody can say we went around her.
Objections you will hear
What they say, and what you say back.
| Objection | How to answer it |
|---|---|
| “We can't just buy this. Anything over our procurement threshold has to go to open tender.” | Understood, and I'd be worried if you told me otherwise. Two questions: what's the threshold, and is there an existing panel or whole-of-government arrangement we could be listed under? If neither, the useful work right now isn't a proposal — it's helping you build a defensible specification and business case so that when it does go to market you're comparing apples to apples. I'll give you the functional requirements, the records-compliance clauses and the evaluation criteria we'd expect to be scored against. If a competitor writes a better spec than we do, we deserve to lose it. Can we also scope a below-threshold pilot in one service area so you're testing rather than guessing before the RFT is written? |
| “Data sovereignty is non-negotiable. It has to be onshore with government-grade security.” | All data resides in onshore regions, no offshore replication, no offshore support access — I'll send the hosting attestation and our assessment report before we go further. Who's your assessor: does this clear an internal security review, or does your ICT strategy require a formal certification level? I'd rather bring that person in at week one than have them kill it at evaluation. And separately from hosting — records disposal, retention and sentencing schedules, and export on exit are where councils actually get burned. I'll show you exactly how records are captured, sentenced and handed back if you ever terminate. |
| “There's no money this financial year. It'd have to be a budget bid.” | That's fine, and it's the conversation I want to have. When do bids need to be with the Executive — February? Then we've got eight weeks to build the numbers with you, not for you. What I need from you is the current cost: FTE hours on FOI processing, overdue request volumes, cost of the Ombudsman matters last year, and the community satisfaction score for responsiveness if it's dropped. If we can't build a bid that survives a hostile question from a councillor who just deferred the pool upgrade, it shouldn't get funded. What format does your Executive expect, and whose bid are we competing against internally? |
| “We're heading into caretaker. Nothing's getting decided.” | Agreed — no decision should be made in caretaker and I won't push one. But caretaker is when your team has the most capacity for the unglamorous work: mapping the current request workflow, quantifying the FOI hours, drafting the spec. Do it now and you move the week the new Council is sworn in instead of starting from a blank page. Two things I'd want to know: who's likely to be the sponsor on the other side of the election, and does the executive structure survive it? |
| “We've got two rating systems and an asset platform from before the amalgamation. Nothing here integrates with anything.” | That's the normal starting point, not the exception. We don't require you to consolidate first — we sit above and pull identity and property data via API or scheduled file, and we handle duplicate address records rather than assuming they've been cleansed. But I'm not going to promise integration I haven't scoped. Can you get me your CIO or the systems owner for forty-five minutes so I can look at what's actually there? If one of those systems can't be integrated safely, I'd rather tell you now and phase it than discover it in implementation and blow the go-live. |
| “My staff are already stretched. They don't have capacity for an implementation, and the union will have a view on workload.” | Then the plan has to be honest about who does what and when. Realistically: about a day a week from a records officer and a customer service team leader for eight weeks. That's it — and if you can't commit that, we should delay rather than fail. On workload: bring the union in early and be straight that this changes how requests are logged, not headcount. The councils that hid that had a rough time of it. What's your consultation obligation for a system change like this? |
| “Which councils our size are already live? I want to speak to them before I take this anywhere.” | Fair, and I'd ask the same. Three references: one post-amalgamation authority with a similar staff headcount, one in your state so the FOI legislation matches, and one that went to open tender so they can tell you what the process was actually like. Talk to their Records & Information Manager, not just their CIO — the records manager will tell you what went wrong. Do you want me to arrange a site visit? Most of our best decisions came from an officer spending a morning watching another council's contact centre. |
Questions reps ask about this call
- How is a warm call script for Government / Public Sector different from one for a private-sector account?
Two structural differences. First, the probity beat: within the first thirty seconds you ask whether they have an RFT, RFQ or EOI in market that touches your scope, and you offer to stop if they do. No commercial warm call needs that, and skipping it can get your buyer into genuine trouble. Second, the timing questions carry more weight than the pain. A Director of Corporate Services can have a screaming problem, full internal support and absolutely no path to money until 1 July, because the bid went to the Executive in March. In the private sector you find pain then find budget. In local government you find pain, then find where they sit in the budget cycle and the caretaker calendar, then decide what kind of meeting is even worth booking.
- They've got a tender in market. Do I have to hang up?
If the scope overlaps with what you sell, yes — and say why. "Then I shouldn't be on this call. I'll note it in writing to your procurement contact and come back after award." You lose four minutes and you become the vendor who behaved properly, which matters when the next specification is being drafted. If the scope is unrelated (their EOI is asset management, you sell request management) you can keep going, but still email the ICT Procurement & Contracts Manager with the date and substance of the call and copy your buyer. It costs one email and removes the only reason the call could be used against them later.
- Which metrics should I actually put in the discovery questions?
Pick two the buyer is publicly measured on, so they can't be waved away as vendor framing. The strongest pair for a first warm call: percentage of FOI/RTI requests determined within the statutory period, because it appears in the annual report and an Ombudsman or Information Commissioner review follows a deemed refusal; and open service requests overdue against service level broken down by ward, because that's the number a councillor asks for in a briefing. If you're speaking to a Manager, Customer Experience rather than Corporate Services, swap in call abandonment rate and average speed of answer, or the community satisfaction score for 'ease of contacting council'. The tell you want is when they can't produce the number at all — that's the finding, and you should say so out loud.
- Should I name the referring council on the call?
Yes, and name the person's role too — "Jenny Ballard, their Records & Information Manager" — because in local government the role tells your buyer how much to trust the recommendation. What you must not do is inflate what the referrer said. "Jenny suggested I call you" is safe. "Jenny said you'd be really interested" is not, because these people sit on the same state association committees and they will check. If the referrer's council is significantly different from your prospect's — never amalgamated, different state, twice the headcount — say that difference out loud before they do. It's the fastest credibility move available on the call.
- What's a good outcome if they say the budget window has closed?
A booked working session, not a nurture email. If bids are due to the Executive in February, you have a defined window to build the business case with them: current FTE hours on FOI processing, overdue request volumes, Ombudsman matters, cost per service request. Close on that: "Thirty minutes with you and your Records & Information Manager to put numbers against the FOI hours, so the bid writes itself in January." A closed budget window is not a lost deal — it's a deal with a known date. The genuinely lost deal is the one where you demo in October to someone with no money and no path to money and call it pipeline.
- Who should I ask to be at the second meeting?
Ask for the person who will find the problem with you, not the person who will agree with you. That's usually the Records & Information Manager or FOI/RTI Coordinator, because they know what the retention schedule requires and what the shared drive actually looks like. Add the CIO if property or rating data has to be integrated, and copy the ICT Procurement & Contracts Manager on the invite even if they don't attend — it removes the 'you went around procurement' problem before it starts. Warm calls have an unusually high hit rate on "who else would care about this?" because you arrive as a known quantity. Use it.