All aboard the Google bus

Google Apps partner Cloud Technology Solutions claims nationwide tour has helped fill its sales pipeline for the year

Google partner Cloud Technology Solutions (CTS) has hailed the "phenomenal" success of its Google bus tour (pictured), and claims the marketing ploy has helped fill its sales pipeline for the next 12 months.

CTS has now been running its Google bus, which features a range of Google technology including Chromebooks, for four months, visiting 27 locations and 65 organisations across the country.

James Doggart, CTS managing director, said the bus was supposed to run for four months but owing to its success it will carry on until September.

"Rather than getting people [end users] to come to the office, we thought we'd take the message out to them," he said.

Doggart did not think many people use buses to go to customers and said the reaction has been very positive.

"The people who tend to [use buses] are normally consumer-based organisations that go to shopping centres and park it there," he said. "We have adapted it to the enterprise and there have not been a lot of people doing it there; the last time I saw it done was in the 90s.

"It has probably filled our [sales] pipe [line] for the next 12 months easily," he said. "The return on investment has been phenomenal in terms of creating pipeline. It's caused a bit of a buzz certainly in the public sector and with some corporate customers as well."

While it is quite an old-school sales tactic, Doggart said using the bus creates a good balance between other techniques.

CTS, which focuses on Google Apps, collaboration and Chrome, hit sales of £5.6m for the year ending March 2015, up from £2.5m in 2014. And Doggart was confident CTS could reach sales of about £9m by March 2016.

Last year Google announced a number of initiatives to help its partners, including a new lending scheme launch. And Doggart was ebullient about the efforts Google has been making to use its partners to make inroads in the enterprise.

"I think some of the commitments from Google around the mid-market campaign where they are buying into enterprise agreements but also giving partners funding for services has been a signal of intent from Google," he said. "So the noises I hear from Google [indicate that] they seem to be more serious about the enterprise, so from our perspective that is really exciting."