PR is the Lost (Sales) Opportunity

Posted by Christine on September 13, 2010 under Uncategorized | 5 Comments to Read

Media relations is an area where sales and marketing have different expectations. Sales, not really understanding how PR works, see it as a key activity in ‘opening doors’ for them. It’s much easier to get an appointment when a prospect has recently heard of the company in the news or blogosphere.

The disconnect between sales and marketing happens on two fronts. The first is that Sales wants media coverage that praises the product. For emerging companies with customers reluctant to talk to the media, that is a difficult accomplishment. To counter this, innovative marketing organizations engage in progressive, push-the-envelope strategic PR. Done correctly, this delivers coverage and builds a strong market reputation. However, this produces the second disconnect; Sales has no idea how to leverage strategic PR and is often afraid of the resulting coverage. And that is a problem.

I’m not going to get into a discourse of what strategic PR is. Suffice it to say that it is a media strategy by which a company jumps on the coattails of an emerging, hot industry story and uses it as a platform to communicate its value proposition. The resulting coverage often isn’t about the company or its product but rather quotes the company as a thought leader, expert, etc. Done right, the company is often the only vendor in its market category to be quoted. A string of this kind of coverage is sweet.

Strong salespeople of the hunter breed know how to assemble media coverage and connect the dots for their prospects. They paint a picture of the company’s expertise and tell a story of how the media wouldn’t include company comments if the company wasn’t credible. In my experience that’s about 10% of all sales people. The other 90% either ignore this type of coverage or, worse, ring the bell of alarm.

For that 90% group, not leveraging strategic PR is a lost sales opportunity. If you can’t ‘connect the dots’ for the prospect, at least use the coverage to engage the prospect in a conversation of ‘what do you think about XYZ market development?’

Frequently management and marketing shy away from strategic PR because it’s unconventional. Yet it might be the only avenue available to them. I say ‘go for it’, but do get off your duff and help sales understand how to use this type of coverage.

Bernard said,

I find this frustratingly true! The company I work has a sales force largely based on “Account Managers” not “Hunters”. The few hunters we do have get what we are trying to do.

The rest look at us like what they hell are we doing! I even had one go so far as to write up his own PR and said we should use it.

Once I got done laughing I had to break it to him, that he just does not get it.
Wyatt said,

I couldn’t agree more. Sales just sometimes doesn’t get it. It’s unfortunate but a PR professional’s work is never done. If we want Sales to get how our strategic PR can make a difference in their commission checks, we have to package the information and spoon feed it to them. They’ll get it eventually.
David Locke said,

It seems like you have a training problem, an ongoing training problem. At one place I worked, everyone in the company was sent the BI weekly. It wasn’t data that I needed, but it did put the company in context, so it was valuable.

I imagine that if you sent your sales reps a weekly newsletter that connected the dots for them, that they could turn this problem around. Go further and get it into their sales compensation plan. Get the PR content in their sales training program. Host your own training program on how to use the data.

Don’t expect them to get it on their own. All they care about is closing that next new customer deal. Sadly, that’s not really enough.
Christina Ellwood said,

Marketing can (and should) “connect the dots” for sales between the strategic PR coverage & their customer’s situation & close this gap.
Charlie Born said,

I view this as the fault of marketing – it’s not only our job to create the content but to learn how to distribute it in a meaningful way that your consumer – be it sales or finance, management or investor relations can use. If we don’t complete that loop and just throw it over the fence – we are not doing our job. The problem I’ve observed is that PR professionals do not always have any knowledge of how sales are made – or the objections or issues sales has to deal with in their job. Marketing teams that build tight relationships with sales – and even have some sales background themselves – win the day. What is it someone said – don’t confuse marketing with sales?