Are You a Sales Person?

“PR is just like sales, are you a sales person?” This is the question my placement boss asked me last week. For all intents and purposes, yes I am. I have worked in high-end retail management for years now. I could probably persuade you give me your bag and then make you buy it back for twice what you originally paid for it. What she was getting at was that a PR practitioner has to sell their pitches to clients and their ideas to management. To do so they have to be confident, knowledgeable, efficient and authentic; just like a good sales person.

Though years of customer interaction at work, I have fine-tuned the art of selling. But what I’ve realised, after studying communications, is the reason I sell well is not because I can manipulate customers into buying things they don’t need. It’s because I do the exact opposite. I help them realise what they do need and then present only options to fill that need. And I do that by asking open-ended questions. In other words, I do my research. 

I ask customers questions such as, “are you shopping for yourself? Are you buying a gift? Is the gift for a special occasion? What is their personal style?” By finding out what they need, I also find out what they don't need and from there I can make appropriate suggestions on products. 

Alike to sales, we have to ask the open-ended questions in PR too, although, we answer them ourselves by conducting in-depth research into our client’s business. Why does the client need PR? What is already working for them? What isn’t? Are they sending the correct messages to the correct people? In public relations, and not just writing a PR plan, research should be the starting point for any initiative. Without research we cannot define objectives because we do not know what we need to achieve. Research is the difference between an idea and an effective solution. In retail, it makes me a sale. In PR, it wins me the client.