Pitches and RFP’s…a match made in heaven

There’s inherent synergy between a company sales department and the PR team. I was recently reminded of how valuable it can for PR to stay tapped into what’s happening on the ground – and for PR to in turn contribute to the sales effort.

The obvious connection is with the new customers who buy a company’s solution and agree to be part of various PR activities. The sales team can then of course use articles in their sales materials.

There are other ways though that these two groups can work effectively together. On a recent conference call, I had a chance to speak with a few marketing folks who are in tight communication with their sales force. The purpose of the call was to go over upcoming editorial calendar opportunities for the target publications for the prioritized vertical markets.

As we were reviewing the topics, one of the marketing folks brought up that they had been working with the sales team on RFP’s that directly related to more than a few of the editorial calendar opportunities. Not only did these RFP’s directly address the editorial calendar topics but they were responding to real-world customer scenarios that were specific to the customer’s needs, giving us unique slants to use in our pitches. Wow! How cool!

We now have a monthly call with the sales team to review the upcoming editorial calendar topics, making sure to tap into each other’s pool of knowledge and the information gathered for pitches and for RFP’s.

Author: Megan McKenzie

Megan McKenzie provides strategic leadership to McKenzie Worldwide and the agency’s work with technology companies in enterprise, consumer, wireless, networking, & cybersecurity.