Ways to Screw Up A Pitch: PR, and How not to Market your Service effectively
Posted by KevinE at 11/9/2007 2:41 AM and is filed under uncategorized 
I was recently involved in hiring a public relations (PR) firm. The company’s old firm, while initially great (see note below) was, due to some personnel changes and growth of the company, not keeping up… so we asked for pitches from other firms.
Some “Dos” and “Don’ts” I observed, which I feel are relevant to any service firm pitching their product (people!)…
DO: Show what you can do, don’t just tell me. The original firm won the business in part by arranging an editorial opportunity before being hired. Cost to them? Maybe 1-2 extra hours of work.
DO: Be innovative and enthusiastic. When challenged by a situation (“we just launched, so have no live customer press references”), the original firm was the only firm that didn’t wince, shake their heads, and say “gosh, that’ll be hard” (yes, we know, that’s why we’re paying $0000’s to you), but instead proposed a few ideas to overcome that challenge.
DO: Your homework. The current winning firm knew our exec backgrounds (eg, had read our site). They went to their media sources, asked what they thought of the company, and printed those quotes in their presentation. They explained what they thought was right and wrong about our current PR approach, and why. Specific data = good.
DON’T: Give a cookie-cutter presentation that addresses no specifics. If it doesn’t mention our competitors’ names, or articles we’ve been in, or customers of ours, you lose points. If the presentation could have been copied from an MBA textbook, and has no explanation of why certain vehicles and tactics apply to our situation, more points off. Extra points off for use of the word “Blogosphere” or “New Media” without explaining why we need ‘em. Failing grade if you forget to remove the name of the last company you used this deck for from any of your slides…
DON’T: Bring a horde of people to the meeting, then when pressed, admit that only the two most junior will be staffing the account. Extra-negative credit for stuffing the room with completely irrelevant people (“…and this is our junior associate in charge of global health care government lobbying relations, which we feel is highly relevant” – to my corporate infrastructure software startup?).
DON’T: View us as a training ground. If we’re too small for your firm, or you don’t have the people with expertise in our area currently available to staff us, just say so. I’ll respect you much more for that, and refer you to others, than if you show up with the graduating class of Sweet Valley High… who may be cute, but are useless to me on the PR front. Train them on your time and dime, not mine.
DO/DON’T: Listen! We’ll tell you what questions we have. Answer or admit you don’t know. If we tell you “We hate purple”, don’t propose a purple strategy – at least until you’ve said “You don’t want purple, so here’s a blue strategy. That said, we personally feel there are purple benefits, and so we’ve worked purple up too, here’s a comparison”.
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[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]
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Two more DO.
1.Please get back to us quickly and on time. We have been working and evaluating multiple suppliers lately and many would just not return our calls\emails on time.
Even if our first budget is low, we are almost happy to pay well for responsive and top grade Graphics\PR\Branding etc.
I have found it quite amazing that we have money on the table and people would not respond.
2. If you are one person shop, let us know what your real availability is.
Wrong: Don't worry. I will work nights and its my problem. Then , he has to go abroad for a week ..
Right: I'm quite busy and it will take me double the amount of time it would usually take full time person.
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