Break Down Silos To Build Relevance And Drive Sales

Forbes

7 days ago

Rachel Gerber Kule, Founder, Managing Partner, Pursuit PR.
When evaluating sales, marketing and communications content and processes at companies I work with, relevance—or lack thereof—is often the first issue I uncover.
Marketers are developing content separate from the communications experts because it's 'just for the website' or 'it's for a paid ad.' Sales are pitching with a lack of coordination or use of modern systems. Communications and PR are creating and earning content across traditional and digital media.
One reason for this fragmented approach is the antiquated, broken system across sales, marketing and communications teams. Disjointed, and often internally competitive, approaches siloes all functions, diminishes their impact and undermines their potential.
What Disjointed Organizations Look Like
Here is one simple example of what is happening at companies:
• The marketing team writes 10 riveting pages of content (e.g., a white paper, e-book, report, etc.). They started it five months ago and just put on the finishing touches. They want the PR and communications team to get it covered in the media, and then they'll handle the marketing website and digital media promotion.
• The PR/comms teams think that's a great idea. However, they need to make edits to the headline, topic and the entire way it is written, as well as the format.
• The sales team has no idea any of this is happening. They are wondering why the marketing and communications investment is not directly increasing sales. They're also chasing leads with bland approaches like 'I'm just following up …'
This is just one scenario of the disconnect among teams that can be otherwise working wonders. The missing link: an understanding of and commitment to relevance.
The Importance Of Relevance
Integration of relevance is key to advancing effective sales, marketing and communication. So, what is relevance, and why does it matter?
Relevance, from my perspective, is achieving recognition that what you are doing matters—and it matters NOW. Relevance, when leveraged effectively, can achieve several objectives:
• Earn visibility among prospects, customers and partners—including valuable media and influential creators.
• Instill action promptly.
• Increase trust, especially via credible third-party endorsements.
• And, perhaps most significantly, drive differentiation.
The last point is a key factor. Differentiation—as David Sable, vice chair at Stagwell, explained recently on my company's Pursuit Perspectives podcast—'is different than relevance. You can be relevant and not differentiated, and you can be differentiated and not relevant. When you're both, you're a unicorn.'
Differentiation is about standing out. And standing out both drives relevance and increases its staying power. The concept '15 minutes of fame' applies here. You could secure an amazing TV segment, or your video could go viral—but does it have staying power? You're relevant, momentarily.
The key is to become and stay relevant. To dare to be different, even with the advent of AI.
To use your voice, personality and decades of experience, to do something that others are not doing and to earn the trust and confidence of your audience. To get people to care about you and what you represent (or your values, vision and mission).
How To Stay Relevant
Given the importance of relevance, it makes no sense that sales, marketing and communications are still running in circles around each other. It's time to disrupt this approach by working TOGETHER.
Who reports to whom is a long-lived debate. And I'm over it.
Work together and succeed together, as a team. Work for relevance. For differentiation. For staying power. With a common goal, these critical functions can look at their goals so much differently—and achieve them more efficiently.
A high-performing sales team is guided and empowered to deliver fresh insights to their prospects while nurturing existing customers. Rainmakers are central to effective corporate communications. This applies from the account executive to the CEO level.
Anyone responsible for driving revenue must be equipped with the necessary assets to generate interest and close deals. That's where communications and marketing come in. Communications, and especially PR teams that focus externally, are responsible for earning recognition from third-party endorsement. As David Sable concurred, 'Third-party endorsement is critical.'
To do that, the PR team should understand:
• What's new.
• What's now.
• What's different.
• What's true—no making stuff up and messaging out of a problem or into an aspiration.
When a credible media outlet covers you, your company or your product, you can then demonstrate that you are a relevant entity.
To do this, the same people who can engage external parties and secure endorsements need to play a role in shaping the content the company produces—whether it is news-related, media-related or not. This will enable the PR team to help fuel marketing efforts, together, becoming powerful forces for profitability, revenue and overall growth and longevity.
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