This is a PR blog, so let’s talk about…bees. Not what you expected right? But follow me on this one. Bees pollinate more than a third of the world’s food supply, and pollinated crops have significantly better yields. In turn, plants produce pollen and nectar, which are essential for a bee’s survival.

Now I happen to be allergic to bees. But I appreciate the lesson here. Because it’s not just in nature where we find these mutually beneficial relationships.

Public relations and sales are often viewed as separate entities, but actually they have a symbiotic relationship as well. Each fuels the other. When working together, amazing things can happen. This is valuable for any company, but especially for startup PR efforts.

Sales and PR: The Foundation of Collaboration  

The highest-performing brands are famous, and they didn’t get there by accident. They understood the value of sales and marketing. Even if you have the best product in the marketplace, you need customers to know about your business and understand your value.

PR and sales share a common goal: promoting your company and what you have to offer. While PR focuses on building and maintaining a positive public image, sales works to convert that goodwill into tangible revenue. When these two departments align their strategies, the results can be transformative.

PR Impact On Sales

Solid PR paves the way for sales.

Building Brand Awareness and Credibility

Your PR efforts get you noticed, establish brand awareness and create credibility — all essential elements for sales success. By securing media coverage, managing your company’s reputation and crafting compelling narratives, PR creates a favorable environment where sales teams can operate.

Amplifying PR Wins

Sales representatives can leverage PR success in their conversations with prospects. Media coverage, awards and other PR wins serve as powerful social proof. This helps build trust and credibility with your potential customers.

Generating Warm Leads

Ask just about any salesperson what they hate the most about their job and they’ll tell you: cold calls. Making cold calls is tedious and less effective than ever before. It’s like throwing darts while blindfolded and hoping to hit the bullseye. Warm leads are different altogether. When people know who you are and have a positive view of your company and offerings, you can see the target and dramatically increase your odds of conversions.

B2B PR helps build that profile with potential customers. Whether you’re an established company or focused on startup PR, generating press coverage for your company news, product launches or thought leadership pieces can make you instantly more recognizable to key prospects – and over time, even have them approach you. Warm leads? Yes, please!

Sales Contributes to PR

It works both ways, of course. While B2B PR helps make sales more effective, sales can inform and amplify PR wins.

Providing Real-World Insights

Sales teams are on the front lines, interacting directly with customers and prospects.  By approaching these interactions as valuable research-gathering missions, you can uncover key insights that can inform PR strategies. Real-world feedback helps craft messages that better resonate with the target audience. It also enables the PR team to hone their focus on the media that reaches that audience – whether it’s large mainstream targets, or smaller but more engaged “watering holes” within specific trades and vertical markets.

Sales Success Is PR Gold

Sales successes can be newsworthy. Highlighting key achievements gives your PR team good news to pitch to media sources and gain positive coverage. Once those leads become clients, if they’re willing to be a reference, there’s even more you can do to pull them into the PR cycle, from sharing customer success stories, to collaborating on awards, and more.

Strategies for Fostering Collaboration

To maximize the benefits of this symbiotic relationship, implement strategies that encourage collaboration between PR and sales teams. Are you doing these four things regularly?

  1. Aligning — and unifying — your messaging and goals
  2. Sharing information on a regular basis and updating tactics based on what you learn
  3. Leveraging your PR wins in sales conversations and conversions
  4. Involving your sales teams in your B2B PR planning

Measuring PR & Sales Success

None of this works in a vacuum, however. You need to track your KPIs that reflect both your PR and sales objectives. Start with these:

  • Increase in qualified leads generated from PR activities
  • Improvement in sales conversion rates
  • Growth in brand awareness and positive sentiment
  • Increase in media coverage and share of voice

Want to Grow Revenue? Think Bees and Flowers

Just like bees and flowers, the relationship between PR and sales is truly symbiotic, with each function supporting and enhancing the other. By fostering collaboration, you can create a powerful engine for growth, brand awareness, credibility and ultimately, revenue.

Need B2B PR or a PR agency for startups? Resound Marketing is different. We build PR campaigns based on proven experience, execute passionately and relentlessly, and deliver real results. Drop us a note and let’s talk: makesomenoise@resoundmarketing.com.