The Communications Consultant's Master Plan

Leveraging Public Relations Expertise for Client and Personal Success

Roger Darnell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000485691
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Public Relations
• Index: Business

This volume builds on Roger Darnell's The Communications Consultant's Foundation by providing insider knowledge gained over the past three decades atop the field of communications consulting, incorporating lessons learned serving businesses in the global creative industry.

Going beyond the basics of a communications consulting business, this book parses and distills the knowledge of top business management luminaries, helping readers build and expand their expertise to heighten their opportunities, and maximize all aspects and phases of their businesses, from start-up through to succession. It discusses essential topics including:

• The business of running a PR agency, with emphasis on landing clients and honing expertise to remain exceptional

• Advanced PR practices including investor relations and strategic planning

• Agency expansion, addressing growth and exit strategies

Working PR professionals, entrepreneurs, students, and recent graduates will appreciate high-level insights from a seasoned business owner, as well as templates for proposals, campaign planning, and more. Read with The Communications Consultant's Foundation or on its own, this book will lead readers on life-changing journeys and help a new generation of smart communicators take their professional pursuits to the highest levels.

Part I PR Client Services

Topics Covered

• Winning and Managing PR Accounts
• Client Positioning and Communications Strategy
• Investors and Investor Relations
• Advanced PR Account Management
• Advanced Communications and Marketing Strategies and Tactics

1 Winning and Managing PR Accounts

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177913-4

As we begin this new journey together, you already have some knowledge of the educational and life experiences which led to me becoming an account executive at the successful public relations firm The Terpin Group (TTG). That career-changing development took place in 1999, when TTG had offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. In this book's introduction, I also mentioned some of the business intricacies I have homed in on – including philosophical and practical discussions – to better understand how, when, where, and why the steady application of sound communications practices can radically alter careers and enterprises. If you have read The Communications Consultant's Foundation, you possess an excellent working knowledge of vital concepts including brands, branding, creativity, leadership, strategy, objectives, integrated marketing, business development, profitability, and project management. The question is, can you convince another business owner that you are the perfect candidate to help them add professional communications capabilities to their operation, and then fill that tall order?

Yes, you can, if you have been actively participating in incorporating what I have shared, building your brand, embracing the challenges presented and preparing yourself to be a proactive, strategic communicator dedicated to exceeding your clients’ expectations. Winning the first account is likely to be the hardest, but if all goes well, that achievement will ignite a chain reaction. Let's take a moment to fully assess the phenomenal foundation you now stand upon.

1. You are a proactive communications leader dedicated to the success of yourself and others, guided by one or more codes of ethics.
2. You embrace the importance of creativity, problem solving – and innovative approaches to problem finding.
3. You are committed to ongoing learning, and to strategic planning on a regular basis.
4. You are always ready to position yourself as the ideal candidate according to your core strengths, and to demonstrate your expertise.
5. You have a solid brand identity and open communications channels, and you can guide others in thoughtfully developing their own personal and business brands, and their strategic promotional campaigns.
6. You are the proprietor of your own business consultancy, and you have a Leadership Brand that fits your objectives.¹
7. You are increasing your strengths in all facets of the key skill set for a communications consultant.
8. You can explain how you can make a strategically sound impact on a client's business objectives over time – and intelligently use media assets to maximize impact in its storytelling initiatives.
9. You have one or more case study to demonstrate your expertise in action.
10. Your understanding of the continuous customer journey, business development, strategy, and other essentials of business – including project management – positions you to focus on the right tactics to serve your clients’ business objectives strategically, starting immediately.

The Initial Interview

Moving forward based on our common understanding of business development, customer service, and integrated marketing in action, attracting and retaining customers is a nuanced science unto itself. I have found success in navigating this vast terrain by focusing on objectives – mine and those of my clients. If they are calling you, someone at that company has identified a need that has been deemed important, and most likely, there is strong interest in addressing it starting very soon. Your goal, then, is to listen well enough to fully understand the nature of that need. From there, the challenge is to convince the caller that you are the best person to guide them forward, and to establish an agreement that will make you a leader in addressing their needs.

Whether the initial interview happens in person or by phone, this interaction is a test to determine your worthiness for an assignment. The simple way of looking at this is your potential client has some needs, and they want to explain those to you and then determine if they feel confident in your ability to address them to their satisfaction. Whenever the phone rings or an email query arrives, my response is usually to the point: (1) Thank you very much for thinking of me; (2) let's set up a call to discuss this in more detail; and (3) let's exchange emails and set a date and time for the call.

Before the interview takes place, I find the time to connect with those who have reached out on LinkedIn, and I go through their website, subscribe to their newsletter if that is an option, examine and connect on their social media channels, and perhaps do some research to analyze what media coverage they have generated. For the call itself, I use a set of questions I refer to as a Needs Analysis. It is especially important to listen and take notes, to capture whatever information comes to light in the interview.

If you pass this initial test and are invited to submit a proposal, its first section is where you will need to create a short Situation Analysis accurately portraying the client company's status and its reasons for seeking professional PR help. Also, remember this: Although this is an interview of you by another company's executives, it also represents your best chance to determine whether they are going to be a good fit for you before you become obligated to serve them.

Normally, the company's lead for setting up the interview will begin by presenting a quick overview, which will provide an explanation of why they are considering adding PR. Here are the questions you can expect them to have for you, along with some suggested answers from my playbook.

1. Q: How do you work, what is the process?
   • I would like to run through some questions together, which will give you a good sense of how my process works. How does that sound?
2. Q: What are your rates, how are we billed?
   • You may have seen on my website – my minimum retainer is U.S. $3,500 per month, and that is based on an hourly rate, which is currently U.S. $215 per hour (that translates into about an hour per weekday, on average). I use a standard letter agreement that is very client-friendly – after the first month, either party can wrap things up within 10 days by providing notice, and after the initial term, it continues on a month-to-month basis. If you choose to go in a different direction, I want you to be able to do that. This agreement is the same one I have in place with all my clients, and it has served us all very well.
3. Q: How do you feel about our chances for generating media exposure?
   • There is a spectrum of media outlets, with hard or breaking news outlets on one side and trade-media outlets on the other. By taking a balanced approach in engaging with trade media outlets and also professionally pitching breaking news outlets when we have relevant stories for them, I feel we will be able to make great progress on your objectives. I will aim to do excellent work on your behalf.
4. Q: What are the next or the first steps?
   • Within a week after this call, I will send you a proposal, which provides a menu of the services I can offer, subject to your needs. I will also send a simple letter agreement. Once you have signed the agreement and arranged payment, we will begin with a deeper dive into your positioning, assess your communications channels, and ensure we have the most strategically sound messaging in place everywhere. I will then research and build our media database and begin organizing our communications initiatives.

Here are the questions I present to potential clients from my Needs Analysis. Rarely do I ask them all, because many of them may be answered in the client's initial comments, or I may decide to research certain answers on my own.

1. How's business?
2. What led you to consider expanding your PR efforts?
3. What does your company specialize in?
4. Who is your main competition?
5. What is most unique about your company?
6. What are your main marketing objectives?
7. What are the most important aspects of your marketing plan that I should be aware of?
8. What news-worthy projects or announcements are coming up?
9. What media outlets are of the most interest to you?
10. What else is coming up soon that is important for the company? Involvement in industry events, speaking engagements, etc.?
11. How important are awards programs, and are you interested in having me monitor those and/or coordinate submissions?
12. When does the PR campaign need to begin?

Having asked these questions and gathered notes on the answers, you are now in great position to create a proposal. What remains to be done is positioning yourself as the perfect candidate for their needs and demonstrating your expertise. The talking points I use for those purposes begin with three triangles.

• The McNeill PR Triangle: This framework was shared with me by Digital Kitchen's co-founder and CEO Don McNeill in an initial interview for his company's PR account. According to Mr. McNeill, PR came down to three things: (1) the work; (2) a company's efforts to communicate with its PR partner; and (3) the capabilities of that PR partner.

If you introduce this framework by saying that a successful business leader has asserted that PR campaigns have those three main ingredients, be sure to emphasize that the first two components are in the hands of the client company. Therefore, the results you generate will be built on the quality of their work and the support they will provide to you.

• Lead, follow, or get out of the way: I often tell my clients that we cannot do PR on something until they have a happy client … and sometimes, making the client happy is impossible. There are also other reasons why every company development is going to need to be assessed individually to determine whether it is a fit for being promoted. Assuming it is a go, we then need to determine if we are going to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

This filter is based on the knowledge that clients often have clients, and in that chain of command, there may be other PR professionals engaged to lead the PR strategy around a given project. When others are “leading” the efforts, the best you can hope for is to be granted permission to “follow” with your client's effort, after the leaders’ plans go into effect. In the absence of another leader, that is a momentous opportunity for your client to leverage your capabilities and offer to extend your services to its client. To make this clearer, imagine your client is a toy maker, and an inventor comes to them to make a special commission. If the inventor has no PR team, your client can offer your services to lead the PR campaign, where your objectives focus on getting people to stock or purchase the toy, versus just promoting your client's brand, strengths, and stories. In this situation, it is important to remember who is paying the bill and to ensure they approve of all your efforts.

The final alternative – “get out of the way” – is what happens when your client is not able to secure permission to lead or follow. Normally, there are still opportunities there, like promoting whatever news coverage does come out on social media, adding the project to your client's website, and possibly submitting the project for awards, if those steps are permissible.

• Big, medium, and/or small: Based on whether we are leading, following or otherwise, and how the company feels about a given project, together we will then determine the scale of our promotion...