The St. Louis-based Public Relations Firm

When I was in business school and subsequently earning my MBA in the early ’90s, sales was still sales. The practice of “selling” was something that you just picked up from watching people around you, or perhaps using some canned sales presentation with a flip-chart.  I knew back then that I wanted to be a salesperson, because I did not see myself sitting at a desk earning a paycheck all day long, but I must confess that I had an image of a salesman as being a “slick-talking, fast-walking, shoes shined used car salesman”.  Here is a clip of one of my favorite sales movies of all time, Used Cars:

The used car salesman in this clip is “Jeff” (played by Gerrit Graham) and while he made the sale (through deception), ultimately was not effective because he did not earn the trust of the buyer for a long -term business relationship.  He realizes that this family man is overwhelmed with rowdy kids and convinces him to test drive a station wagon, but doesn’t engage the prospect in a conversation; it is mainly Jeff talking. To be successful in sales today, a good salesperson must be a “business developer”. Unlike the old paradigm of selling, which was “Always be Closing”, business development is focused on creating a long-term relationship with a customer and finding opportunities to cross-sell other products or services, “Always be Opening”.

So if you are a business developer for your company, remember that the key is to engage your prospect in a conversation, use probing questions to uncover needs, and create a long -term relationship that benefits both of you.

We all communicate on a daily basis, because human beings are social animals.  But how many people really speak or write well?  And if you don’t write daily, it is often difficult to craft a clear and succinct message, especially in times of crisis and extreme stress.  It is often better to be an expert in a small niche than to be a generalist; it’s the old saying “Jack of All Trades, Master of None”. So you may be the best business owner, manager etc. in your field, but does that qualify you to be your own publicist?

Jack of All Trades and Expert Communicator?

It is important to plan for a crisis in advance and to think about the 2-3 key points that you want to convey in your communications, then STICK TO YOUR PLAN! People get into trouble when they start making up answers on the fly.  We have all seen people “wing it” while on camera (remember seeing Tony Haward of BP early in the oil spill crisis), with disastrous results.  There is a reason that political figures have campaign managers and professional speechwriters!

Whether or not you should handle your own public relations and marketing depends on your skills in writing and speaking. I am a believer in do-it-yourself, if you truly know how to do it yourself. The internet has a long memory and things that you say (recorded on video) and write can come back to haunt you years from now!

To help you with DIY PR, we have created the St. Louis Public Relations for Small & Mid-Sized Businesses group on LinkedIn.

We invite you to join here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3141142&trk=hb_side_g

This group is an area where anyone can start a discussion or pose a question, and we can use “crowdsourcing” to tap into the collected knowledge of our network!

DIY Public Relations – AMM Communications – Creve Coeur Chamber of Commerce from Ed Mayuga on Vimeo.

Ann Marie Mayuga, principal of AMM Communications, the St. Louis-based public relations firm, presented DIY Public Relations: Top 5 Ways to Get Earned Media, to members of the Creve Coeur Chamber of Commerce, on Thursday, July 15, 2010.