PR Precedes The Sales Pitch
The Key takeaway: By the time sales picks up the phone, PR has usually already made the case.
How does PR support sales?
Sales and PR tend to live in different meetings, on different budgets, reporting up through different people. In practice, one has usually already done a good chunk of the other’s job by the time a deal starts moving. Ask most sales teams why a lead already felt warm before the first call, and the answer is rarely the script.
Most B2B buyers now say they’d rather avoid speaking to a salesperson altogether, preferring to draw their own conclusions first. That means the pitch has usually already happened, just not in the room. It happened in whatever the buyer found when they searched the company name, read a review, or came across a piece of coverage that built trust before anyone from sales said a word.
Every piece of coverage a business earns is doing quiet persuasion work long before a sales conversation starts. Decision-makers consistently say an organisation’s thought leadership does more to demonstrate its value than conventional marketing does, which is a polite way of saying buyers trust journalists and independent commentary more than they trust a sales page. This matters even more in complex, committee-based sales. The people signing off a purchase often include several who’ve never spoken to a salesperson at all, and coverage is one of the few things that reaches them as part of a boardroom pack, without sales making contact.
It also shapes what buyers find in the first place. One study tracking real companies before and after major press coverage found meaningful jumps in organic traffic and backlinks in the month straight after a story broke, meaning the research a buyer does alone is more likely to land on the right side of the story.
How do you turn coverage into sales support?
Enter keithbishop.com. We make sure the press wins we earn you turn into things sales can actually use: “as featured in” badges on the website, coverage worked into decks and email signatures, and social pushes timed to land right as outreach goes out, so a well-earned headline becomes a talking point on the first call.
Done properly, PR stops being a separate department doing separate work. It’s the reason the sales conversation gets underway on easier terms. If PR and sales aren’t talking to each other yet, get in touch.