We’re back from a much-needed holiday break that hopefully, was full of rest, relaxation and recalibration. But now we’re heading into an infamous time of the year, sales kick offs (SKOs) when enterprise technology companies outline their priority objectives and focus areas for the coming year. As leaders of strategic communications firms, we all know how these often play out – that laundry list of goals every executive team member wants to accomplish through PR and communications. The initial reply is Yes, Yes, Yes to all of them, while we are shuddering and thinking, No, No, No. Because when you try to satisfy everyone’s goals, you most often satisfy nobody’s. Then the hard questions start emerging come June or July when folks are asking, “Why haven’t we accomplished X or Y yet?”
In-house teams and their PR agencies can put themselves on a successful path if they focus on one thing from the jump – align stakeholder goals. It sounds simple yet all of us know the business pressures, internal politics and other dynamics at play that can make this objective hard to achieve. Here are several other tips on how to navigate it all and come out on the other side slightly unscathed but set up for long term success.
- Align thought leadership themes with sales team priorities
- Identify synergies across multiple stakeholders
- Execute short-term activities while laying long-term foundations
- Separate differentiation from desperation
Align thought leadership themes with sales team priorities
First, get aligned on the definition of thought leadership – insightful perspectives on customer challenges, marketplace issues, policymaking and trends that are relevant to the platform and product portfolio. Second, PR should come to the table with 2-3 broad themes that sales teams can overlay with more granular perspectives driven by recent customer and prospect interactions. Don’t come away with ‘AI’ as a theme but double clicking on and refining that to land on a very specific associated opportunity, challenge or issue.
Identify synergies across multiple stakeholders
Great PR teams are great listeners and by extension, great dot connectors. Most often, multiple functions all share the same goals but articulate them in vastly different ways. Find the synergies, the common denominators (e.g., CISOs are our most important audience this year) to align on communications strategy and execution.
Execute short-term activities while laying long-term foundations
We all know about the importance of quick wins. Don’t lose sight of those but ensure you’re carving out considerable strategic thinking time for the bigger ticket initiatives that will help change the perception and build real storytelling momentum for the company.
Separate differentiation from desperation
Sales teams are on the front lines and often are the ones identifying new opportunities, but they can also be the first ones to foresee product shortcomings and customer challenges. PR teams need to be able to decipher whether the feedback they’re receiving is truly based on differentiation – a new or emerging opportunity that will set apart the company or is based on desperation – ill-defined shortcomings causing sales challenges and have the tendency to become unsolvable focal points. PR teams need to align their efforts to the former and avoid spinning cycles trying to solve for the latter.
What are some other tips for navigating the SKO season that you all are thinking about?