Want to integrate communications across your PR and sales teams - not to mention get valuable feedback on customers' needs from the customers themselves? PepperCom Managing
Partner Steve Cody explains how it can be done using the New York-based agency's Sales Positioning tool.
The Partner: PepperCom, 470 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, 212/931-6100, http://www.peppercom.com
The Contact: Steve Cody, Managing Partner, [email protected]
The Price: The cost ranges based on the number of interviews done with external clients and customers and internal stakeholders on the sales team and in other departments. Most
analyses begin around $10,000. Sales Positioning is available to regular clients and on an a la carte basis.
The Skinny: More and more often, PepperCom clients were asking the agency to media-train sales teams in addition to the execs who would represent the company with the press.
"The left hand and the right hand weren't working together," Cody says, and company execs were concerned the sales teams weren't promoting key corporate and product branding with
customers and prospects. On the other hand, the sales teams felt that customers were only concerned about the bottom line - price and how quickly and conveniently they could
implement a product and use it.
"We had a eureka moment," Cody says. "We realized our corporate positioning program [used to uncover key corporate messages for communications purposes] could help uncover key
points for sales people based upon what's keeping the customer awake at night. We could also close the gap between the sales and communications side by getting them both closer to
the client."
PepperCom teams audit company executives from various departments. But they also go straight to the customers and prospects - including those the sales team has never been able
to crack - and interview them about their concerns and their needs. Once the results are tabulated, the PepperCom team conducts training and role-playing in simulated sales
environments with the sales team. And the communications team can build its campaigns on the same information the sales force is now using.
Doug Froh, chief marketing officer at Paxar, says Sales Positioning made "a profound change in the way we go after the customer." It also helped align sales, marketing and PR:
"This has everyone singing the same tune," Froh says.