Selling Kevin Bacon

At Indiana State University (go Trees!), I remember being told by more than one professor that 75 percent of all students with a communications or public relations major would end up with a career not in communications or PR, but in sales.

Now, I’m sure that exact statistic was somewhat fabricated (or at least this is what my Googling efforts lead me to believe), but upon hearing such a scary and disheartening statement, I remember thinking one thing:

No. Possible. Way.

I grew up with sales in my family. My dad and grandparents owned a salad dressing company (J. D. Mullen Company, if you’re interested in tasting the world’s best dressing), and my grandpa was a natural-born salesman who had the ability to sell shoes to a guy with no feet, or however that saying goes. But in no way did I ever see it as something I wanted to do. Ever.

So imagine my surprise when I began work as a media specialist and found out that my entire job consisted of … selling. Leave it to those sneaky PR people to leave “sales” off the term “pitching.”

I’ve since accepted the sales component of publicity, but it wasn’t until I was reading up on some tips and tactics from the sales training gurus at Indianapolis-based Lushin & Associates that I stumbled on this gem of a statement and truly began to embrace the overlap of the industries:

“The real challenge of selling is the ability to relate the unrelated.”

Believe me, I’m not saying that we publicists sit around playing the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game all day (although it would be fun), or that you should redraw your family tree to make your boyfriend your third cousin (because that’s gross). What I am saying is that sometimes the angles that seem the most practical and strategic don’t always cut it.

So whether you’re lugging encyclopedias door to door or trying to get your client on Oprah, kick off your Sunday shoes and cut footloose.

Kevin Bacon would want you to.

Comments

[Andrew M. Scott]

Fun, clever blog post! Even though I'm in PR, I too feel that it is an important component to understand how sales people think and better know their needs in relation to a brands efforts. To help get into that psyche I recently read Jeffrey Gittomer's The Sales Bible (that I got at the Boarders that shut down a few weeks ago in downtwon Indy, oddly enough).

What I learned really was uncanny in the similarity of thought, efforts and work strategies between PR and our sales peeps.

[Andrew M. Scott]

Strangely, I woke up last night, remembering that Borders is spelled without an "a." I felt the need to correct myself. I guess the cat's out of the bag that I'm more of a Barnes & Noble guy. =P

Thanks again for a fun post!

[Hannah Shaner]

Thanks for the feedback - and the spelling correction! :) Stay tuned for future blogs that go more in depth into the similarities between sales and PR!