When corporations deny free advertising…

I wonder why sometimes –well, actually many times, corporations deny free advertising. This happens all the time when a university or post-graduate student chooses a corporation as a case study for a subject. They deny to give information about the company and its activities. I certainly understand that some information is confidential and classified and they cannot reveal it but there are many things that they can pass to a student or a group which chooses that corporation as their assignment.

This is the way I think, correct me if I am wrong:

When a student or a group approach me I would at least be kind enough to listen to them. When they say that they chose me as their assignment that would be a great occasion for my company because they know my company and they respect it. They chose ME! They prefer to study me because either I have conquered their hearts or at least I have an impact (even a negative one) on them. That is publicity; and it’s free. By all means I don’t want to waste it! I will release the information that is not confidential and with great pleasure, as a matter of fact. That information will not go to the competition; that would be presented in a class full of potential customers. Many students will hear about me, they will get aware of me, they will learn about my tactics, they will remember me when they purchase relevant products and ideally they will switch brands. Actually the student or the group of students, with this assignment may switch brand because they will inevitably get highly involved. Even if they are already buying my products now, at least I have that information available and I have built some relations.

In most cases corporate managers deny that information either out of luck of time -customer acquisition and public relations seems to them like a waste of time!!!- Or they just don’t care! They usually don’t even deny that information kindly; they just ignore you like they want to irritate you as much as possible. Well Done! You turn your prospective customers into enemies which will never buy again from you and furthermore they will spread negative publicity about you!

Networking & PR Planning

Public Relations are very important no matter one’s profession. Especially in sales, PR is really crucial. The most successful sale process involves making one stranger as an acquaintance, then transforming him/her into a friend and then into a customer. Sales from people that you have not transformed into friends are not repeated. You need to be remarkably good and in order to achieve that you need a loyal clientele. Another thing you need to bare in mind is the fact that you may not be a salesman but you always sell. If you are a doctor you sell health services, if you are a lawyer you sell legal services if you are a writer you sell books and thoughts, etc. Every job involves selling so every professional needs a customer base. Such a base can be build through networking and a good PR plan. So organize yourself and start: building connections, strengthening your weak relations (people you haven’t spoken for months), reinforcing your current affairs and acquainting new ones.

I have recently come to realize that a good pr planning actually requires having a specific list of contacts that you need to communicate each day. So, I sorted each of my contacts into groups based on a scale of significance and then I set a communication frequency for each group according to that scale. From that point it’s easy to organize whom you are going to call or email or meet each day of the week.