When Managers Play PR Card

The payoff for business, non-profit or association managers can be a real assist towards meeting their department, division or subsidiary objectives.

Playing that public relations card means they’ve decided to pursue their objectives by reaching, persuading and moving those outside audiences whose behaviors most affect their organizations, to actions those managers desire.

Here’s a blueprint to help them do just that: people act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired- action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

In other words, here is PR blueprint and tools you need to persuade your most important external stakeholders to your way of thinking. And then move them to take actions that lead to your success.

First step? Shift attention of PR team assigned to your unit away from communications tactics and over to a more effective action plan like one outlined above.

You’ll know it’s worth effort when you begin to see stakeholder behaviors like strong increases in inquiries, more repeat purchases, new proposals for strategic alliances or joint ventures, a fresh round of employment inquiries, or stronger contribution levels.

Lay it all out for PR people who work for your unit, especially why it’s a must to list in priority order those key outside audiences whose behaviors impact your operation most. Talk about importance of discovering how your organization is perceived by those audience members. Particularly because such perceptions almost always result in predictable behaviors that can affect success of your unit for better or for worse.

If you have a large, uncommitted budget, you can use professional survey counsel to interact with target audience members and ask important questions. “Do you know anything about us? Do you have an opinion about our products or services? Have you ever had a transaction with us? Was it a positive experience?” Or, members of your public relations team can handle this crucial task since perception, persuasion and behavior are prime concerns of theirs, or certainly should be.

This story (fully described in Fast Company December ’03 issue), highlights a vital point. In general, we want to price with a goal of maximizing profits, not sales volume. Too often, business owners look at gross revenues (sales), when net profit is what really matters. We could have sales of $250,000 a year, or $1 million, and be losing money. More sales do not necessarily mean more profit. Having sound accounting and analyzing financial reports regularly are essential. It’s important to remember that profit is not a dirty word. A business must earn a profit to stay in business. Whether a particular business’ profit is fair or is excessive is another matter – that could be subject of another article!

Why Women Underprice in Their Businesses

Underpricing is a common problem for women entrepreneurs, which happens for several reasons, one of which may be that we don’t know how to properly set a price that will yield a fair profit. Another reason is we often undervalue ourselves and our product and/or service. Furthermore, many of us have concerns about fair economic access to our products and services.

Pricing basics

The first problem of understanding best way to approach pricing one’s product or service is solved by getting sound business advice, which is readily available in Western North Carolina’s entrepreneurial environment (see sidebar). There are many methods for pricing for service businesses, retail operations and manufacturers. Going into many of them would be too extensive for this article. However, basic parameters are easily set. Costs determine our lowest price and must include overhead expenses, marketing costs, R & D, etc. Demand and competition determine our highest price.

Self-worth

Another reason for underpricing is that we often undervalue ourselves. It’s only in past decade or two that women have been business owners in large numbers that currently exist. Most new business owners, whether male or female, do not have extensive prior experience in running a business. Women have additional challenge of overcoming our internalized devaluation of ourselves, especially in business world. We may feel unqualified or undereducated. Where men might have tendency to understand and properly value (or sometimes overvalue) their product or service, this is usually not case with women.