You Can’t Handle the Truth!

There’s a lot of advice out there about how freelance PRs can ask smarter questions to get better PR briefs.

And there’s an implication there that it’s the job of the freelancer to shepherd the client towards revealing what they really want/need, perhaps when they don’t know it themselves

In this game of cat and mouse, one party has the secret knowledge and the other has to discover what it is.

It makes for an interesting drama to be Sherlock Holmes or getting Jack Nicolson to blurt out “You can’t handle the truth!”

But this is PR, not Hollywood and the process should be collaborative not gladiatorial.

So here’s a suggestion for clients to get better results. Don’t play the game or at least play by different rules.

By this we mean flip this on its head by setting some ground rule expectations before a meeting to discuss the brief and then going further by pre-empting what might otherwise be considered smart, inquisitorial questions, so that the discussion is as productive as possible and more likely to go to interesting places.

Let’s face it, many of us have read The Trusted Advisor (and if you haven’t you should) so the smarter line of question is not going to be a total surprise.

The Ground Rules – Information Available to You Now :

I’ll expect you to have read not only the front end of our website back to front, but you’ll have dug into the corporate sections and understood our structure

I’ll expect you to have looked at the LinkedIn profiles of everyone you’ll be meeting and paid attention to their previous role and considered whether that impacts how they see the world

I’ll expect you to be able to play back to me our USP, main products/services and key markets and routes to those markets

The Flip – My Stakeholders and What They Worry About

Here’s how decisions are made around here and by whom.

Here’s what those people value when considering whether to invest in something with PR implications and here’s how they like information presented to them.

Here are the things I’m measured on and here’s which of those are the most important

Here’s why we are changing PR advisors

Here’s How I Like to Approach Meetings

I like to hear a bit about you/If the small talk goes beyond one sentence I will loathe you

I want to get into the technical detail/I want to visualise what’s possible

Don’t expect me to make a decision until I’ve seen the data/I’ll tell you exactly what I think

I like to review a number of options with colleagues/Give me a choice of 2 things and I’ll decide

I expect you to recommend strategic options/I value excellence in execution over ideas

Honest, comprehensive answers to these questions will advance the first discussions far beyond the usual tentative dancing around issues and will have both parties getting into substantive issues more quickly and more profoundly.

What other questions would you pre-empt to make the first meetings truly productive?