I always say that the one thing I feel confident in is my job; I can do PR and media pitching in my sleep. I tend to worry about everything else, but my work has never been one of those things. Recently though, I realized that the reason I never worried is because I was pretty complacent in where I was. I tend to go after the same kinds of clients, but recently I started going after bigger clients. It is scary.
I feel like even though I have been doing this for a long time, my switch to going after big clients with more responsibility has made it sometimes feel like I am starting all over again. With that, sometimes I look back on things and realize “I should have done this or I should have done that”.
An opportunity recently came my way for probably one of the biggest projects I have ever taken on in my career…in terms of money and the amount of hours. As you know, I usually only work with PR firms and so all I do is pitch the media. I don’t normally work on client relations. However, this opportunity came my way and I decided to go for it. I had a phone call with the client, and he needed me to come up with a proposal. When I got off the phone, I thought the project seemed pretty straightforward, and I had enough info to write the proposal. What I realized when I started to think about the proposal is that I needed to ask way more questions. At the time, I figured these were questions that I would ask later if we decided to move forward.
Ask more questions on the initial call! You want to know everything from scope of work, to expectations, to the way the company works. All of these things will help you write a proposal and show that you are interested in the product or company. Below are a few of the questions you should ask before writing a proposal:
→ What would success on this project look like?
→ What tasks do you expect my team to complete?
→ How do you want results to be recorded?
→ Since, I would be running a PR campaign, can you tell me more about the way you expect the campaign to run? How have you previously run campaigns?
→ What budget do you have in mind?
→ One of the things I really wish I would have asked (this question is specific to PR), is did they want national or local press? Or a combination?
→ What tasks do you expect my team to complete?
→ How do you want results to be recorded?
→ Since, I would be running a PR campaign, can you tell me more about the way you expect the campaign to run? How have you previously run campaigns?
→ What budget do you have in mind?
→ One of the things I really wish I would have asked (this question is specific to PR), is did they want national or local press? Or a combination?
To sum it up, I learned that is definitely better to ask more questions from the beginning. It shows that you are interested in the project and wanting to learn. The initial call should be about you finding out more information about both the client and project. You don’t want to give away too much of your strategy though.
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