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Every business owner knows that public relations is a subset of marketing and marketing is a subset of sales. The “bottom line”, to use an overused term, is what it’s all about. Whether a company is selling a product or service, making the sale is the goal.

So it’s often fascinating when a company says, “I just sold so and so,” and they name a company. The truth of the matter is, companies don’t sell to companies. People sell to people.

And this is the crux of good interpersonal public relations.

Certainly, to make the sale a company or organization must have the right elements – quality product, good service, competitive pricing, reliable deliverability and so forth. But before the customer signs on the dotted line, there is personal interaction between someone at the company making the sale, and someone at the company approving the sale. I am not talking about companies that sell to the public. I’m talking about business to business sales. When one order could be worth thousands or millions of dollars to a company.

How likely is it that a company will place a large purchase with a company if the representative is not paying attention to their public relations? What does this mean? It means things like returning phone calls promptly, taking time to answer questions and going the extra mile. There are just too many companies selling the same products for any one company to be so arrogant as to think they can be successful while not paying attention to their one-on-one public relations.

The lesson here is that public relations is more than creating a great image and getting stories in the media. That aspect is critical to drive prospects to a company. But when a prospect makes the call, the one-on-one relationship that develops is also a form of public relations. And for most businesses, the most important form.