The Professor of Professional Selling Neil Rackham was in Singapore recently for a workshop sharing his internationally-renowned sales effectiveness methodology called SPIN® Selling in the context of the global downturn. Huthwaite, the leading sales performance improvement organization, presented the event in partnership with McGraw Hill, the Singapore Institute of Management, and the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. The half-day session attendees comprised mostly of sales managers from multinational companies.

Rice Communications had access to the workshop as their communications consultants.

One of the discussion points we found particularly fascinating focused on the three types of sales models or approaches – Transactional, Consultative and Enterprise, which Neil Rackham had previously expounded on in one of his best-selling business books Rethinking the Sales Force.

In simple terms, transactional selling is all about “commodity” selling, whereby the goal is to serve intrinsic value customers. Price and convenience are the drivers of the transactional model.

Consultative selling meanwhile takes the sales process to a higher plane by focusing on problem solving and creating tailored solutions for specialized needs. According to Neil Rackham, integral to effective consultative selling is the ability to ask the right questions that help customers not only make sense of their situations but more importantly recognize their unseen problems and the implications of failing to address them.

Transactional selling prevailed in the olden days while the 80s and 90s saw the rise of consultative selling. The more multifarious enterprise selling model that involves an integrated approach for a longer-term seller-buyer partnership began gaining ground in recent years.

What had us thinking during one of the workshop station breaks was whether the Public Relations sales model was a transactional or consultative one; or if it even had in fact evolved to the enterprise level.

Sonya Madeira-Stamp, Rice Comms Managing Partner, held that Public Relations has and will always keep an inherent consultative, problem-solving nature. Services such as press release development or event management may be marketed in a “transactional” manner by ad hoc publicists and direct-to-customer online press release distribution channels, but this is more of an exemption rather than the rule.

The strategic thinking that comes with effective messaging and tactical planning in professional Public Relations is anything but transactional. Rather it is a process that requires deep immersion into the client’s business and demands advanced skills from PR consultants.

Unlike advertising, which is more often tied to or subsumed under marketing, Public Relations serves a broader strategic management function in an organization. Assuming a perception management role, it encompasses both internal and external communications for such purposes as corporate brand marketing and promotion, stakeholder relations, all through to crisis and reputation management. This wider ambit consequentially makes it imperative for Public Relations professionals to create rather than merely communicate value for their clients.

At Rice Communications, we encourage the growth of the “hybrid consultant” – one who can proficiently apply PR skills as a value creating brand ambassador.

As the partner of one of the region’s fast-rising mining conglomerates Middle East Coal, Rice Communications offered flexibility and went beyond media channels to build their corporate profile. We tapped high level industry profiling events and brokered relationships to introduce the MEC leadership to media and potential investment partners.

The counsel for the Mobile Marketing Association, on the other hand, has been creating tangible value. By strategically marrying on-the-ground in-country events with regional media outreach and Social Media strategies, Rice Communications contributes in raising the membership and expanding the networking base of the industry alliance.