Vendor Briefing Tips, via Byte & Switch

Those in Tech PR who cover data storage should be very familiar with the online publication Byte & Switch.  In The Vendor Pitch Revisited, Mary Jander wrote there today about pet peeves for vendor briefings (thanks, Bennie, for pointing this out).

You don't need to be in storage PR to appreciate the tips, they are pretty applicable to tech PR in general.

Some fall under the category of common courtesy and common sense. E.g she implores vendors to be respectful of reporters who might be trying to follow along and understand complex information on the other end of the phone, sometimes without the benefit of having any briefing materials, or a PowerPoint or press release.

Here are a few of the other tips from her list:

DON'T treat the listener like a student or employee. Some vendors simply want to scroll through slides at their own pace, even if they say, "Feel free to interrupt." Some pretend not to hear a question. Some say, "Got that?" after each slide, as though speaking to a subordinate. All of it gets a raspberry.

DON'T use the speaker phone. Vendors love speakerphones, perhaps because it gets more people on the call while allowing them to control the "message" from a remote office... Usually, these sessions wind up as a chorus of anonymous voices or just plain screaming matches -- to say nothing of the pathetic stage-whispered side conversations that somehow get passed along despite the technology. Forget it.

DON'T have participants use cellphones. See reference to audio quality above. And bluntly, anyone who can't take the time out for a call isn't worth mine.

DON'T try to control the message. In-house performance tests, commissioned survey results, and "coin operated" analyst comments fall into this category. Nobody believes them, so why waste time on them?

 

Comments

[bsham]

Good tips. I agree that if you don't have to use speakerphone, don't. It's never safe.