How PR and Sales Can Work Together to Increase the Bottom Line

For years, PR and communications teams have been asked to justify their value in ways that are not always easy or even realistic. The question of ROI has hovered over the discipline for a long time, but today it is being asked with far more pressure attached. Budgets are tighter, scrutiny is higher and leadership teams want to understand not just what activity looks like, but what it actually delivers for the business.

The challenge is that PR has never been a neat, linear channel. You might occasionally hear that a prospect reached out because they read an article or saw a comment piece, but those moments are rare. You may see spikes in website traffic when coverage lands, and while it is highly likely that the spike is driven by strong communications work, it is still difficult to point to anything concrete. What most organisations really want is a pound sign, and turning PR activity into a clear financial figure has always been extremely hard.

This is exactly why the role of PR needs to evolve.

Running effective PR is not easy. It requires planning, judgement and a deep understanding of what will genuinely resonate with the market. It demands high quality content, from press releases and thought leadership to reports, features and opinion pieces. Just as importantly, it relies on trusted relationships with the right journalists and publications. 

Shortcutting those processes through generic or automated content (GenAI) may create volume, but it rarely builds authority. Credibility is earned over time.

Even when PR is done well, there is still a fundamental question many businesses fail to ask, for example, “once you have earned attention and credibility, why wouldn’t you use it more deliberately to support sales?”

Turning Credibility into a Sales Advantage

Sales teams are operating in an increasingly difficult environment. Buyers are more informed, more cautious and often well advanced in their decision making before they ever speak to a salesperson. Closing deals requires confidence, clarity and trust, yet many sales conversations still take place without the benefit of the very proof points the communications team has worked so hard to secure.

PR and marketing content therefore should not sit in a shared folder or be used purely for brand awareness. It should form part of the sales toolkit. Credible third-party coverage, independent commentary and authoritative thought leadership can all play a powerful role in opening doors, building trust and helping prospects feel comfortable moving forward. Used properly, this content allows buyers to educate themselves, reinforces key messages and positions a business as a credible partner rather than just another supplier.

This is where our approach is different.

Alongside high impact communications campaigns, we work directly with both marketing and sales teams to ensure that momentum carries through. We do not simply hand over assets and hope they are used. 

Our sales consultants and trainers work alongside sales leaders, account teams and SDRs to help them apply communications content in a way that feels natural, confident and commercially effective.

That means building practical sales playbooks, sharpening messaging and showing teams how and when to use content in real conversations. It might be sharing coverage at the right point in an outreach sequence, referencing an article in a meeting to reinforce a point, or using thought leadership to re-engage a prospect that has gone quiet. In many cases, this content also strengthens the sales team’s own understanding of the business, giving them clearer narratives and greater confidence at the table.

We are seeing this approach deliver real results, including with an HR software business where we combine ongoing PR activity with regular sales support each month. The outcome is not just stronger coverage, but improved pipelines, higher quality meetings and clearer commercial momentum.

Where Stories Sell 

This does not suddenly turn PR into a perfectly attributable channel with a neat ROI figure. That remains unrealistic. What it does do is ensure communications works harder for the business and plays a direct role in supporting growth.

In a climate where every investment is under scrutiny, connecting PR and sales is no longer a nice to have. It is how communications earns its place at the commercial table.

If this resonates and you want to explore how joined up comms and sales can work in practice, feel free to get in touch. 

hello@shift7.agency