Communicating Promise

The Price of Indecision

August 14, 2008 | Written by Glenn Jasper

I’m writing this blog post with the hope that some of our client prospects will say "no" to our services.

Now, why would the managing director of an Israel-based PR firm wish such a thing upon his organization?

You know, it brings me back to a time – long ago – when I would have such conversations with my mother. They would go something like this:

"Mom, can I go to the St. Joe’s game Thursday night?"

"But Glenn," she would say, "Friday is a school day. You will have homework Thursday night."

"But they play Villanova that night. It’s the biggest game of the year, and Mike (my best friend growing up) has tickets!"

"I’ll speak with Howard (my stepfather) and we’ll let you know later."

"But I need an answer now or Mike will find someone else to take!"

"Glenn, if you need an answer now, the answer is no."

And with that, she had made herself clear. She would give me an answer, but it would happen on her terms, not mine.

Now, more than 20 years later, I find myself in roughly the same position with some of our client prospects. Except now, there’s a major difference …

Israeli companies and organizations that hesitate about their approach to PR and marketing only hurt themselves.

They are trying desperately to compete and to make themselves known in the US and global marketplaces, yet they sometimes operate in a way that demonstrates they are not confident in how they should proceed.

I’ll give you an example: We are currently in talks with an Israeli healthcare company about helping them with investor relations (out of our US offices), local Israeli PR and international business media relations. We have provided them with everything they have asked for, and we have taken a tremendous amount of time to meet with them in their offices. And we have been dancing this dance for a year. They would be silly to not move ahead with us, because we have made it clear that we will bend over backwards to provide them with excellent service.

And yet they have hesitated … for a year. Now, this doesn’t mean that they have to choose us. The point is that for more than a year they’ve chosen no one. This means that theoretically, their IR/PR/marketing has gone nowhere in a year. This indecision only hurts them.

Another example:

There is a company that has decided to hire an agency. They have a major event coming up in one month, and made it clear to us during our initial meeting that they needed to make a decision by August 1. It is now August 13. The event is coming up and we’ve made it clear to them that they will lose significant media opportunities at the event if they don’t begin reaching out to the industry media now. And yet they still have not made a decision. This of course bothers us, because we’d love to have them as a client.

But it also hurts them.

I guess what I’m saying is that, for the good of the Israel PR/marketing industry, I’d love to have all these clients say yes to Ruder Finn, but I’d also be perfectly happy if a few of these prospects were to say no to us … and say yes to someone.

For Ruder Finn Israel, we’d rather hear "no" than hear nothing. For these companies, saying nothing to us means they are also saying nothing to the market.

And in the process of saying nothing, they lose the most.