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| Dustin Siggins |
I’ve been running my PR agency for eight years. For the first three, the most common response to my presentation wasn’t “Great, let’s work together.” It was “Why should I care about getting in the press?”
Not the most auspicious start—and I didn’t have a good answer. “Because it puts you in front of target audiences” didn’t work when ads, social media and networking do that, too. It took those three years to understand that I was the problem—because I was focusing on PR outcomes and not the business goals that business leaders care about most.
In a tough job market with AI threatening our careers, communicators have to prove more than ever that PR is more than a “nice to have.” Speaking jargon hasn’t worked, so we have to try a new tactic—speaking the language of the C-Suite decision-makers who control our futures.
Winning new business
This new, exotic language will get a good reception in several venues. First comes the decision maker. This is the person whose “yes” you need before getting the contract or asking for an increase in the department’s budget.
Say you’re an agency or a consultant looking for a new client. The CFO you’re courting isn’t interested in throwing money around. He needs to be convinced not just that there’s a pain point worth solving, but that you in particular are the one to solve it. You can’t start with “media coverage” and end with “more of it,” you need to connect coverage to value. Talk about mitigating reputational risk when AI fakes can tank the stock, maintaining stakeholder trust when tariffs increase costs and increasing penetration when the marketing team repurposes media coverage.
The same strategy works to expand the budget and authority of the in-house communications role. Stephanie Roberts has worked in progressively higher roles within Hitachi, Ltd., a $70 billion global entity. She started as a one-person communications department for a business unit and is now head of communications for Hitachi Americas.
“Communications cannot solve any problem alone, but we are responsible for mitigation,” she said. “When an industrial or tech company faces a complex market disruption, like supply chain vulnerabilities or regulatory hurdles, it is rarely just an operational issue. A weak external narrative can lead to media coverage that erodes customer trust and impacts corporate valuation. Communicators have to lead by showing how proactive public relations mitigates reputational risk, stabilizes customer relationships, and protects corporate resilience.”
In other words, said Roberts, “Connecting our function directly to company capability is how we earn our role as business partners and strategic advisors.”
Helping your POC lead up
Speaking C-Suite isn’t just for the people in the boardroom. How you communicate with your client’s POC or to your direct superior in-house can make or break your future, because they have the access you need.
Here, you need to speak two different languages. The first is that of the middleman. Think about that person’s pain points and needs so they can be your advocate to those who hold the power of the purse. Arm your boss or client point of contact not with outlets, but with why those outlets matter. Show how the narrative landed—not by impressions, but through engagement, clicks and sales. And be sure to tie it all back to the executives’ KPIs and the POC’s pain points and solutions.
“Your point of contact almost never controls the budget,” said Zen Media partner and head of PR Sarah Evans. “The competency is thinking through what they need to carry into the C-Suite and handing it to them before they ask. We did exactly that for a client facing a renewal. We tracked what one piece of content did in two hours—143 outlets, number one on Google, cited by ChatGPT and Google AI Mode—and handed our internal champion proof to bring to her leadership. She made her case, and they renewed for six months.”
Breaking through the job-seeking crowd
Now we cover the worst-case scenario: Because you didn’t speak C-Suite, your last company thought AI could do better. It didn’t, but they aren’t going to admit that, so you’re hitting the pavement for a new job. You’ve landed your interview and bought a new cologne. Now what?
That cologne won’t win the day, but your fluency in C-Suite might. Don’t let the interviewer corner the market on asking questions; ask some yourself. Use your pre-interview research to feel out and dial into the executive’s pain points. Keep in mind the “Iceberg Effect”: whatever the business put in its want ad is only the tip of what leaders want to achieve.
Recruiter and KC Partners founder Brooke Kruger said this is how her candidates break through the crowded communications market. “The candidates who land and keep jobs are genuinely curious, know how to listen and think on their feet. They understand how communications fits into the organization’s long-term goals, how it solves what’s keeping the CEO up at night and what they can do to positively impact the bottom line.”
When all the resumes look the same, speaking C-Suite can earn your seat at the mahogany table.
Adding more value to the comms function
In a world where cost-conscious CEOs are drooling to replace everyone with robots, speaking the boss’s language has become a core competency in comms. As many frustrated communicators have said on LinkedIn, “we add more value than [leaders/executives/CEOs] realize.”
Maybe. But the old cliché about the tree in the forest applies: If you can’t connect the dots from narrative and media coverage to sales, operations and brand management, did you add value at all?
As I said above, I floundered with the C-Suite for years after starting my company. The business suffered. Now I’m so fluent that during one recent prospect call, we barely talked about the proposal. Instead, we talked about the sales pipeline, the company’s new service model and investor confidence.
When the CFO cracked a joke 45 minutes in, we knew we had them.
Self-servingly, a little language training will help us in comms. get and keep our jobs. Even better than that, it’ll work wonders for the boss’s bottom line. Everyone wins.
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Dustin Siggins is a former Capitol Hill journalist and founder of the public affairs and PR firm Proven Media Solutions.
Heidi Krupp is celebrating 30 years running her agency which began in a studio apartment in Hoboken, NJ funded by selling her car for $5,000.
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