“Honestly, I don’t know what my PR team does.”

That’s what one executive said to me this weekend and I’ve heard this many times before. There is a gulf between business managers and communications teams and that’s our fault.

We need to speak the language of business and align our goals with corporate objectives. That means we need to thoroughly understand the business and the industry and layout our communications plans against that framework.

Getting media coverage is only a small part of the story. We need to be able to demonstrate how communications is a powerful tool to drive brand recognition and corporate reputations. Ultimately, we need to show how we impact revenue.

Recent studies show that PR has a far better ROI than marketing or advertising but unless we can translate what we do in a way that resonates with executives, managers and other departments, we aren’t going to get the respect we deserve.