A practical process for picking a PR firm, from the shortlist to the reference calls, with the questions that expose who will actually do the work and the contract terms that protect you when it does not go to plan.
Choosing a PR firm usually goes like this: three agencies pitch, the founder picks the one with the best-looking deck and the most familiar logos on the client slide, and six months later nobody can say what changed. The process below takes about a week and replaces the deck with evidence.
Before you take a single call, write down three things. The change you want in how your market sees you, in one sentence. The two or three outlets whose coverage would actually move your business. And the budget range you can hold for at least six months, because anything shorter is not a PR program.
A firm that cannot speak specifically to those three things in the first call is not a fit, no matter how impressive the rest of the conversation is.
The agency directories rank whoever paid to be ranked. A better method: take the outlets you named and look at who is getting covered there in your category. Then ask those companies, or their communications leads, who represents them. Two or three referrals from people you trust beat any list.
Add one firm from outside your sector. The best media relations people are often generalists who know how newsrooms work, and a firm that has never pitched your category can still be the right one if it understands reporters.
A good firm spends the first conversation asking. About your business model, your competitors, what you have tried, what your board thinks, what you are afraid of. A firm that spends it presenting has already decided what to sell you.
Two tells in the first call. If they promise specific coverage in a specific outlet, they are either overpromising or paying for placement. If they cannot name anything they would advise you not to announce, they have not thought about your situation yet.
Every agency has a polished answer for "what makes you different." These questions do not have polished answers.
Ask for three references, then ask specifically for one client who left. Call all of them. Ask each the same four things: Who actually did the work? What did they push back on? What did the reporting look like? Would you hire them again for the same budget?
If a firm cannot produce a former client willing to talk, that is your answer.
Guaranteed placements. Editorial coverage cannot be guaranteed by anyone honest. What can be guaranteed is paid placement dressed as editorial, and readers can tell.
A team you never meet. The people in the pitch are senior. The people on the account are not. You find out in month two.
Reporting built to impress rather than inform. Big reach numbers, no descriptor tracking, no mention of what did not work.
A contract you cannot leave. Twelve-month lock-ins with no performance language protect the agency, not you.
A six-month initial term with a thirty-day out after month three. Named team members, with the right to approve replacements. A defined scope with the extras priced up front. Monthly reporting in a format you have already seen. Ownership of all materials, lists, and relationships created on your behalf, so they leave with you if you leave.
None of these is unusual. A firm that resists them is telling you how the relationship will go.
If you are still unsure between two firms, hire one for a single project: a funding announcement, a launch, an executive positioning sprint. Six to eight weeks, a defined outcome, a fraction of a year's retainer. You will learn more from one project than from any number of pitches, and the firm that does it well has earned the retainer conversation.
Ask us every question above. We would rather lose a fit we were wrong for than win one we cannot deliver. The honest version of our pitch is short: we run a newsroom and a firm at the same time, we bring our own audience rather than renting reach, and one senior team handles everything from earned media to investor communications. If that is not what you need, we will say so, and we will probably know who you should call instead.
Gokhshtein PR is a full-service firm: earned media, thought leadership, launches, crisis, and investor communications for founders, brands, and leaders in any sector — one senior team, inside a daily newsroom.