Our public relations team uses Vocus to help us research editorial contacts across many mediums. The database is helpful because it tells us when editors leave, what their beats are, how often a publication publishes and more. It’s a common tool for many public relations agencies. But it can also be a crutch for those practitioners not daring enough to do what we know is right.

It’s that darn “preferred pitching method” section in Vocus that can get into an unsuspecting practitioner’s head and make him passive in his outreach. Because undoubtedly it will say e-mail. But email does not make the world go round.

As much as I like to deny that I am in sales, I am. Public relations is selling story ideas to journalists.

I talk about this often with my husband–who is in sales. If he only emailed prospects, he’d rarely turn outreach into new clients. Instead he picks up the phone and calls people. He’ll stop by their business to make a personal connection.

He tells me: “Imagine how many sales queries each business owner gets in a day? Even with a strong subject line (no joke, his favorite is “pick me, pick me”), it’s likely most of my emails go to trash or get deleted. Being strong enough to pick up the phone and call or stop in and say ‘hi’ is what sets me apart from hundreds of other salesmen trying to earn a buck.”

And that’s what many public relations executives forget.

Building relationships is key and nothing can beat in-person meetings and networking events. And face-to-face, over the phone or email pitches do nothing if you don’t know how to do effective public relations. But in regular day-to-day pitching, picking up the phone to call can accomplish more in one call than 100 emails.

The truth is, while on the phone we may only get 10 to 15 seconds of an editor’s time to win their ink. The ability to make that happen is what can set a good PR executive apart from a superior one.