For years I have counseled our senior managers that they should view their contributions to clients' programs much as a lawyer would:
"You are offering premium value; clients pay us for your counsel; your advice and work make a real impact; you are a professional in your demeanor and a pro at what you do... You should act accordingly; you should be treated accordingly."
Meanwhile, though, the PR industry is under seige regarding billing practices: procurement officers are getting more and more involved in contract negotiations, often because PR is so hard to quantifiably measure (another of my pet passions)!
Compare this to OTHER service industries, such as Accounting or Legal services. That's what the Mercer Island Group did, last summer. A telling quote: "Business service firms such as law and accounting firms are good at identifying and securing the value for their work. Clients view services such as legal representation and accounting as more of a fixed cost of doing business (empasis added), rather than the more discretionary nature of marketing services."
It is only because we PR practioners cannot MEASURE our results that we are considered DISCRETIONARY.
When one of our clients engaged SHIFT's LeadSensor process and found that about 25% of their closed deals had originally come to the table via the PR "channel," trust me, PR got moved off the list of "discretionary" budget items.
And if that sounds like biased self-promotion, then please, please, tell me about your firm's work in quantifying bottom-line impacts! I will happily post all about it.
It's no good to me to be a lone wolf on this: the entire industry needs to wrap its arms around the Measurement Question.