Running from the 29th November through to the 3rd December, it will be held at The Gallery on the Corner, Battersea Park. Admission is free to the general public, but any donations to the charity will be most welcome.

The opening night will be Monday 28th November from 6.00pm onwards and there will be an auction night on Friday 2nd December from 6:30pm - with none other than yours truly as the auctioneer- where some celebrity phoneography along with top work from the exhibition will be sold to raise money for Kids Company.

If you would like to attend either of these nights please send an email to info@createhive.org with subject header – “Auction night” or “Opening night” (or both if you can make it) along with your name and company name.

It’s in support of an amazing charity reaching 14,000 children across London providing practical, emotional and educational support to vulnerable inner-city children and young people, in particular those with severe emotional, behavioural and social difficulties, resulting from significant experiences of trauma and neglect.

Please feel free to bring along friends and partners and do forward this invite on to everyone and anyone, the more support the better!

Thanks, and I hope to see you there!

 For further details on the exhibition please click here.

Pixel This – A phoneography charity auction for Kids Company is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

A lack of professionalism when trying to win new business is one of the cardinal sins in my book. My previous blogs on customers for life and the difference between new business and business development will give you an insight to my way of thinking.

So picture the following scenario.

Before Christmas, I get an email from a “new business agency” – and I use the term in the loosest possible sense – offering me business development services for Alchemis.

Perhaps they sent it by mistake. I’ll just ignore it and we’ll say no more about it.

But a few weeks later a follow up email arrives – they’ve tried to get in touch with me but to no avail, surely I would be interested in their business development services for my company. This time, I couldn’t let it lie. I sent a polite reply to the sender which simply said “Gemma, please have a look at our website to see what we do as a company and then decide if we are likely to need a new business agency to help us.”

Surely this would do the trick – a two second check of our website would have shown the sender that we are, in fact, a new business agency ourselves. They could put me on their do not approach list and we will all be happy. But alas, my words fell on deaf ears as a while later I received another email from the same person – albeit this time into my junk email filter as I had marked the previous one as such.

Then last week I received yet another communication. Here is an excerpt:

We aren’t about sending over a high volume of poor quality appointments, we will create highly qualified meetings to make sure you are only meeting prospects that have a genuine need for your services.

Robert we would love to come and meet with you to discus in more detail how we can help you get in front of prospects and get you on track to fulfil new business targets. If you would like to arrange a date for a brief meeting then please do not hesitate to reply to this email or call me.

A few terms jump out of me from this. “Poor quality”; “highly qualified” (not) and “genuine need for your services.”

They also claim to provide a recording of every call they make – which is great except it is illegal unless the prospect is made aware that they are being recorded (and how would you react if you received a cold call from a company you didn’t know and were told they were going to record it)?

I am the only person at Alchemis who is not actively involved in a “sales” role of some description. But even I know that the key thing to any new business approach is to know a bit about the company you’re approaching (like, for example, what they actually do), listen to what the prospect is actually saying and only then are you in a position to know whether your services will be of use.

I’m not going to name and shame the person or company who keep sending me these unqualified approaches (despite my reply advising them to check what we do first) but as Mr T would say “I pity the fool” that would take them on to help with business development if this is an example of their attention to detail.

Companies like this give the more respectable agencies a bad name. And if the company in question happens to be reading this blog, please – for the love of god – practice what you preach.

New business idiot alert is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

There are other determining factors (like relevant case studies, ROI, unique methodologies etc) but the simple truth is that building rapport and demonstrating empathy with their current challenges are often the most important reason why marketing prospects will agree to meet a new agency – particularly when there aren’t any discernible points of difference.

This makes it doubly important for us to recruit and retain a highly skilled and motivated team of New Business Managers and I’m often asked where we get them from.

The simple answer is, from wherever we can, provided they can demonstrate the unique blend of skills, passion for marketing and intrinsic values that we are looking for.

They will often have experience of setting meetings in other markets, such as technology or management consultancy, sometimes they come from recruitment or publishing and often they are referred by our existing team.

On a practical basis we use a combination of handpicked recruitment consultants who know and understand our business very well and online jobsites. It’s then down to the time consuming process of first and second interviews where the candidates are put through a series of exercises which will help us identify the mix of skills and attitude that are so important in a small, tight knit company.

I’ll write another blog shortly on how we retain our staff…

How we find our team of Business Development Managers is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

Why?

Because they will mould themselves to become an organic extension of your existing team thus being able to sell your offer and put you in front of the right people, generating high quality opportunities for you to secure new business in 2011.

I joined the Alchemis family in June of 2010 with a limited amount of sales experience from a property management company. Daunting? Yes!

I plunged in at the deep end and made the decision to be open minded to whatever came my way. Well, my first months were a complete blur of intense training sessions, learning the marketing lingo, campaign plans and role plays. The buzz on the sales floor from some 12 New Business Managers was enough to make me want to get my first meeting up on the board and until I did, I felt out of my depth and full of doubt in my ability.

Well, that first meeting came and I have not looked back. With the help of Dave our Sales Director, who has been very patient with my incessant questions, I came to realise that the art of ‘selling’ is really rooted in psychology and once I began to understand this suddenly something clicked!

8 months into the job and I have four clients of my own.

It is a testament to the quality of training and the encouragement of my colleagues that I have started to understand how to wear hats for a variety of marketing clients. My numerous hats have included creative clients, a PR agency, a market research agency, a customer management outfit as well as design and digital clients. By gaining solid insight to how these companies operate, their heritage, ethos and ambitions for their business, I am able to put together a campaign strategy to represent them in the most honest and appealing way to potential prospects.

In my experience, I believe that the blueprint for a successful New Business Manager would be one that found the right balance between flair and fluency on the telephone, up-to-date knowledge of the market and sectors they are working within, strong communication with their clients and good time management skills. I can say with confidence that these are attributes found amongst the team at Alchemis and qualities I strive to emulate. So if you want to join a team that encourages you to be the best you can be and rewards you for it, a team that supports, stimulates you and teaches you to think on your feet in any situation then this is the right experience for you and your career. It is certainly a group of people I am happy to continue learning from, socialising with and bouncing ideas off for some time to come!

Learning the role of a new business manager is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

I am pleased with the number and quality of the meetings I have set for my clients, who offer a range of services from mobile apps to full service creative solutions.

However, let us not forget the sole reason that our clients embark on a proactive new business campaign with Alchemis – to win new business.

Whilst the temptation is always there to push for a speculative or credentials based meeting to hit targets, I have approached my calling with the knowledge that we are building a long term relationship with our clients, and that quality will always trump quantity. A client winning business and yielding a good ROI is a happy client, who are much easier to work with and converse with on a weekly basis. Furthermore, I have found that a by-product of clients winning business is that you also win their trust, which means they are willing to go on a few speculative meetings, which can be equally as fruitful, if approached in the right way.

As for 2011, our client base is growing and the marketplace is evolving with the technology available to us. These are exciting, albeit challenging times and I for one am looking forward to 2011 and building on the success of 2010.

Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to one and all!

A year in the life of a new business manager is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

 It follows on from my blog about how much more cost effective it is to retain a customer as opposed to solely focussing on trying to win new ones and how a certain restaurant chain has attempted to completely disprove everything I’d written.

Let me set the scene first: I’m one of those fairly loyal customers. If I find a brand I like, I can be a bit of a creature of habit and stick with it. In terms of new business I can be quite hard to win over initially, but once you have me and providing I am kept reasonably satisfied I’ll keep coming back for more – particularly if you wave a good bargain in front of my nose every so often – because nothing pleases me more than value for money.

So this is where my story starts.

Last Wednesday, whilst ploughing through my inbox and sorting out the serious work related emails from the vitally important messages from the long lost son of the ex-president of Nigeria (who needed my bank details so he could transfer $10,000,000 into my account) something caught my eye. It looked like a bargain: ‘Eat all you want at La Tasca for £10!’

I could hardly contain my excitement – this wasn’t some scam email – it was a proper bargain from a reputable company! I knew I’d been a loyal customer of theirs throughout the year and I know it’s the season of goodwill and all that, but truly this was Christmas coming early.

I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming – surely there must be some sort of catch. I feverishly read the small print after downloading the voucher. The offer was from a slightly limited menu, but there was still a reasonable choice on it and for £10 I’m not going to complain. Oh, and it was only valid for two days – Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th December. Well, that’s a pretty short lifespan but at those kind of never-to-be-repeated (until next month) prices you sometimes just have to throw caution to the wind and go for it.

So I decided I was going make a special journey to La Tasca. It was my duty as a loyal customer to reap the benefit of this voucher – not just for me, but for them too. Why? Because no doubt somebody in their marketing department had thought long and hard about a way to increase revenue streams from existing customers and since the success of this email campaign would definitely be monitored I for one wasn’t going to put this person’s job in jeopardy through apathy.

Originally I was meant to be meeting some friends for pre-Christmas drinks in Covent Garden – but with an offer like this on the table I could hardly keep it to myself. Let’s push the boat out I thought. I know we’re living in times of austerity, but I can spread the news of this voucher and give the economy a helping hand, albeit in my own small way. So our plans of Christmas drinks were changed to plans of drinks and a meal at La Tasca.

By the way, did I mention that it was one voucher per person? Well it was – but that’s OK, the kind people at La Tasca would let all of my friends have a voucher too – all I had to provide was their email addresses so that said friends could disclose various personal details deemed useful to the La Tasca marketing department and carefully screened third parties. Everyone signed up and was raring to go.

Now, I’m not one to ask for the moon on a stick or anything but I do have very strong views about brands acting honourably if they want my loyalty. And so the cracks started to appear.

The first one involved their online booking system. Half an hour after receiving the confirmation email of my reservation for four people I received a phone call from the manager. He was awfully sorry and he didn’t know how this had happened but their automated online system had somehow accepted my reservation by mistake. Yes, if in doubt blame it on the computers. Probably the Y2K bug or something I’d imagine. Not to worry, he said, we could still come in and eat here – just not reserve the table at a specific time.

This wasn’t the end of the world – we could spend our hard-earned cash in the bar at La Tasca whilst waiting for a table. We were meant to be out for a drink anyway.

So at 7.30 my merry group of friends stroll into the restaurant. There will be a table in 20 minutes, just take a seat in the bar and buy some drinks says the maitre d’. Not sure if that’s an appropriate description when talking in terms of La Tasca, but you know who I mean. But then she drops the bombshell – have we got vouchers? Why, yes we have actually – that was pretty much the inspiration for us changing our existing plans and visiting your restaurant on this freezing cold night. Well it turns out we can’t use them because they are “busy” tonight. Wait a minute – this smacks of Hoover airmiles all over again!

I thought I must have misheard. After all, the vouchers are only valid for tonight and tomorrow: if it’s busy tonight, 10 days before Christmas, then I will categorically stake my life that it will be even busier the next night; after all, Thursdays are always busier than Wednesdays. It’s the new Friday after all.

I read through the small print again – maybe there is something that says ‘not valid at Covent Garden because it’s always busy’ or ‘not valid in the evening as that’s when most people want to come here’ – that would be all that was needed to pacify me, but there’s nothing along those lines. Just that ‘the manager reserves the right to withdraw the offer’. This is the offer that is only valid for two days and it’s being withdrawn on the quieter of the two days “because it’s quite busy”.

Now, let’s be fair: La Tasca is not an expensive restaurant and it wasn’t going to really break the bank for my group to say ‘what the hell, let’s just eat here anyway’. But this is where my principles of brand loyalty kick in. I’ve been loyal to La Tasca. I’ve spent a lot of money with them over the years. I’ve given them my personal information for their marketing department to do with what they please and I’ve forwarded their email offers to friends who might be interested, thus helping them win new business on my time. I didn’t really ask for anything in return, but they tempted me with an offer I couldn’t refuse anyway. And how does this brand repay my unquestioning devotion at this time of goodwill to all men? It stabs me in the heart. Not literally, obviously, but definitely metaphorically.

I was apoplectic with rage at the injustice of it all – this time quite literally rather than metaphorically.

With one dodgy promotion, this brand has alienated a model customer for life. If I had never opened the email I would have been none the wiser to this dastardly malpractice and they may well have retained my business indefinitely. From my previous blogs you will see I have a long memory for shameful behaviour by brands and La Tasca has definitely made my “Easyjet” list. I vowed then and there that I would never set foot in a La Tasca again (unless it was to use their toilet without buying any food maybe) and I would make it my business to moan to everyone I know about this perceived scam.

The icing on the cake? The next day I got an email asking how I enjoyed my meal. The meal that I didn’t have. I responded with full details about my experience and I haven’t heard a peep out of them since. Perhaps they need a new research agency to help them out with customer insight – I expect they must be quite busy.

So, forget what I said in my last blog – this is one brand that should focus 100% on winning new customers rather than retaining existing ones. In this case it would definitely have been more cost effective.

Bah humbug and Merry Christmas.

A customer is for life, not just for Christmas is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

I ended up attending 7 new business meetings. September has always been a big month for agencies wanting to talk to Alchemis about new business but nothing could have prepared me for this surge in people wanting to meet “this week”.

As I don’t often meet prospective clients I found the experience fascinating. No two meetings were the same (obvious really as no two people are the same) but there were some common themes.

Every person (agency) I talked to was impressive. They impressed me with their passion for their business, the people who work for them and the work they do for their clients. I met some very bright and interesting people and learned a lot.

Everyone had a medium and a long term commercial view. For some it was continued rapid growth, for others it was securing fee income and consolidation in an uncertain business climate.

Everyone invited feedback and was open to ideas. This surprised me because I was talking to successful business people; entrepreneurs and self-starters. They were certainly not lacking in self-belief and conviction but they were interested in my thoughts on their business as a whole. We would talk about how they had won new business in the past and I think it’s fair to say they felt reasonably confident once they were in front of a prospect and supremely confident they could do a great job if they secured the business – but ‘getting the ball rolling in the first place’ was the tough bit.

Several of the agencies I met had done relatively little in terms of pro-active new business; recommendations, referrals and organic growth into existing clients had got them where they were. Others had tried a few things with mixed results – the most common refrain was that they found it hard to keep the momentum going day-in-day-out because the core business of delivering to clients ‘got in the way’. More than one person told me they had an internal new business formula that had worked until they won a client and attention was switched to client service. Having stopped new business for a few months it was then difficult to get it started again.

The agencies I met were doing some great work. Whether it was PR, research, digital or creative they all had a story to tell about how they have delivered something special to help a client. There must be other agencies out there with an equally credible offer so the deciding factor between agencies that flourish and those that stand still is the number of opportunities they get to tell their story to someone that counts. If you get 20 more opportunities in front of a decision maker next year than you did this year how much business could you win?

I’m glad to say we’ve already begun work for some of the agencies I met last month and I’m looking forward to hearing about new clients we have helped them win over the next few months.

Meeting agencies in September is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

We fell just short of the record number of meetings set in August but still recorded a figure that stands as 2nd best in the past few years. More impressive is the number of quality new business meetings our clients attended, which was a year best.

October is already shaping up to be a good month and it will need to be as we have had an influx of new clients coming on board. Any client starting in October is going to get in front of some great companies before Christmas but they will find the real work starts in the New Year. With December being a ‘festive’ month finding a date that works for all parties to meet can be a bit like nailing jelly to a wall so meetings tend to back up in January. Although we try to be sensitive to our client’s need to recover after the Christmas and New Year break I’m afraid most will be returning to work in January to face a busy diary of good prospects with money to spend.

So if you are thinking of making ‘new business’ a resolution for the new year then now is a great time to get the ball rolling.

Sales team round up for September & making your ‘new business’ your new year’s resolution is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

How do you manage conflict and confidentiality?

Inevitably, with a client base of over 50 clients, all of whom offer creative, strategic or digital marketing based solutions, we work with clients who have similar offers or who wish to target the same prospects.

This is a crowded, competitive marketplace, so there is no way we can prevent this happening, but what we do NOT do at Alchemis is share new business leads amongst our competing clients.

We have two ways of preventing this happening, a technical solution and an incentive based approach.

Firstly, the technical solution; we invested in developing our own bespoke software about 20 years ago (and this development has been ongoing ever since), which enables us to build discrete password protected databases for each of our clients, only allowing access to each client’s campaign by the New Business Manager who represents that client.

We hold updated decision maker information to benefit all of our clients in a central database which holds over 150,000 marketing decision makers, but every specific conversation, brief, pitch, opportunity or meeting on behalf of each clients is ringfenced.

Our incentive scheme is based on client retention and the quality of meetings that our clients attend, which no New Business Manager would wish to dilute by passing that lead to one of his/her colleagues.

We always encourage prospective clients of Alchemis to sit on the sales floor and see for themselves how the software works – we are justifiably very proud of how it can help us search for and develop new business on behalf of our clients.

How do you manage conflict and confidentiality? is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

In my experience, the five most commonly asked questions are (in no particular order):

1. What’s the best time to start a new business campaign? (see my blog on business development seasonality)

2. How do you manage conflict and confidentiality?

3. How can you guarantee me results?

4. Can I pass over leads and contacts for you to follow up on my behalf?

5. How will you get to understand not only my agency’s offer but the personality of my agency?

I’ll be writing blogs about questions 2-5 over the forthcoming weeks; in the meantime, do read my response to question number 1.

Do you have any other questions you’d like to ask me……?

Top 5 questions asked about business development is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

I was nervous; unsure of what was expected of me and whether I could deliver.

What would the people be like? Would I get on with them? Would they like me?

I needn’t have worried, because Alchemis turned out to be better than I could ever have imagined.

The people were warm, my bosses were cool (almost like me) and they’d go out of their way to help you with any issues that you had. I could tell right away that they worked hard to create a comfortable, happy office environment where everyone wanted to do well and were well rewarded for it.

Actually, the support from my bosses and the team camaraderie is something that I will never forget about Alchemis and it’s what carried me through when I have been stressed or up against it.

I won’t lie to you - working for Alchemis can be challenging. You need to perform consistently and manage the needs of your clients, as well as deliver an effective campaign over the telephone that will win them new business. It can be stressful meeting your targets (especially when you have a day when everyone says “no”) but the sense of achievement that you get when you finally hit target is fantastic and you want to do it again and again.

In my 4 years and 9 months at Alchemis I have worked on a number of marketing services clients from PR and design right through to branding and eCommerce and what strikes me immediately is the shift from traditional marketing methods to online mediums. It literally seemed to happen overnight!

I’m thankful for the opportunity I had at Alchemis. Without it I would never have been able to take up my new job, working for a fashion eCommerce agency with international offices.

I’ll miss everyone –  the jokes, the laughter the support and the challenges.

Most of all, I’ll miss working with incredibly smart and talented people who I have go to know here.

Long live Alchemis, I’ll miss you…

Goodbyes are hard to do is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

The Sales Team had much to live up to in July following a record June for quality new business meetings set. In the end we fell just short of June’s peak with a highly creditable performance that delivered the 2nd best set of results for the year so far. August has been storming though; we’ve bettered June to establish the best set of results for over 4 years.

I know that clients often ask whether August is a good month for new business prospecting and we’ve occasionally had a job convincing them that it is. Most people acknowledge that September-November is a great time for seeing prospects and picking up briefs and will see the benefit of laying the groundwork in August but I often hear “surely so many key decision makers are on holiday, getting through to people must be impossible?”.

This sounds logical but actually we enjoy a higher than average access rate (ratio of attempted calls to actual decision maker conversations) in August. For every Marketing Manager regretting their staycation (hoping this will be the last ever recorded usage of the term) on the soggy south coast there are half a dozen sat in an office but unable to progress full pelt because at least one cog in their wheel is being washed out on an English beach somewhere. Consequently they have the time to reflect on the year to date and what’s required as they approach the final quarter. Crucially, they also have time to take calls and talk to new agencies.

We find Marketing Decision Makers to be particularly frank around this time of year. Regardless of when their company’s financial year runs August seems to be a natural time to take stock of things, which is why so many agency reviews take place in the Autumn.

Prospects rarely criticise their incumbent overtly when they’re on the phone to us but we’re more likely to hear rumblings this time of year, which makes our job MUCH easier.

The irony is that many marketing agencies consider August to be a lost month and chose to take their holidays. The guys in the office holding the fort will be servicing clients and won’t have time to prospect for new business, which means many marketing agencies are missing out on a very fertile period for making new connections. This is where a New Business Agency that is working day-in, day-out on your behalf can be such an asset.

While many agencies have put their new business efforts on ice over the summer we have been very busy indeed. A quick analysis of meetings we have set show that 12% of the FTSE100 and 21 from Top 100 UK advertising spenders will be meeting clients of ours as a result of work over July & August. Not bad considering most of the companies we target would fall just outside of these league tables.

July was also the month for momentous sporting events of course. The Alchemis Rounders Match on 9 July saw the company split into two teams, each under the captaincy of a Director. Three innings and much arguing later and my team emerged victorious. Some special mentions for:

John for volunteering to referee. To describe this role as a poisoned chalice would be a gross understatement. He was still taking stick for decisions made in the 2009 match so that took some courage.

Pete, Dan and Algie for the most outrageous act of cheating; over the course of one innings the distance between bases grew from 20 metres to 40 as they shuffled them further and further apart.

George for almost decapitating two of his colleagues with a wildly struck ball and Amanda and Claudia for bravely taking said baseball in the face in relatively good spirit.

The other sports event of note in July was the world cup. Much has been written about the mockery that unravelled in South Africa so I won’t comment further here but two guys who took more from the tournament than most are George and Richard who each earned a big night out with optional hotel for winning World Cup based team incentives.

So a great few months for Alchemis and our clients. Brilliant though August has been for the sales team I don’t expect the record to last until the end of the year. September to November is usually our strongest period so the challenge is to meet or beat August’ performance every month until December.

By the way, December can be a good month for similar reasons to August but there just aren’t enough working days to be breaking records for absolute performance numbers. Needless to say we we’ll be looking at setting a new high for productivity instead.

Sales Team round up for July & August and August bird catches the worm is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

The objection is similar to the emotional response of passing over your child to someone else (something most parents experience when their child first goes to a childminder or to school). Most of our clients are small-medium sized agencies and are owned and run by a founding partner, therefore handing over responsibility for contacting prospects and articulating their proposition on their behalf can initially prove unsettling. How can I entrust my child to another person? How will they able to put across my offer to prospects when they haven’t grown up with it? See how easily the experiences can get blurred…

The rational response to this is that someone from the outside can add great value to your business/child. We all fondly remember a teacher who made a difference to our lives by pointing us in a direction we hadn’t previously considered or opening our eyes to an author we hadn’t previously read. Run with the analogy and you’ll rationally understand that an outsider (with 23 years experience in this market) can add enormous value to your business, helping to refine your proposition to work in this current marketplace for example.

However, it’s the emotional objection that is the most difficult to overcome, which is why we always insist on our prospective clients meeting our team of New Business Managers prior to appointing us – the only way they will ever truly feel comfortable with handing over their child is by spending time with the childminder.

Handing your child over (aka appointing a new business agency) is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

June normally marks the beginning of our most productive period through to November. Despite what one might think August is normally a very good month despite it being ‘holiday season’. We tend to find that for every decision maker that is on holiday the day we call there will be several more that are having a quieter than normal day and are available to talk.

June has been the best month for absolute number of meetings set for at least 4 years. I put this down to 2 reasons;

1. World cup related incentives – we have been running world cup related incentives since May including ‘players for meetings’ where one selects a player every time they set a meeting and this player then earns fantasy league points with big prizes up for grabs for the most points. Once a player was picked they became unavailable for selection UNLESS a New Business Manager had a spectacular day. The opportunity to watch the big games in the pub for hitting team targets also proved very effective. I doubt I’m the only Sales Director to have exploited the World Cup in this way. The Olympics can’t come around quick enough

2. Bigger Sales Team – we welcomed 3 new colleagues to the team in May and June. More people means more calls means more meetings.

Although the World cup is coming to a close it’s business as usual at Alchemis and we’re confident we can have a cracking summer. The next update will include a match report for the annual Alchemis Rounders match scheduled for 9 July.

Sales team round up for Q2 is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog

However, all of this MUST be done and one of the real benefits of working with a new business agency such as Alchemis has been highlighted starkly over the past few days. As an agency, Alchemis lose very few New Business Managers (NBMs). We, along with our clients provide a stimulating and enjoyable place to work (or we think we do!), but we are just about to lose our first sales team member for over 13 months. Anyone involved in a sales organisation will tell you that this is a very low turnover.

The benefit of using Alchemis and having a stable New Business Manager is the continuity it provides. That New Business Manager knows exactly what is going on, who they should be calling and when.

However, we do lose NBMs from time to time, and we have the systems and processes in place to ensure that there’s no break in momentum and that all important continuity.

As a company owner, you want to feel that the service you provide is as good as it can be, and most importantly in our industry, your people are the best in the market. I can honestly say that this has hit home over the past two weeks. We are very sad to see this particular New Business Manage leave. He has been a great team member and achieved some fantastic results for his clients. However, he is leaving and we have robust processes in place to ensure that accounts are handed over to new callers seamlessly, but these processes are nothing without the input of the outgoing NBM.

The key is an effective, well run internal briefing for each client. I have sat in a few of these briefings over the past week or so and it has become apparent that the outgoing NBM has a real passion for their clients and genuinely cares about the new caller taking on the mantle effectively, not missing any current leads and continuing to do a good job. This infectious enthusiasm for their clients clearly rubs off on the new Account Manager. I can genuinely say that seeing this first hand has instilled pride in myself at the company I co-own, the quality of the people we have employed and the commitment that they have to their clients’ businesses.

From a client perspective, there is no break in momentum. Versus an internal resource, there is no reluctant notice period, no break in activity whilst a replacement is found (we know from experience that quality sales people who work well with agency propositions are few and far between), no recruitment fee, no training or build up whilst the new person gets to know the systems and tries to decipher someone else’s notes and leads. At the end of the day, we don’t miss any opportunities on behalf of our clients if someone leaves.

I can understand if you think this sounds a little self congratulatory, but there are times when things happen within your business when you should take a step back and be proud in your achievements. Working with the other owners of Achemis in selecting and developing our current team is one of those times.

Business development continuity – there’s no other way! is a post from the Alchemis New Business Blog