I read Steve Henry’s blog on ‘What does a start-up need?’ with interest.

He raises the question about whether a start up agency needs creatives as well as planners on board; I can see the need for both myself but from my perspective of running a business development agency, I would add that one of the most critical elements in setting up a new agency is ensuring you have a well thought through new business strategy and plan.

Yes, most start ups bring a number of clients based on long standing relationships and yes, you’ll be able to work that network of old client relationships for a few months to help secure those initial accounts, but our experience shows that the little black book and the incoming calls will dry up sooner rather than later and you need to instigate a decent business development program in order to build your business successfully. New business wins from a standing start can take up to 12 months plus to convert and you need to start building the pipeline a long time in advance.

Anyone engaging with a new business agency would see budget as being a key part of the qualification process:

“We don’t want to meet anyone without an approved budget for our marketing services!”

On face value that is a perfectly valid comment and it is always something Alchemis has highlighted as part of our core meeting quality criteria. However, more and more of our clients are developing propositions around very targeted offers and services, which revolve around specific client issues. This is great news as we are able to offer something unique and different, but as a result, whilst these offers provoke interest from the prospect, it is unlikely that they will have an allocated budget for that specific activity.

This is where the new business approach to qualification needs to change. Would that offer or service provide a solution to a business need that the prospect has? If the answer is yes and we can convince the prospect that this is the case, it is not necessarily about allocated budget, but more about the authority and decision making power of that individual within their organisation. If they can see a true benefit, a budget can always be found.

In terms of the new business process, you have grabbed their interest and the next step is to persuade them to create or reallocate budget for that activity. It could be that you now need to work with that prospect to build a business case internally. This is time consuming and often arduous, but this kind of approach, should it be successful, is likely to result in stronger relationships.

At the end of the day, of course there needs to be a significant “marketing” budget in the first instance and that needs to be qualified. However, from the perspective of a business development partner, the emphasis really needs to be on the decision making power and authority of a prospect. Qualify that and you are over one of the largest new business hurdles.

Another interesting advertising and marketing column in the Evening Standard (25th October 2010).

The piece comments on the benefits of real time feedback through digital technologies and social media, enabling real engagement with consumers and allowing brands to react to feedback and messages immediately. The example cited is that of Gap and the feedback the company received when they announced a new brand logo. The company binned the logo almost immediately based on the Facebook postings.

Clearly, the capacity for big brands to focus their efforts in the digital world and use social media to gather quick feedback enables them to adapt campaigns in real time. Indeed, research agencies such as You Gov are developing specific products and services to cover this responsive research channel. It has fantastic potential for large brands in terms of consumer involvement and engagement as well as campaign management.

Social media is the new medium for achieving that end result, but actually speaking to consumers or potential consumers for your brand/proposition has been a successful and often underrated and/or under utilised tool for years. The phone is not just about slick sales people chalking numbers on a white board. It is about using each and every call and conversation to learn more about your market and how your offer is perceived.

Alchemis has been doing this successfully for the past 23 years. OK, the brands we represent are marketing agencies and not large consumer brands, but what we are able to do through actually speaking to people is gather a true response to a proposition on behalf of our clients. Based on the feedback we provide, we are able to work with our clients to adapt or focus on part of their offer as well as test new propositions.

We collect some valuable quantitative data through our bespoke software, and this, combined with the qualitative insights gathered by their New Business Manager is the added value our clients buy into when choosing Alchemis to deliver an effective business development campaign on their behalf.