Referring back to my blog posted on 30th September 2010 here is my response to question number 2 on that list:

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.

There are various statistics around new business development depending on who you are and your target audience, but some ring true in most cases and certainly in the marketing services universe. The key one being:

· 25% of leads are short term and 75% long term

It was recently reported by the BPI Network that within the professional services arena, “80% of generated leads are never followed up on, dropped or mishandled”. Whilst our clients live within the marketing world, for clients entering into a relationship with Alchemis, I would say that this figure is pretty accurate and is a key reason that a dedicated new business resource is essential to manage any lead pipeline and indeed why clients engage in a campaign with us.

Failure to nurture leads is a cardinal sin of new business and the frustrating element is that everyone we speak to knows it. Time is the biggest barrier and it seems this will only grow as agencies tighten their belts and streamline their operations. This is why at Alchemis, we insist on driving the follow up/nurturing process and it is why we have continued to help our clients convert business in what has been another tough year. Many of our 2010 client wins have been from initial appointments generated in 2009.

This is not just a case of nurturing leads over the long term, but following up shortly after a meeting to accurately gauge interest and genuine opportunity. Just yesterday morning I sat in a meeting with a client, who dismissed a meeting as “unlikely to lead to anything in the short-term”. After agreeing a quick call would be appropriate that afternoon, a brief has now been received.

Of course this is an exception, but it is by no means an isolated incident. 80% of people have been keen to see what your agency can offer. Don’t let them go cold if there is no immediate brief.

From a customer’s point of view, I had a certain amount of satisfaction reading about the outcome of the “Pinocchiogate” court case this week. I’m sure you would have heard it in the news, but the topline is that Ryanair ran some advertising in the press featuring Stelios Haji-Ioannou with a long Pinocchio nose and implying that Easyjet flights are usually late which is why they had not updated the “flights arriving on time” statistics on their website.

Having suffered numerous delays and other perceived injustices at the hands of both of these airlines more times than I would care to remember, the publicity surrounding this case made me smile for the following reasons:

Firstly, Michael O’Leary had to apologise “unreservedly” to Stelios for the slander (and pay him £50K plus court costs). That must be the first time Mr O’Leary has said sorry to anyone who has been wronged by Ryanair without adding words to the effect of “we’re the cheapest airline and Europe, so like it or lump it”. Must have been pretty hard for him to get those words out of his throat without choking I would imagine.

Secondly, even though Stelios won the court case, there may be a certain amount of negative publicity generated by the whole affair with people thinking “no smoke without fire” concerning Easyjet’s punctuality. My personal experience with them is that if you get the first flight of the day at 6am you’re generally going to arrive at your destination on time. If you get a flight in the evening though, well that’s another matter.

I’m now eagerly awaiting the next stage of their public relations war with bated breath.