Another strong month for the sales team. The two most remarkable things in January were the unprecedented number of rearrangements we had to manage due to global cooling at the beginning of the month and the significant increase in access we achieved when targeting marketing agencies for our own new business effort.

I’m happy to report that most of the meetings postponed at the beginning of the month have now gone back into the diary. Rearranging meetings is the bane of any Business Development Consultant’s life as there is always the chance that the meeting will not slot smoothly back in and occasionally such meetings can slip into a limbo-like state for months on end. We do everything we can to minimise the impact this has on delivering to clients, including;

• Regular contact with our clients to ensure we have the most up to date knowledge of their availability for meetings
• Setting high quality meetings in the first place, with a qualified decision maker and establishing a clear agenda for both prospect and client
• Ensuring the proven process for confirming meetings is carried out
• Factoring in a cancellation rate; we set more meetings than we need to because at the end of the day and despite everything we do, some meets will always drop out

The first couple of weeks in January posed an unprecedented challenge however. Some of our clients were literally snowed in and some prospects were inaccessible on the day the meeting had been set for. Fortunately the measures we took ensured no clients made a wasted journey and the majority of the meetings we had to move in the first week or so have now either happened or will do so shortly.

The increase in decision maker access we achieved when talking to marketing agencies is harder to explain. We were 50% more likely to speak to an agency owner in January than the historical average (which really doesn’t fluctuate much). One can only assume that marketing agencies are looking positively at 2010 when planning their proactive new business efforts, which is great news for people like us. This assumption is supported by the net increase in our client base we have experienced so far this year.

I’d like to report that we found it so much easer to get through to Marketing Directors in January but this was not the case. It seems there is no substitute for hard graft when it comes to winning a telephone audience with a Marketing Director. Fortunately the uplift in successful outcomes once we have got one on the phone, which began in June 2009, now seems entrenched so we enter the year optimistically, hoping to build on a very positive second half of 2009.

Our clients attended more quality meetings in November than any other month in 2009. Although the sales team didn’t quite match the heights achieved in October in terms of new meetings set we still exceeded targets across the board. Some of the meetings we set in November will happen in January, as will most of the meetings set in December so we have entered the New Year with a record breaking number of meetings in the diary.

Setting meetings is only stage one of what can be a long journey for our clients before they win business but it’s the stage that our New Business Managers can most influence – creating opportunities for our clients to meet with prospects is the foundation upon which everything else we do to help clients is based – which is why we get so excited when we thrash our targets.

The sense of optimism and activity across UK businesses that we first picked up on in June 2009 (after a moribund 9 months) feels stronger than ever as we enter the New Year (and decade). It’s a sense based on collectively speaking with about 2000 senior marketing people every month but has been backed up since November by the fact that 2 marketing agencies we first worked with 2 years ago have recently re-signed with us to help them exploit a market that was emerging from hibernation.

It’s always a relief when the Christmas party passes without serious injury or incident but 2009’s was one of the best we’ve had. Shy retiring types are thin on the ground at Alchemis so the banter and party games began early with a champagne breakfast and Mystery Santa in the office followed by a prodigious lunch in a private room at one of London’s finest restaurants and then drinks in Soho.

The first few days of January have been very busy for the sales team. We do our end of month reports at the beginning of the following month so it was always going to be busy – but the weather has thrown some logistical challenges our way. So far London remains relatively unaffected so we’ve all been able to get into work but not all of our clients have been able to get to their meetings. By speaking to our clients everyday we’ve been able to deal promptly with any meetings that must be rescheduled. We have also focussed our fresh calling on areas of the UK not yet in the grip of permafrost but by Thursday 8 January this was pretty much London and the Scilly Isles….even so, by giving the North West, Scotland and Western Home Counties a wide berth we’ve avoided any drop off in productivity at a time when the Federation of Small Businesses have estimated the cost of the current weather to be £600m per day to the UK economy.

The sales team has been growing since early summer and we welcomed our latest colleague in November. A personal friend of one of our stalwart New Business Managers it soon became obvious to the rest of us what Pete and Richard had in common; a suspicious physical resemblance and unfounded belief in their own dancing ability meant they were quickly christened Petard.

I’m delighted to report that October was the best month for the sales team for several years, continuing an upward trend that began in June 2009. We measure monthly team success by looking at how many quality meetings were generated and attended for our clients – this is a reliable and early indicator of activity within marketing departments – and October was a record month. Ultimately we measure longer-term team success by the number and value of new business wins generated for our clients, which has surged in the 2nd half the year (14 wins for 11 of our clients in September and October alone).

This year really has proven to be a tale of two halves; the period to May was tough, as were the last few months of 2008 but things have definitely picked up since June. At the start of the year we were still finding Marketing Departments reluctant to bring new agencies in, for any number of reasons that can probably be grouped under the umbrella of “caution and indecision”. Of course, we still set quality meetings during this period and the outcomes were better than average; our clients won more business per meeting than usual. We think this was because Marketing Managers were only seeing people if they had a genuine and immediate need. Often they were looking for a leaner, better value alternative to their long-term incumbent and this benefited our mostly small to medium sized agencies. So our clients were happy even if we had to work our socks off to get them in the door in the first place.

Since June we have seen a steady rise in the number of decision makers wanting to meet new agencies. It seems the indecision has been cast off in favour of a determination to “make things happen”. For some companies this will be born from renewed confidence in their long-term prospects, for others it will be driven by expediency – but either way it has made for a more profitable hunting ground for our clients.

A full diary of prospects and recent wins in the bag obviously makes for happy clients but it also makes for happy sales people. The sales team at Alchemis have been buzzing since the summer because they are remunerated on the basis of client satisfaction. The chief beneficiary of this energy, dynamism and confidence – our clients.

As we enter November all our New Business Managers are relishing the challenge of beating October’s performance for meetings set in the month knowing that what we sow now our clients will reap in Q1 of 2010 in terms of new business won.