How do I increase my agency revenue? It’s one questions that gets banded about a lot. Often we hear that the goal of creative, communications or digital agencies is to power through the £1m revenue ceiling and that is a key reason that they are investing in new business to drive that growth. Once through … Read More

What really matters to B2B customers? It is not always just about the rational in the buying process. People buying agency services may have a range of conscious and subconscious triggers and playing to these may give your agency the edge over another. But what are these and do B2B decisions really go through a … Read More

There are a couple of frequently used adages that anyone in the commercial world will be familiar with: Time is money. You have to speculate to accumulate. Both are proved true time and again. However, linking both together would form what I like to call “The New Business Paradox.” (Note to self – register that … Read More

It’s the Holy Grail.   Phoning someone just at the point they are reviewing or may be considering a new agency or indeed using an agency for the first time. If someone tells you that they can accurately predict this, take it with a pinch of salt or at least question their methodology or criteria. … Read More

A lot of agencies we meet are often concerned about how to open up a cold new business meeting and how to close it effectively. They are most comfortable once the meeting is up and running and they can show and talk through their case studies, but find the beginning and the end problematic. As … Read More

What is a good value proposition? Our role in new business development is to help our clients define just that. It doesn’t matter if you are a creative, digital, research or any kind of agency, competition for business is rife and any prospective buyer of your services needs to be able to quickly identify the … Read More

As anyone who may have read any previous blogs of mine might gather, I’ve been at Alchemis for a VERY long time. But prior to that – in the final 6 years of the last millennium in fact – I had a somewhat different role. I used to work in contract publishing. Not just any … Read More

As we move into the second quarter of 2019, new business development and lead generation activities should be well underway for the year. Growing an agency is both challenging and rewarding. We have outlined 7 great ways to grow your agency below: 1) Set some core KPIs around turnover, new clients, extension of current clients, … Read More

15 years ago, when I was in my relative infancy as an Alchemis employee, I remember a great murmuring resonating through certain parts of the marketing industry and national press. An event was about to happen and its ramifications were so great that they were almost unthinkable to thousands of sales organisations across Britain… Companies … Read More

With over 30 years’ experience at the sharp end of business development, we have witnessed absolute talent and frankly, downright nonsense when it comes to agencies trying to win new clients. Here are just a few examples of what NOT to do: 1.    Over-promise and under-deliver. Sounds obvious but it’s actually quite difficult to put … Read More