My Mum doesn't know what I do for a living (I'm not a gigolo, I run a new business agency)

Running a new business agency is a big bundle of highs and lows, work and results, frustration and resolution. I'm in the room now with a small but effective team - we've just hired a new guy that we're really excited about. He seems like our sort of person and that's important - enthusiasm is a part of what we do. My enthusiasm for what I do hasn't ever wavered. There's a small problem though: when I meet people that my parents have told about me, they never understand it. I think one person that Mum and Dad described Sponge NB to in the last 5 years has understood what Sponge NB does without a lengthy explanation. This is my attempt to explain it.

Okay, our office is full of phones, computers, marketing books and magazines. If you walked in now, you'd see the Account Managers making calls and me typing on my Samsung laptop. Same as any office.

We work for marketing companies mainly. They hire us to find new clients for them (that could be someone small like a local pet shop or someone big, like Tesco). Our part in that is to phone those companies that may need their services (services including advertising, design, online, PR, sales promotion, events or any other marketing discipline). We find these companies through research - something we do a lot and are very good at. When we phone these companies, we call in the guise of our clients. If I'm calling for a client called Monkey Marketing (fictional company...), then I introduce myself as Steve from Monkey Marketing. Making sense so far?

So, the aim of the call we make is to identify an opportunity for my client - not easy. Then we have to try to arrange for our client to pitch to them, either in an existing pitch, where they'll be responding to a brief, or perhaps to something more project-based, maybe where we've created an opportunity from scratch. There a lots of people out there who are easy to book meetings with. There was a chap at the DTI called Rupert Marsh. He looked after Online Marketing stuff there. He was always (I don't know about now, I haven't called him since I worked for nb ltd) very easy to book if you were calling from a web agency. The meetings always seemed good too, but he never once gave any of my clients any business. These people are best avoided - this means missing out on booking loads of meetings. Our company prefers to go for the good leads exclusively. This means we make fewer calls, so we have time to do our research. It means fewer meetings per month for our clients, because we don't want to book easy ones. It's a tough brief and one that's hard work to sustain. Tough months are very tough, but of course the good months are fabulous. Our clients pay us a retainer of around £1900 a month for a proportion of an Account Manager, plus me backing up their activity. They get a huge database of companies and contacts and they get the benefit of our research as well as the business wins that result from all this. When they win business, they pay us a commission, based on the Gross Profit from that business. Sponge NB pays this commission to the staff. It makes them focus on finding business wins.

To get this done, we need more than phone calls. Here are some things we do for our clients:

- Research
- Investigative calling
- Assessment of their marketing materials
- Management of their Twitter output (optional extra)
- Database generation and cleaning
- Multi-stage email campaigns with follow-up phone calls
- New Business training
- Affiliate introductory service (some of our clients end up partnering to provide a wider breadth or services
- Other things which escape me right now

So that's it, I think. That said, the "comments" bit below is a handy place to ask any questions, so if you're an agency, a competitor or just my Mum, feel free.

How the FA Trophy ended up being a tech-fest.

On Saturday, Ebbsfleet United lost in the semi-final of the FA Trophy. Perhaps not the most likely example of Social Networking or online technology you'd spot. It was in fact a spectacular yet unsung example of web technologies combining. I won't write an essay, but here are some examples of why it ought to have been singled out as a true techie highlight.

- Firstly, Ebbsfleet United is owned by 10,000 members of MyFootballClub - all club decisions are voted on online.
- The games are broadcast live on the web to all overseas members after a deal was made with Setanta.
- At half-time, members are interviewed in a specially created broadcast room at Stonebridge Road, the stadium.
- One of the members, Nick Baggott of Navigate Consulting, contacted me on Facebook to ask for text updates on the game (he's in Argentina right now)
- In the end, he was able to watch the live-streamed game in Argentina.
- The team was selected by the Manager after an online vote allowed him to do so.
- The headline on the poster, newspaper ad and flyers for the game was chosen by members after an online pun competition.
- Dozens of MyFC members discussed the game in the MyFC chatroom, while emailing Jaiku (it's a bit like Twitter) which generated automated, free texts to members who'd subscribed.
- Dozens of members met up at the game (as they now always do!) and watched the game together, live.
- MyFC has Facebook groups publicising itself and various appeals.
- Ebbsfleet's striker, Michael Gash was purchased for £20,000, donated by hundreds of MyFC members.
- Ebbsfleet's centre-back Darius Charles was purchased after a member vote. Dozens more chipped in for a chunk of his transfer fee.

There's more too. There's a FleetWiki, where ideas are gathered and developed, the Board of MyFC have their meetings on Skype, there are Flickr groups for our photos and there's even an anti-MyFC web site for disgruntled members. It may not survive however and needs more members. I'm not asking you to join, but if you're reading this blog, I reckon you're a little curious....

How not to campaign against Facebook

Recently, Facebook has reinvented its layout. The new system, clearly designed to compete with Twitter, with live updates from friends, is unsurprisingly unpopular with long-time Facebook users. Sometimes, people get comfortable with things and they don't like it when it changes. Often, it's for fairly superficial reasons and their adverse response fades quickly. My personal opinion (for what it is) is that I'm impressed that a relatively big organisation has moved quickly to meet a market's demands. If MySpace, Faceparty or any of the others were so nifty, perhaps Facebook would have something to worry about.

So, lots and lots of people are currently taking time out from messaging their friends on Facebook to campaign about the "new Facebook". Where are they doing this? Yep, on (the new) Facebook. One "group" (groups are collectives you can join to support a cause, statement, petition or conceivably anything) is called Petition against the "new Facebook". It was easy to find using the new Facebook.... It currently has over 1.7 million members. Yes, 1.7 million people dislike the new layout of a social networking site so much, they're using one of its features to decry it. There's a certain dislogic to it (dislogic isn't a word, but illogicality is an ugly, ugly word) which may have escaped these protesters. But they're not alone. Another group, called People Against The New Facebook System has a further 260,000 members and then there's We Don't Like The New Facebook, with a paltry 210,000 members (these duplicative groups remind me of Monty Python's "People's Front of Judea" scene...).

Facebook is of course the winner in this changeover - there are over 2 million members across these groups, using Facebook's features more than most of the users who are ambivalent about the change. I'm aware that some people will have defected to MySpace et al, but while millions more either don't care or care enough to extend Facebook's many usages to rail against itself, this particular episode in Social Networking's history isn't likely to dent the huge presence that is Facebook.

I'm very bored of thinking and typing the word "Facebook" now, so that's all.

Not a business-y post, just a nice picture of a bee.

I took this in Northumberland. Nice eh?

Business Development, New Business, or whatever you call it.

We've just taken on a few new clients and are interviewing for staff - quite the opposite of many companies at the moment. We're being asked to pitch for new business contracts regularly and a recurring question is "is it harder this year?" - not surprising. My answer has been "no" - because it's always been tough. There are very few easy business wins in marketing, so now that every penny is being watched it is harder to justify the spend. Which is great if you're small or medium-sized and play the hand your dealt correctly. Some of the big agencies are looking at their plush receptions, glass buildings and shiny, fast cars and hoping their clients don't realise that they paid for these things.

Many of our clients are in more modest offices, keeping low fixed-costs and eschewing the excesses that characterise an industry best described by Matt Beaumont's books. Their clients pay well for services that do what the pitch promised and these are the agencies that are benefiting from the trickle down from the big guys. It has been over-said that "nobody gets fired for hiring Saatchi's". It's probably still true, but I imagine few people will get promoted for doing so now. Sharp Marketing Directors and Managers know that medium sized agencies are responsive, keen and capable, while often staffed by former big-agency people. This week, we were contacted by a newly installed Marketing boss at a motorcycle company asking us to put the best of our clients in front of him. Nice for us, but the most interesting thing for him was that we don't represent any of the really big agencies.

I'm beginning to think that the reason we're doing well is (apart from our staff, our attitude and our desire to win things) that we're a lot like our clients. I've watched as our competitors have shrunk, disappeared or in one case, re-opened in a new guise (twice...). We change our approach by the minute. We spend little on luxury and a lot on resources. Our clients are used to a kick up the arse if they're slowing us down. Our office is often as untidy as it is busy.

So, when I'm asked if it's harder this year, I try to explain: if it's not hard, you're just not trying. A friend of mine runs Body Balance Osteopaths. He's very well-respected in his industry, is a good person and works hard. He keeps up with technology and marketing (he remains one of the few osteopaths with a strong SEO effort behind his web site), but new business had slowed down. Now we can't make calls to people, hoping to find one with a bad back, but he asked for our help. We found a local government magazine that is distributed to every household in our borough and negotiated a silly price for 12 adverts. We selected a separate VOIP phone number to use (we use Gradwell for this) so as to track bookings. The total cost was around £50 a month. It's early days (month two) but each ad sees a burst of bookings (yesterday saw six new patients call the designated line to arrange appointments) at £35 a pop. We're already looking for the next opportunity for Body Balance to grow, while their peers recede. Advertising isn't our role, but resourcefulness, tenacity and intelligence are. None of those come easy, so yeah, it's hard to be as good as we are, but so it should be.