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.