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Small Spark Theory: a marginal gains approach to new business and marketing

New business is one of those subjects guaranteed to get a reaction from agency owners everywhere. Many will have a nagging feeling they should be doing a bit more, wonder how other agencies manage to land the accounts they covet, have moments of wild inspiration and energy then falter because the day job just, well gets in the way.
Gunpowder’s Lucy Mann has worked in agency new business for over 25 years and has witnessed these scenarios, and many more like them, as an outsourced new business telemarketer, a new business recruitment consultant, in house new business developer, in house head of marketing, and new business mentor across multiple disciplines and agency shapes and sizes.
Regardless of size and discipline, many agencies encounter the same new business challenges, and more and more, the solution is not necessarily an ambitious marketing plan, or expensive sales resource, but instead a forensic application of process and a marginal gains approach to performance improvement.
Gunpowder’s podcast, Small Spark Theory® explores the small changes we can make to our sales and marketing process to achieve better new business results. With contributions from a range of experts, each episode will examine a single element of the process in detail, providing manageable tips for improvement.

Find our more about Gunpowder Consulting, please visit gunpowderconsulting.com
Follow us on Twitter @gunpowdertweets and join the conversation #smallsparktheory
Music from Jukedeck - create your own at http://jukedeck.com.
Host - Lucy Mann
Producer - Isabelle Jarvis

Dec 7, 2020

I can’t imagine finding an agency owner, who since March, hasn’t tuned in to at least one of the myriad of webinars or zoom chats that have been made available through either our industry bodies (see our earlier conversation with DBA CEO Deborah Dawton), individual agency experts or peer networks. From HR and...


Nov 8, 2020

In previous episodes we’ve tackled various aspects of pitching and presenting, specifically with Tony Spong from AAR (episode 10) and Catherine Allison at Master the Art (episodes 3 and 33). In those discussions we concentrated largely on our behaviour - our pitching processes, how we question, how we listen. But the...


Oct 8, 2020

Back in April this year, Claire Beale wrote this brilliant Campaign article about the client/agency dynamic. It was a rallying cry for cultivating deeper working relationships built on partnership, trust and mutual support and a move away from the procurer/supplier mind set we know all too well.

I’ve reflected on...


Sep 11, 2020

The podcasting juggernaut shows no sign of slowing. Four years ago, when we started planning the idea behind Small Spark Theory I thought we were too late to the party. Yet here we are now and with Apple estimating some 1 million active shows and over 30 million episodes on iTunes (double the figure in 2018), it would...


Aug 10, 2020

One of the biggest challenges we face for the remainder of 2020 and beyond is undoubtedly our ability (or inability) to plan ahead.

Almost daily, we are bombarded in the news by a roll call of redundancies, rumours of regional lockdown, interspersed with “is it a V, U, W or ‘swoosh’?” predictions for our...