The team was tasked with launching a marketing campaign for NMS Marketing to raise awareness and hit a monthly income target of £10,000. They initially contacted local businesses through emails and phone calls with limited success. They then organized a trade show to communicate NMS Marketing's value face-to-face which 58 local business owners attended, generating potential sales of £75,000. The campaign involved hiring and training additional telemarketers to invite businesses to the event. While calls had low conversion initially, the trade show was more effective at connecting with customers.

1. 25th March 2015
NMS Marketing Business Development:
Introduction:
In January 2015, Phill McGowan, Managing Director of the Southampton-based New
Media Software, approached a team of Business students from the University of
Southampton, to carry out a business development of his recently launched outsource
marketing company NMS Marketing.
The team consisted of two Masters Students, Pedro and Gabriela, who were studying
International Management and Logistics and Supply Chain Management respectively,
and Nik, who was in his second year of his Bachelors degree in Economics and
Philosophy.
The company had been established a few months earlier and had experienced major
success launching marketing campaigns and boosting sales for several local
businesses including a plumber, an electrician, a tree surgeon and a beauty salon.
The aim was to launch a marketing campaign in the Southampton area to raise
awareness of NMS Marketing and to hit a monthly income target of £10,000. This
was to be achieved by calling local businesses to sell them marketing services.
The team were given a budget of £1,500 per month as well as access to the company’s
call centre, email facilities, blog and social media along with mentorship from Phill
and his marketing manager, Ethan Sugden.

2. 25th March 2015
Phase 1: 26 January- 19th February 2015
Details of 1,000 local businesses in the Hampshire region were purchased from a data
broker for £230. These were to serve as our sales suspects.
The initial marketing plan consisted of sending out weekly emails to local businesses
introducing the company and highlighting the importance of having a marketing
strategy and a means of bringing in new customers. In the process, the team would
examine the current needs and expectations of local SMEs in order to tailor the
content of the emails to the existing problems within the market. By examining the
reactions of local business owners and their respective gatekeepers when being called,
the team wanted to be able to create a script which they could use to train unskilled
people to become proficient telemarketers with the least amount of training possible.
The team followed up the emails by calling up businesses and speaking to marketing
or managing directors to ask what their plans were for growth in 2015.
The team worked like this from the 26th of January to the week ending 20th of
February, with approximately 7 hours of office work per week per member and 2-3
hours of meetings in which the marketing strategy, the contents of the blog and the
sales targets were discussed.
By the 20th of February, the team had made 404 calls and got 6 leads, giving a ratio of
one lead per 67 calls. With the calling rate at the time, 325 calls per week, it would
have taken three weeks to go through the entire database (1000 leads). In this time
each member got paid the following, with an hourly rate of £7.00:
January February
Gabriela - £236.00
Pedro £154.00 £192.00
Nik £136.50 £238.00

3. 25th March 2015
Phase 2: 20th February -23rd March 2015
During the initial phase, the team experienced a great deal of difficulty
communicating the value of the marketing package. Calls were usually met with
predictable objections such as lack of budget, lack of interest or that they were
satisfied with their current level of business. By trying to sell marketing services over
the phone, most business owners assumed that we were trying to take over their
marketing department, and that we were expecting sums of money in the order of the
tens of thousands of pounds, for web development or for a telemarketing campaign.
This was a failure to communicate our value suitably, as NMS Marketing’s main
competitive advantage is that they can adapt to the company’s demands and can offer
different services, depending on what the business’s needs may be at any given
moment in time.
In light of these problems, and the team’s lack of training to sell over the phone, Phill
suggested that the team organise a trade show in the centre of Southampton, and
invite local business owners and managing directors to attend. By organising the
event, we could meet with business owner’s customers face-to-face, and communicate
the value of NMS Marketing. The event was to be held at the Royal Southampton
Yacht Club only a month away, on the 24th of March, so the team had to hire several
telemarketers and train them in order to be able to fill the event.
Event speakers were arranged from the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management,
Samsung, Berry Recruitment, University of Portsmouth and several other companies,
as well as several representatives from New Media Software who spoke about NMS
Adaptive and NMS Marketing.
Altogether, seven new telemarketers were brought in from NMS Adaptive to call
local business owners and invite them to the event. The event itself was promoted on
the rationale of wanting to help businesses grow, whilst helping them find the right
tools and the right people to do so. The initial target was to get 50 sign-ups to the
event as the team thought that in doing so, 25 would turn up on the day. In the end the
team managed to get 88 people to sign up, and 58 turned up to the event.

4. 25th March 2015
From the 25th of February when the team started inviting business owners to the
event, until Friday the 20th of March, immediately before the event, the team went
through the database twice, making approximately 3600 calls (twice the number of
leads in the database). The team made calls during 14.5 days. If we take this number
and multiply it by 6, the number of calling hours per day, we get that altogether, 87
hours of calling were done. In terms of payable hours, at any given time during the
working week there were approximately 3 members on the phones, making the
number of payable hours rise up to 261 hours. If we multiply this by the hourly rate of
£7 per hour, we get that the total amount paid in this period to the telemarketers was
£1627.
At the end of the event, there were a number of sales opportunities totalling up to
£75,000. The next step is for sales representatives of NMS Marketing to follow up
these leads.