As evidenced by the pollen caked on the back window of my car, spring is officially here. Though with the sloppy weather of the last couple days it feels more like fall.

Regardless, it’s suddenly seems like everything is waking up around us, and in terms of New Business Development, everyone.

After a very brief lull, proposals have kicked backed up again with a vengeance. This means the majority of my days at DDA are now being spent on conference calls, e-mails, preparing proposals, internal meetings and discussions, and returning calls.

It is a very time consuming and involved part of my job. A large reason for this is the way DDA handles inquiries and every job it does — whether it’s web development, video, animation, graphic design, etc. — as I know I’ve written about before, in a very customized way.

There’s a process to determining what the best strategy for any project is — and it almost always begins with a conference call. This is where we connect with the client and really flush out what it is he or she is looking for.

From that, one of the department heads — website, video, graphic design, or programming — will prepare a time estimate. As we pride ourselves on being as cost efficient as possible and always staying as close to possible within the perimeters of the estimate, this can be tricky, and often requires several revisions and changes.

As one of four professional writers on staff, it is my job, as well as that of the other writers, to take the time estimate and turn it into a quote.

As you can imagine, with so many inquires flooding in as of late, this little process takes up quite a deal of time. But it’s a critical piece to retaining the customized and detail-oriented approach that makes us DDA.

Here at Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA), we do something that makes others jealous — work four 10-hour days. Maybe that in itself doesn’t cause envy, but the three-day weekend does.

I’ll admit it was a transition that was easy to get used to and one that would be hard to let go of, but even with that extra time, we haven’t forgotten the most important thing — our clients.

This past Friday sitting in a car dealership, negotiating a trade-in, the salesman came back to find me talking to my own perspective client. A call had come in from a company interested in our services. I suppose we could have waited until Monday to return the call, but as a full-service advertising and marketing company whose first concern is the clients, that’s just not our style.

Being accessible to clients, even on days we are closed, isn’t only important when it comes to New Business Development. We are on-call to all of our clients, whether it’s a website, video, print production project, or more, in case of urgent situations or questions.

This past fall, we completed several tradeshow items for a dental practice — we also created a DVD and website. They were at the show to recruit new dentists and specialists. As a growing practice, it was very important to them. We took care of everything from beginning to end, including all of the necessary paperwork for the tradeshow.

But the most important piece, and the one that could’ve avoided a minor disaster or catastrophe, was a list of cell phone numbers of all of the people at DDA who were directly involved in the project. There was a number for the website, the DVD, the tradeshow material, and one in case anything went wrong administratively.

Our client knew that they were covered, not only in terms of presentation, but for any of those unexpected issues that pop up from time to time.

I like my Fridays, most definitely. But when it comes to making sure our clients needs are met, I don’t mind taking the time.