The 13-strong firm has entered The News Business Excellence Awards in the small business category and believes it has a strong chance of success because of its rapid growth.

The company, which also currently has three agency members of staff, was set up in November last year at the Cumberland Business Centre in Northumberland Road, Fratton.

In that time it has grown from four to its current employee level and has expanded into premises next door at the business centre.

Boss Richard Keyes has an aim of getting the business to a £1m turnover in the year and believed the firm would get to that level because it was working with a number of multi-million pound companies.

Among the latest has been a £7,000 a month contract with an outfit called Pythagoras, which is the UK’s leading supplier of Microsoft CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Sales Logics. RedWasp’s job is to find leads for the company.

Mr Keyes said: ‘I think that is a significant achievement considering our age and size and reinforces how serious we are about providing a professional high end service.’

Among others it is working with the £20m turnover business Peldon Rose as a lead generator for the interior design firm.

In total the firm is turning over about £50,000 a month and it has the aim of bringing in five to six extra clients a month.

Mr Keyes added: ‘The contracts we tend to win are with bigger companies. We spend a lot of time prospecting them.

‘Our growth is a culmination of three things.

‘We spend a huge amount of time getting the people we want.

‘We look for graduates and pay £16,000 basic. and we put a lot of sophisticated IT around them.

‘The third thing is campaign management. We have two people who aren’t on the phones who are full-time running, planning, and managing the upkeep of a campaign.

‘We take time to do it properly.’

jeremy.dunning @thenews.co.uk