Jan 27th, 2017- Jacksonville, FL
While everyone else is undoubtedly watching Tom Brady make history with the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, I'm going over BRE notes from Jacksonville and preparing for my next training this week.
So, back to Florida....
Day 2 was all about the elements that make up a good BRE plan. We also discussed how to properly market and brand a BRE plan, and use social media to reinforce the strategies employed. Here are a few things I took away from it:
-Customer Outreach: The days of scheduling times to meet with CEOs, picking up the phone to cold call them, and taking up an entire afternoon on the golf course or an entire lunch hour at a swanky restaurant answering mundane questions about how the operate are over. Those days died with the recession. Now, CEOs are moving faster than ever before, and an economic development office that is successful will have to keep up. That's why it's necessary to meet the business leaders where they're at, whether that be at a community service event, or in the grocery store, or at a Chamber event. Building relationships, understanding their bottom line, and development plan will be key to effectively knowing how we can assist them in keeping their doors open.
This is an area that I'll have to work on. Jerry has years and years of relationships built with business owners in our area, and I will need to make those connections at lightening speed in order to be effective. There is some validity to the idea that even those long time business owners are also getting ready to retire, and there will be an opportunity for new faces to lead these businesses in the future. I'm hoping that as we transition at the City, those businesses transitioning as well will allow for an intersect and relationships can be forged in the meantime.
-Data Retention: Although it is important to keep good data, and pay attention to trends and oddities, it is also more likely that data retained is never analyzed. The most important part to collecting data and understanding what challenges our Texarkana businesses might be facing is to actually work to use the data that is collected. Instead of collecting survey responses, recording interviews, or pulling reports, it is important to draw some conclusions from all the information, and then actually use it to make data-based decisions about spending and programming that can best benefit our existing businesses.
Since graduate school, thanks to Dr. Al Bavon, I have been thinking about how to help organizations make better data-driven decisions. Fortunately, the administration at the City of Texarkana, Texas has been doing a great job at this for the past three years I've worked there. I hope we can continue this trend and use even stronger sets of data to better understand all aspects of a decision and use our budget (tax dollars) to the fullest potential.
The trainers presented ideas about "welcome wagons" and "business walks" which were interesting takes on BRE work. Welcome Wagons are groups of people that make initial contact with a businesses when it first opens and then remains the contact for that business to the city/economic development organization throughout the businesses tenure in that location. While I'm sure we could use this concept to some extent in Texarkana, we do not have a ton of new businesses relocating to our city every year. The idea of helping facilitate various inspections, zoning requests, or other interaction with the city to ensure the processes are smooth is valid and useful.
We discussed a Business Walk program first employed by Sacramento, CA and perfected by the British Columbia, Canada Chamber of Commerce that involves volunteers gathering and walking to businesses within close proximity taking notes about the exterior of the building, traffic counts, and other noticeable traits. Resisting these businesses once a quarter, or year, provide data about changes over time. If the CEO is present when the group visits, making contact with them, just letting them know what is happening and how the data can be used is also useful. Of course, letting business owners know that the group is coming prior to the visit is also important. This technique could be valuable in Texarkana, in certain geographic locations where many businesses are located close in proximity, such as Falvey Industrial Park.
The rest of the training time was spent discussing job fairs, job training programs, working with local schools K-12 and higher education to meet the needs of existing industry, and marketing tools. Fortunately, these are areas in which I feel confident.
Next week, I'm off to Phoenix for a class in Credit Analysis. Should be fun!
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