When Economic Development Organizations create their Business Retention & Expansion (BRE) Programs, they often have key goals such as:
- Having a better understanding of business needs and expectations
- Better matching community and government resources with specific needs of a given business
- Improving relationships between the local government and its constituent businesses
- Identifying companies at-risk of relocating or at-risk of job loss
- Increasing local business retention and job growth.
These are all very good, very laudable goals. But to achieve goals such as these requires that the BRE professionals have resources, information, and intelligence on their local businesses.
If you want to understand needs, bring resources to bear for a local business, improve a relationship, know who’s at-risk of job loss, and grow the local economy, you need key pieces of information. Here’s a checklist for you to use to ensure you have what you need:
- BRE Surveys – Understand retention drivers, current business outlook, likelihood to be recruited, perception of your local business environment, and many more characteristics.
- Interviews from Site Visits – Learn about the local industry’s products/services, personnel needs/issues and recent changes, lease details, local customers and suppliers.
- Business News Research – Gain information on leadership changes, facility closures/expansions, acquisitions, earnings, corporate strategies.
- BRE Alerts – Get same day/next day updates on information that addresses imminent impact on a local business.
- Exit Interviews – Learn the reasons why businesses left, so you can apply lessons learned to those that stayed.
- Resource Updates – Have ongoing dialogue with local resources that help address business needs/issues so that you’re abreast of changes to programs, personnel, and information.
What else do you need? What do you need to know to best serve your local industries?
Get what you need so you can give what your locals businesses need.
Learn more about keeping up-to-date on your local businesses at http://brebuzz.com/
