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Welcome Putting the Business Back in Business Retention SmartBusiness – The Smart Way to Help Halifax Businesses Relationship-Building and Business Retention Making the Most of Statewide Business Retention, Expansion, and Modernization Efforts Chicago’s New Direction: Leading the Race in Global High-Performance Manufacturing Five “Musts” for Business Incubator Success Growing and Keeping Your Region’s College-Educated Workers Learning to Learn: What to Do Different in the New Modern World Competing in a Global Age: New Skills for Our Nation’s Students Business Retention on a Budget: Billings’ BEAR Program Leverages Volunteers  Subscribe
About Economic Development America
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Putting the Business Back in Business Retention (cont.)
Business retention is important for those communities that have been consistently successful in attracting new investment as well.What happens to the new firm after the groundbreaking ceremony? Is it forgotten in the rush to recruit more new businesses? A systematic business retention program keeps recent “wins” on the radar screen and ensures that newly won customers are not forgotten as market conditions change. Done correctly, business retention can provide a roadmap for business recruitment within a market area. A quick analysis of industry composition in your region will reveal growing business sectors or emerging industry clusters that can be fortified by attracting the right types of companies. Knowledge of one’s existing customer base should be used to make a compelling business case to these recruitment prospects. The same holds true for entrepreneurial development. When asked, local companies will openly prescribe a “wish list” of vendors for supplies, business services and a variety of other needs. This target list can be used to spur new business ideas in the entrepreneurial community and attract seed capital.
Business retention and expansion is at a crossroads. The global economy has never been more dynamic and unpredictable. Successful businesses have never been more sophisticated. And business demands on economic developers have never been greater. Unfortunately, this all comes at a time when many economic developers view business retention as a hollow, robotic exercise in data gathering. “I want to come out and survey you today” is a commonly heard refrain. In many communities, key business customers are subjected to regular “surveying” with no direct benefit to their business, industry or local economy. In this approach, businesses are treated homogeneously, regardless of their individual needs or economic impact. It is an agency-centered approach in which the focus is internal to the local economic development organization and its own needs, such as annual reports or board propaganda. Think about it: How does a company in your town benefit from submitting to a 30- to 45-minute interrogation? What is needed is a customer-centric approach to business retention, which emphasizes value to the customer and where the survey is only a means to an end. Data obtained from the survey process is then used to develop specific customer knowledge and trigger actions that directly benefit the individual company, or broader programs or policies that benefit the industry, the entire business community and the region. Business retention is essentially a private-sector customer satisfaction program applied to public-sector economic development.
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