The relationships with your business community always contain more than what meets the eye. From all the micro interactions at community events, business visits, frequenting their establishments, and even running into them at the grocery store you know these people as your neighbors.
When it comes to business retention and expansion, these interactions are mainly stored within the brains of economic development professionals, remembering everything from your business owner’s childrens names to their industry needs. This is one of your strengths, because it lends you to be a great community partner, but it can also be a downside when it comes to succession planning.
Using a CRM to store business information such as points of contacts, employee site, industry sector, revenue, and much more allows a team to share and read the story of this business all in one spot. By moving data out of a spreadsheet, sticky notes, emails, and the scattered notes in your memory, you can build a one stop location for storing and referencing a business relationship to the city.
For example, if you’ve been working with a business over the years and are planning for retirement, your successor is going to have some big shoes to fill representing your community to this business owner. By storing all the data points such as how many employees work here and which grants this business has received, tracking your calls/meetings, and syncing your email onto a business profile within a CRM like Bludot’s solution, you can unlock transparency for the person filling your position and ensure a smoother transition for the business as well.
We know as economic developers, that storytelling is a large part of the work you do. By combining data, email interactions, and meeting notes you can tell countless stories of how and why a business matters and their important contributions to your community.
These stories of success can help with grant writing, attracting new industries to your community, and attracting new talent to your region. Additionally, by leveraging and compiling the data in one spot, it can help your team and community track gaps that businesses are looking for additional support with.
To learn more about how Bludot’s solution can enhance the work you do, please set up a demo.