In growing communities, Economic Development Departments must work hand-in-hand with the City Council to ensure the growth and sustainability of their local economy. However, it can be challenging to keep the City Council up to date with all of the business retention and expansion (BR&E) activities your department is spearheading.
In this blog, we’ll dive into a few ways that you can share your team's BR&E initiatives and goals with your City Council.
1.) Bring visibility to relationship building. Building relationships isn’t always something you can qualify – however, tracking business visits can shed some light on the relationship building activity. With a CRM like Bludot, you can track visits to businesses, what type of visit, new business growth, employee growth and even the square footage of each business. All of these metrics help share the compounding economic growth that businesses add to our communities.
2.) Add City Council members to your CRM. Tracking all of the above isn’t helpful unless your City Council is able to view it. Bludot’s CRM has additional user permissions, so you can add your City Council members as “view-only”. That way, they can view custom charts, reports and detailed information without needing to always reach out to your department. You’ll see higher engagement and understanding, with less effort on your parts.
3.) Share Information. All the Time. With your City Council able to access some parts of the information database, they can now view visual reports on their own time. Creating custom visual reports specifically for your City Council to view means that questions about business revenue, age, size and NAICS code can be easily answered on their own. By taking the information out of the spreadsheet and into the hands of the council, your efforts won’t go unnoticed.
4.) Bring data to storytelling. Make your storytelling more powerful by adding data to help promote your community. Is your City Council trying to bring a new employer to town? Give them the ability to rattle off workforce statistics during the presentation. Celebrating Women’s History Month? Share how many women-owned businesses reside in your community. Tying together the hard data with the soft touches can amplify your local community’s messaging.
A City Council that is informed and engaged in the economic development process is a powerful partner. By providing them easy to access and accurate data, they will understand the importance of your BR&E initiatives and the value of investing in economic development. As you work together, the Economic Development Department and City Council are able to build a thriving and sustainable local economy.
Want to implement some of these best practices? Schedule a call with Bludot. Bludot is the leading business retention and attraction platform, trusted by over 180 communities across 30+ states.
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