Global Direct Investment Solutions

Corporate Development for a Networked World

OnTheShortList.com     SurgeUSA.org

ShortListNews.com

Services For Area Representatives

Bruce Donnelly   bruce@gdi-solutions.com    (Biography)

We were the exclusive sponsor of the CoreNet Global 2004 Economic Development Leadership and Accomplishment Awards, as in fall 2003.  (Not in 2005 or subsequently)

We presented the awards before a general session of 3000+ attendees at the CoreNet Global Summits in Atlanta and Chicago.  Winners were also featured in the May issue of Corporate Real Estate Leader magazine and on this website and CoreNet's website.

Are you on our "long lists" already?  Try our Site Search.

If you want to add a button or banner link to our website, you can find the images through the above.  Contact us if a custom "landing page" or "deep links" may be appropriate to highlight the content most likely to be of interest to your contacts.

Based on prior experience of more than a decade in this profession (see Bio), and our preparatory work in recent years, we expect to contact top executives at hundreds of companies per month about their specific investment interests, and provide very well-qualified referrals to the participants who can potentially help them with their plans.

If you would like to participate in any of our various services, but can't move quickly because of budget constraints, approval processes, or other reasons, please talk to us and we can probably find a suitable way forward together within such constraints.

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Note the various inexpensive new services we offer to highlight :

•  recent advertising - to find ads at any time through their content

•  event sponsorships, exhibits at trade shows, and speaking engagements

•  major corporate real estate listings

•  Project Profiles by industry or by location for major announcements

•  available Promotional Materials or Labor Market Profiles

•  "Point of View" presentations analyzing what differentiates your area, reflecting your local market knowledge and independently verifiable facts

These complement our Area Profiles, which are annual work to maintain and openly share timely knowledge summarizing what differentiates an area, including links to details about topics such as those which can be highlighted separately as above.

•  The "Welcome" page (above link) also provides an introductory overview of the various services we offer, how to participate, and illustrative budget planning or cost considerations, given the typical resource constraints facing area representatives.
• The section on "Contacts" and active participants already includes website links for many area representatives and professional service providers worldwide, and will highlight active participants in our services (GUIDE Area Profile, SICR, etc.) to share additional local knowledge and call attention to the benefits of such areas for investors.
• Links to the information about areas are also available at the bottom of many pages for convenience, as well as on the special "For Executives" and "Professionals" pages.  The regional lists of area representatives can also be reached through the "Maps" button in the header, above right.
• For example, follow these links to examples of GUIDE Area Profiles, and note that they also have maps linked to the Profiles for convenience, as well as the ability to highlight multiple sources of support in an area :
  • Tri-Cities, WA (in the US West Coast regional table)
  • County Durham, England (in the European regional table)

  One of the benefits of the GUIDE Area Profile, from the perspective of top executives and their advisors, is to provide a consistent "front end" through which they can quickly find and browse through basic information scattered across many inconsistent websites, including who to contact, what they can do to assist executives, and what has happened in the area recently.  You can try this by browsing the lists for any region of the world yourself, keeping in mind that this is still a new service.

  This makes such timely local knowledge readily available "at the point of sale", when they are looking for it, while also making it easy to browse through areas which they might never have investigated otherwise.  In effect, one role of the Area Profile is to arouse interest in the area's website by summarizing what one may discover through research and local contacts, but it also makes it easy to skip the websites and make direct contact.

  The Profiles can also link directly to presentations of typical interest, when available, such as information about available properties, labor market issues, etc. to elaborate upon the basic summary - even if such details are available through the website of a different local partner in the area.  Even though each area may offer such information in a different place or format, we can link to such topics of common interest in a consistent way.

  A linked Biographic Profile describing the key contacts in the area can also help to facilitate introductions and highlight prior work on major projects.

Although the content of this website is extensive, please keep in mind that the focus of this business is to develop personal relationships among the executives who are responsible for major investment projects, as well as the professional service providers and area representatives who can help them.  The website just provides many resources directly for their convenience.  It is not intended to be a "do it yourself" location selection tool.

There is a special "For Executives" page to simplify access by executives to the website content which we believe will be of most interest to them.  This is, in effect, an alternate home page for their benefit, and will continue to evolve according to feedback about what they find to be most useful. 

For example, we are compiling lists of major companies in areas around the world, so that it is easy to see at a glance which major firms are clustered in an area, and cross-reference such information to their websites as well as the Profiles and websites of local area representatives.  We are unaware of any other source for such information, so it will be somewhat difficult to compile such details.  We hope that area representatives will share such knowledge about their own areas to make it easier to provide a good picture of the major companies they serve.  For example, this is one of the topics of interest in our GUIDE Area Profile work.

We are also organizing a new feature to list major properties, through which area representatives, property owners, or brokers can provide a very simple "point of sale" description and links to details so that it is easy for executives to browse through major properties in any participating areas, and then directly contact the organizations involved if interested.  This will cross-reference to the GUIDE Area Profiles, when available. 

We have also organized articles in development magazines by region and by topic for their convenience, as well as articles by leading consultants, with links to Profiles of their firms and the consultants.

There is also a simple "Professionals" page (and an alternate page with more highlights and explanations) for use by professional advisors such as location consultants and other types of service providers for projects.

The Referrals section explains the independent referral process we follow, as well as other services for active project leads to be "recycled" for the benefit of active participants, and a new way to handle major project rumors.

 Note that corporate executive feedback about the handling of their projects, or their information needs in general, may also be highlighted in the Special Interest section or the sharing of "lessons learned" and "proven solutions".  These sections will develop over time as such feedback is received.

 The News section provides a chronology about the development of this company, including any press releases or other announcements.

 There may also be selective content about The Market for global direct investment projects in general, such a information we receive about major project announcements which may be of interest to executives.  It is not our intention, however, to compile a record of all such announcements.

•   Please reply to the GUIDE Network Survey, which consists of a few basic questions which can be answered quickly and easily by e-mail.
  • There is also a longer version of the GUIDE Network Survey (free), which is an Adobe PDF file covering the same basic topics, which may be helpful if more explanation is needed about what we are seeking.

•  SICR addresses the challenges of proactively reaching major investors by developing support relationships on an independent basis, and then "pulling" in appropriate introductions based on better sharing of local knowledge, instead of "pushing" one location.  It is how we take knowledge, such as what we organize through the GUIDE services, "to market".
•  GUIDE is a group of response-oriented services to organize and share better local market knowledge with investors in a consistent and comparable way which parallels the typical location selection decision process
•  Although there is a "data" dimension to location decisions, the key need isn't statistical data, but rather better local knowledge to make sense out of choices on the basis of reliable facts
•  GUIDE also addresses the "experience" dimension more reliably by documenting a representative sample of actual investor experiences in an area in an independent and very consistent way, so that such experiences can be compared

•  SICR isn't cheap, but should deliver high value through very well qualified introductions to the right executives at the right time for major investment project decisions which appear to be a viable match with the advantages of the participating location based upon the available knowledge about both sides.  It is, in effect, an investment in the capacity of this business to develop and maintain such corporate relationships and find more projects.
•  SICR is intended to be economical, however, by comparison to the direct cost of an investment promotion professional and the necessary costs to support such exclusive work, because the cost is effectively being shared among several participants.  For example, such costs are also shared by our fee arrangements with participating professional service providers.
•  Participation in the GUIDE Network is free in exchange for periodic updates of very basic facts through the GUIDE Network Survey process.
•  The GUIDE Area Profile cost reflects the time required to maintain a close working relationship and better knowledge of the area, rather than just data to be published in promotional materials or a website, or to be used for a single enquiry.  The cost is not just for the additional web pages involved.
• For those areas which want to highlight major available properties, please refer to the section about adding such listings.  Up to ten relevant listings are included free with the GUIDE Area Profile service, or otherwise there is a small charge to cover our costs for the work involved in such listings.
•  The GUIDE Area Reports and Experience Reports involve independent research work by leading professionals, but are standardized to minimize the higher costs of such work.  They require custom proposals since the amount of work involved may vary significantly between areas, unlike the GUIDE Area Profile work, which is a fixed price.  Contact us for details.

•  Australia Trade Coast  (2004 CoreNet Global award)
•  Greater Oklahoma City Chamber  (2004 CoreNet Global award)
•  Hudson Valley Economic Dev. Corp.  (2004 CoreNet Global award)
•  Cincinnati USA  (2003 CoreNet Global award)
•  Greater Tampa Chamber  (2003 CoreNet Global award)
•  Prince William County, VA  (2003 CoreNet Global award)
•   Invest Korea
• County Durham, England, UK
•  Tri-Cities, WA
•  Le Sueur, MN
•  Buck Consultants International
•  DEALTEK
•  The Austin Company

See also : major real estate listings

•  There are many types of services in the global marketplace to support area representatives, as shown by the listings in the section on Participants and examples of contacts.
•  Please don't confuse GDI Solutions with other services, such as those offering traditional "lead generation" services, public relations, the sharing of extensive databases about business location factors, or the publishing and advertising services.
•  We're unaware of any comparable business in this profession.  If you ever find one, please let us know !
•  We actually introduce leading professional services which you might assume to be competitors, since we have no desire to invest in the duplication of capable existing services.  We profit by introducing well-qualified contacts to each other.

In particular ...

•  During introductory conversations with area representatives in recent months, contacts have repeatedly tried to "pigeonhole" this service as being analogous to other service providers who they have met before, such as ACN (now known as bizsitesDATA.com), WEDA, NAM's Site Selection Network, location consultants, "lead generators", PR firms, telemarketers, etc.
•  As the section on Participants and other contacts should now make clear, we are not in the same business, despite some overlap for some aspects of our work.  Indeed, where there are potential synergies in our work, we may even collaborate informally, or retain their services to support our own work.

•  There is an overview in the "Welcome" section
•  Consider the potential impact of inexpensive services to highlight what is available in the area, such as the following, easily found through regional tables of contacts in a consistent manner for anyplace in the world.
  • major real estate listings
  • Network Survey summaries, which can be published (optional)
  • Project Profiles to highlight major project announcements
  • Testimonials to highlight the experience of major investors
  • Advertising Recall to highlight recent advertising in any media
  • Promotional materials to highlight which share useful knowledge
  • Area Profiles to share local knowledge and contacts
•  A more detailed explanation illustrates the value proposition, with related examples to illustrate service pricing for the sake of general budget planning and consideration of the value.  For more specific proposals, contact us directly.
•  Consider the impact of each successful investment project which may be identified through a process such as SICR
•  Consider how much it costs for all the marketing activities combined relative to each such "project win"
•  Consider excluding projects which were not really competitive "wins" requiring investment attraction efforts (i.e., pretty much a foregone conclusion, without the need to invest resources and promotional work to try to identify, reach, and persuade the responsible executives, even if the project may have required considerable hard work and support before it was "won").
•  These are just a few of many reasons.  The potential value should be self-evident.  The shared challenge is to create a service which can deliver high value for all participants through many close working relationships and better sharing of valuable knowledge in this marketplace - not just databases.

•  We're not in the arm-twisting business, trying to cajole every area representative to actively participate in this service, and pay us high fees without getting high value for their areas.  That is a pretty obvious recipe for business failure.
•  Frankly, there are some areas which simply should not do more than the free or more inexpensive services to help us keep our records up to date, in case we ever run across a project enquiry which may be relevant to their areas.  Neither one of us should invest a lot of time and resources trying to develop a much closer working relationship.  We should just maintain friendly contact, as we already do with many organizations through participation in events and other professional networking activities.
•  We want you to be happy with the working relationship for many years by demonstrably delivering high value for your economic development objectives by helping you to meet executives who may have a strong interest in investment in your areas, and by sharing better local market knowledge among potential investors to help guide their choices.
•  We hope that will prove to be of interest.  If so, contact us.

•  As GDI Solutions develops, the business plan involves very significant marketing investments to make more investors aware of these services every year, thereby rapidly expanding the base of corporate relationships and projects supported.
•  For those organizations which invest in significant advertising programs for their own purposes, such as to raise the market visibility and image of the areas which they represent, or to promote specific capabilities to target markets, there may well be good opportunities to work together to develop even more effective promotional campaigns together in cooperation with leading advertising and PR firms and media channels.

•  Once again, for clarity, it is not our intention to compete with existing professional service providers in the marketplace.  Our role is to more efficiently introduce good services to the people who need to find them. 
•  We try to develop a very strong base of market knowledge and many close working relationships and other contacts in order to make well-informed introductions to the people and information sources which can help investors to succeed with their projects.
•  Although that should result in extremely well-qualified introductions according to investor interests, we are not in the "lead generation" business as representatives pushing the interests of any single professional service or location.  Our role is to efficiently "pull" in valuable contacts and knowledge.

•  We fully appreciate that investment attraction is only one aspect of economic development, and that there are many other priorities, including effective programs to enhance the economic impact of existing business investments in an area.
•  The GUIDE Experience report services in particular are intended to provide an independent professional process to gather and share useful (but non-confidential) knowledge about the practical experiences of existing investors in an area.
•  Although very useful to potential investors, that process can obviously also be used to enhance knowledge of the support which existing investors need within the area, and to identify opportunities for business growth.  The process can also share "best practice" knowledge of local business development and retention programs in comparable areas.