Have you ever found yourself sitting up late at night on the weekend, watching television? If you have, I’ll bet you’ve seen those dating service commercials.
You know, the ones where they collect a bunch of information about you -- things like who you are, what you are, what your requirements are; in other words, some parameters to help you make a match -- and then enter it into a computer.
They do this with thousands of other people and, suddenly, they’ve got what’s know in the business as a database.
You tell them what you want and they match you up with someone who not only meets your requirements; you also have to meet their requirements. Hopefully, it’s a perfect match.
That’s kind of like what we here at Expansion Management do for a living.
We try to match companies to communities that are trying to attract companies like yours.
How do we do that? Like those computer dating services that advertise on late night television, we act in the role of middleman, or broker. The only difference is that we do it for free.
Right now, you know that your company, for whatever business reasons, needs to expand or relocate its operations sometime in the next year or two. If you’re like most business executives, this is probably a totally new experience for you. Your expertise is in running and growing your company, not in geography or relocations.
Not only are you looking for the best location to expand your business, you’re probably concerned that you go through the process of finding the right location in the most systematic and thorough manner possible.
That’s where we come in.
When you fill out the “free site info” card from the cover wrap of this magazine and send it to us, we will have one of our trained site location specialists call you to find out more about your company and your needs. They will ask you if you have any special requirements, and if there are any particular regions, or states, or communities in which you are particularly interested.
Then we’ll put you in touch with the right people in the locations in which you expressed interest. By right people, I mean the people who can answer your specific questions about a location, who can provide you with information about taxes and business climate and work force availability, who can address your questions about incentives.
After all, during the initial phase of your search, what you’re looking for is information, and lots of it. That’s what we’ll provide you with: information you can use to compare cities so that you can get your list of realistic possibilities down to a workable number.
At this point, it’s up to you.
Like the dating service, we won’t accompany you on your date(s), so don’t expect to find us in the back seat chaperoning the courtship.
So good luck, remember to smile, and never lose sight of the fact that what you’re really after a lasting relationship for your company.
Bill King is the editor of Expansion Management.
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