Across the Table: What a Former Economic Developer Sees From the Site Selector’s Chair

Devin H. Smith has a blunt assessment of his former approach to economic development: He would have made life difficult for the consultant he is today.

Before becoming a site selection consultant, Smith saw himself as a salesperson for his community. His job was to make the case, build enthusiasm and persuade a company that his location belonged at the top of its list.

From the other side of the table, he sees a different assignment.

“I saw my role as being a salesperson for the community,” Hillsdon-Smith says. Today, he argues that economic developers are most effective as information and relationship brokers: people who know the facts about a site, can assemble the right partners and help a company work through difficult questions.

Smith, founder and principal consultant of Hyphen Strategies, says industrial site selection accounts for about 80 percent of his work, with the remainder devoted to consulting with economic development organizations. That combination gives him a view of both the work communities put into competing for investment and the reasons their proposals sometimes fall short.

His central lesson: A community has to survive the analysis before it gets the opportunity to win over the executives.

Economic development marketing often speaks to the executive who will eventually announce a project. Smith wants communities to think harder about the people who can eliminate a location long before that announcement.

“The CEO who’s announcing the plant isn’t the one who would have ruled you out in week two,” he says.

That early scrutiny comes from the team examining power capacity, water rights, rail access and other operating requirements.

For a typical medium to large project in his practice, Smith says he may investigate roughly 100 to 110 communities across eight states. The client’s executive team may not see the names until the list has narrowed to five or 10.

A community can therefore lose without ever having its broader story considered by the people its marketing was designed to reach.

Smith understands why economic developers gravitate toward that marketing. He once approached the job similarly. But attractive photography and a compelling community narrative cannot resolve unanswered questions about utilities, entitlements or site control.

The first task is to give the people conducting the analysis enough reliable information to keep the site under consideration.

In Smith’s work with complex manufacturing, energy and data center projects, speed to market is a recurring priority. He sees some communities advance repeatedly because they have already worked through questions that others are only beginning to ask.

They understand site control. They have addressed utilities and entitlements. When a request for information arrives, they can respond with substantive answers.

An “unknown” or “TBD” on a consequential requirement can put a community at an immediate disadvantage.

Readiness also has a human dimension. The economic developer needs to know who can resolve an issue and be able to bring those people into the conversation.

“That’s the best sales tactic an economic developer can have,” Smith says: “being able to pull the right people in the room and be able to have the hard conversations early rather than later.”

That is a version of selling rooted in coordination. The economic developer’s value comes through in how effectively the community can help a project move forward.

Smith also had to revise his understanding of the consultant’s authority.

As an economic developer, he imagined that convincing a prominent site selector might be enough to secure a recommendation directly to a chief executive. In his consulting experience, the process involves layers of internal consideration, potentially extending from management through review committees, the C-suite and the board.

The consultant helps the company make an informed decision. The company makes the final choice.

That distinction makes the quality of an economic developer’s information especially important. The case for a community must travel through an organization, including rooms where the consultant may not be present.

It also explains Smith’s emphasis on following RFI instructions. Use the requested units. Supply answers in the requested format. Put supporting explanations in attachments when appropriate.

A consultant comparing approximately 100 sites needs information that can be processed and compared. A response that requires extensive interpretation adds work and, Smith says, can create an early impression that the project will encounter friction.

Asked what he would do if he were starting an economic development organization today, Smith does not begin with an attraction campaign.

He begins with business retention and expansion.

Existing employers help an economic developer understand the community’s business ecosystem: its decision-makers, its operating conditions and the moments when companies may reconsider their footprint. Even knowing when a tenant’s lease expires can reveal an approaching decision point.

That knowledge has value for retaining businesses. It also strengthens the organization’s ability to attract new ones.

“There’s no better way to get to know your community, to get to know the business ecosystem than doing true business retention and expansion,” Smith says.

For the hypothetical new organization, his first hire would be a business retention and expansion professional.

It is a revealing answer from someone whose consulting work is largely focused on attraction. From the site selector’s chair, knowing a community deeply is part of making a credible case for it.