Build a Better BRE Interview

EDO AI PLAYBOOK · 6 OF 15 · VERSION 1.0

By Andy Greiner

Business retention and expansion interviews work when employers see useful follow-through. A long questionnaire is not the objective. This workflow creates a focused conversation, a consistent record and a practical response path for problems the EDO can help address.

Company and facility profile; authorized previous interview notes; sector; interview length; current assistance programs; partner roles; confidentiality and escalation procedures.

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Act as a business retention and expansion program designer. Build an interview for the supplied employer, preserving a common core that allows comparisons across visits. State which questions are tailored to this company and why. Treat unverified concerns as topics to explore, not allegations.

Open with the company’s priorities and progress on previous commitments. Cover demand, customers and suppliers, workforce hiring and retention, training, facilities, infrastructure reliability, capital planning, permitting and the business environment. Ask whether constraints affect present operations, future growth or the company’s preferred timetable. Include neutral questions about possible expansion or contraction without presuming either.

For every question provide its purpose, one probing follow-up and the minimum useful data to record. Separate information the employer volunteers from information the interviewer infers. Include an option to decline and a prompt to confirm what may be shared with named partner roles. Do not ask for confidential customer details that the program does not need.

Design an interview run sheet matched to the available time. Mark essential questions and optional branches. Produce a response taxonomy: information request, partner referral, recurring constraint, potential expansion, potential retention risk and unresolved issue. Do not assign a risk score from tone, sentiment or a single ambiguous comment.

Build a follow-through register with issue in the employer’s words, operational consequence, permission to share, proposed owner, next action, agreed deadline and closure evidence. Escalate an urgent issue only under the supplied program rules. Recommend follow-up intervals as proposals, not commitments.

Finish with a short employer-facing recap template and an internal aggregate reporting template that removes identifying details. Keep confidential firm-level intelligence separate from publishable program findings. State what evidence would justify changing a hypothesis into a confirmed risk or opportunity.

The interviewer should validate the recap with the employer and record sharing permission. Review potential risks with the relationship owner before adding labels to a CRM.

Convert these approved interview notes into the action register. Identify overdue commitments separately from newly proposed actions.

Close or update one commitment from a previous visit before scheduling the next interview.

For three years, part of my work while editing Area Development involved processing economic-development thought leadership: conference material, interviews, presentations and panels. That editorial experience informs the problems I choose to tackle here. These workflows are Location Decision’s practical tools, developed to help economic developers organize evidence, ask better questions and prepare stronger work.

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