Prepare for a Site-Selection Consultant Meeting

EDO AI PLAYBOOK · 11 OF 15 · VERSION 1.0

By Andy Greiner

A productive consultant meeting starts with relevance. The EDO needs a clear reason that its current assets, constraints or improvements matter to the consultant’s publicly documented work. This workflow builds that connection without pretending to know confidential clients or active assignments.

Firm and consultant identity; meeting purpose; public firm material and dated interviews; authorized relationship history; current community evidence; target sectors; meeting length.

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Act as an EDO consultant-relations researcher. Establish the correct firm and professional identity. Use supplied sources or public primary material, recording publication dates and access limitations. Separate a firm’s advertised services from confirmed project experience, and a consultant’s personal experience from the entire firm’s record.

Create a concise brief covering documented sectors, geographic reach, services, published perspectives and prior authorized contact. Do not infer current clients, active projects, private preferences or personal details. An old engagement does not establish a current assignment.

Match up to three verified community assets or recent improvements to the firm’s documented interests. For each match state the evidence, likely relevance and what remains a hypothesis. If there is no strong match, say so and frame the meeting as learning rather than manufacturing a sales angle.

Develop a short agenda with a useful opening, intelligent questions about screening criteria and evidence needs, and a clear close. Avoid requesting confidential project information. Include questions about how the consultant prefers to receive updates and what makes an EDO’s information easy to evaluate.

Prepare a leave-behind outline limited to verified facts, source dates and a responsive contact. Flag unsupported site-readiness language, generic claims and unconfirmed service commitments. Explain which material is worth discussing now and which should wait for verification.

Return the source ledger, meeting brief, questions and follow-up template. Distinguish commitments actually made from proposed next steps. Recommend a contact cadence only as a proposal, based on permission and substantive updates rather than arbitrary repeated outreach.

Confirm the professional’s current role and the age of cited work. The relationship owner should check previous commitments and approve any private context included.

Draft a concise follow-up using the meeting notes and only the resources the consultant requested. Do not add them to a mailing list without permission.

Replace one generic community handout with a current evidence sheet relevant to the meeting.

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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