Recently, ICMA University hosted a webinar on developing your retail recruitment roadmap with Cody Howell, vice president of Buxton; Karen Pollard, CEcD, EDP, economic development manager, Rochester, New Hampshire; and Todd Glover, ICMA-CM, city administrator, North Augusta, South Carolina. 

During this event, attendees learned that in a competitive retail recruitment environment where an estimated 10 sites are evaluated for every one selected, municipalities must take the time to develop a thorough plan for approaching and attracting retail. These steps are essential to building a competitive recruitment roadmap:

1. Know What You Need
   Before you begin the recruiting process, it’s imperative to know what your market actually needs. Leakage/surplus analysis is a helpful way to identify retail gaps and the categories of new retail that will complement existing local businesses. It’s also helpful to compare your community’s retail to the retail in other, similar communities that are further along in the development process. This provides a “reality check” of the type of retail your market can likely support. 
   
   
2. Identify the Targets
   Once you know the categories of retail that you need, it’s time to identify the specific retailers within each category that meet the shopping and dining preferences of the consumers in your trade area. Retail recruitment is a lengthy process, which is why it is important to target your efforts to be as efficient and effective as possible. Analytics can be a useful tool at this stage as they can help you to define a shortlist of retailers that show the most potential for your community.
   
   
3. Set the Stage
   Before you begin calling retailers, there’s one more important stage of the development process that should not be overlooked: pre-determining policies, processes, and recruiting materials. When a retailer expresses interest, you want to be ready. Streamlining approval processes, preparing “shovel-ready” sites, and pre-determining incentive policies are steps that can make the process go smoothly for all involved and enhance your community’s reputation as a good place to do business. Additionally, you should take the time to create custom marketing materials with the information that retailers want and need to see before making location decisions (such as drive-time population data, demographic data, and psychographic data) and make this information easy to access on a user-friendly website. 
   
   
4. Recruit to Win
   The final stage is implementing your plan. If you took the time to lay the groundwork in the first three steps, this final step will produce better results. Some advice to keep in mind: don’t underestimate the power of a “united front.” Involving local leaders with specialized experience, elected officials, and city staff shows retailers that your community is enthusiastic and will be a good long term partner. It’s also important to remember that recruiting retail takes time. Be patient, yet persistent in your outreach efforts.

The on-demand presentation for this ICMA University webinar is available here.