Day 60: The Propect Visit

Day 60:  The Prospect visit:  This is a timely post as I just participated in a prospect visit yesterday.  This prospect is a household name and a very large capital project.  Before the prospect visit you have hopefully collected some information from the prospect so you are completely prepared.  But,  our prospect visit yesterday reminded me we need to be very flexible.  The company had told us they needed thirty to fifty acres and needed to be within thirty minutes from another facility in the area.  They had told us all this last week.  But when they arrived they need 100 acres and to be 10-12 miles from another facility.  We had all the properties mapped out including distances by minutes (not miles).  Fortunately three of the four sites we were going to show them had more than 100 acres available, so that worked out fine.  But one of the sites only had thirty acres and it was immediately eliminated.  Before the visit, we had prepared an agenda, had maps of the sites showing the needed infrastructure and pricing.  We also had some information about the advantages of our location for this industry.  We had a total of seven pieces of paper.  The company had no interest in the community.  They didn’t need a bunch of marketing pieces or studies, or business directories.  They only cared about the sites and how far the sites were from another facility important to this new operation. 

We started the meeting by offering restrooms and drinks.  We asked how long we had for the visit since they came an hour later than originally planned  (they did call earlier in the day stating they were going to be late).  We then did introductions. We then asked if the agenda looked okay to them.  We asked them to tell us about the project.  We then went over the sites in the conference rooms using the two maps we had designed.  We then drove and looked at the sites.  There was not a community tour because they didn’t want a tour.  Next:  Following up with the prospect

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