Communities Sell Better When They Think Like the Prospect First

Podcast Episode 21 - From Site Selector to Econ Dev with Andrew Sloss

From site selector to economic developer: Andrew’s advice from both sides of the table.

Econ Dev ShowDane Carlson

Economic development organizations are naturally built around advocacy. They exist to tell the community’s story, explain its advantages, promote its sites, and help outside companies understand why the place deserves serious consideration.

That work matters. A community needs to be able to describe its workforce, transportation access, utilities, available properties, training partners, quality of life, business climate, and incentives. It needs clear language and credible materials that make the place legible to people who do not already know it.

But there is a difference between telling the community’s story and answering the prospect’s decision.

That difference is easy to miss.

A company evaluating locations is not primarily asking, “What does this community want us to know?” It is asking whether the location can solve a specific business problem. Can the operation succeed there? Can the site meet the schedule? Is the workforce real? Are the costs manageable? Can infrastructure be delivered? Are incentives meaningful and executable? Is there political risk? How does this option compare with the others still on the table?

Those are not promotional questions. They are decision questions.

That is why Andrew Sloss’s conversation on the Econ Dev Show is so useful. Sloss made a transition that relatively few economic developers get to make. Before moving into economic development during Covid, he spent years closer to the prospect side of the table. His path moved from law into negotiated incentives, then to Ernst & Young, where he became more deeply involved in site selection.

That background matters because it gave him a habit the economic development field does not always build into its own process: thinking first from the buyer’s side.

The Problem With Starting From the Local Story

Most communities begin with what they know best: themselves.

That is understandable. Economic developers know the local assets, the major employers, the sites, the industrial parks, the training programs, the utility providers, the transportation network, and the recent wins. When a project appears, the instinct is to gather those strengths and present them well.

The problem is that a strong community story is not automatically a strong project response.

A good project response does not begin with everything the community can say. It begins with what the prospect needs to decide. Without that discipline, communities can end up leading with strengths that are not relevant, promoting assets that do not move the project forward, or discussing incentives before they understand whether incentives are central to the decision at all.

In other words, they may be answering the question they wish the prospect had asked rather than the question the prospect is actually trying to resolve.

A selector mindset starts in a different place. It begins with criteria. What is the company trying to solve? What are the non-negotiables? What factors are being used to narrow the field? What could eliminate the community quietly before the conversation gets serious? What information would reduce uncertainty enough for the prospect to keep the location in consideration?

Those questions change the work. They force the economic development team to separate general attractiveness from project relevance. They make the organization ask whether a local advantage is truly decision-changing or merely pleasant to include. They move the response away from broad promotion and toward diagnosis.

That is where the strategy gets sharper.

Incentives Only Matter Inside the Larger Decision

Sloss’s early move into negotiated incentives is more than a career detail. It points to one of the areas where economic development requires more precision than general marketing language can provide.

Incentives are often discussed as though they are either the magic ingredient or the political problem. Some communities overestimate what incentives can do, treating them like a tool that can make almost any weak fit competitive. Others avoid the subject until late in the process because incentives are complicated, sensitive, or politically uncomfortable.

Both approaches miss how incentives actually function.

Incentives are not the whole project, but they are not an afterthought either. They belong inside the broader location decision. A company is weighing incentives against operating costs, capital investment, labor availability, logistics, infrastructure, permitting, schedule, risk, and competing offers from other places.

Used well, incentives can close a gap. They can improve project economics. They can signal seriousness. They can help a company justify one location over another when the fundamentals are close. But they cannot fix every weakness, and they cannot replace the basics of site readiness, workforce fit, infrastructure capacity, or execution confidence.

That is why prospect-side thinking is so valuable. It helps a community understand where incentives fit in the sequence of the deal. What stage is the project in? What gap would an incentive actually address? What commitment is realistic? What public value is being created? What does the company still need to believe before the location can move forward?

Those are better questions than simply asking whether incentives are available.

They treat incentives as negotiated instruments within a business decision, not as vague promises or last-minute rescue tools.

Site Selection Is Built Around Filters

Sloss’s later work in site selection at Ernst & Young put him closer to the structured evaluation side of projects, and that experience matters because site selection is not built around enthusiasm. It is built around filters.

Communities can forget this when a prospect shows interest. A request for information feels like validation. A conversation feels like momentum. A project can feel serious because the community wants it to be serious. But from the prospect’s side, the process is more disciplined and less emotional.

Locations are screened. Options are compared. Weaknesses are weighted. Costs are modeled. Risks are surfaced. Timelines are tested. Some communities are eliminated for reasons they may never fully hear. Others stay alive not because their story is more exciting, but because they continue meeting the criteria as the project moves through each stage.

That is why site selection experience can be so useful for economic developers. It makes project realism harder to avoid.

A community may have a compelling story, but if the site cannot meet the schedule, the story is not enough. A region may have a persuasive workforce narrative, but if the data does not support the project’s labor requirements, the narrative will not carry the decision. A local team may be excited about a prospect, but if the company is only scanning the market and not yet prepared to act, the organization needs to recognize that too.

This kind of realism is not cynicism. It is better targeting.

Selector thinking helps economic developers ask where the project actually is, what the next decision requires, and whether the community is positioned to survive the next filter. It helps the organization avoid confusing activity with competitiveness.

The Real Shift Is From Persuasion to Diagnosis

None of this means economic developers should stop advocating for their communities. Advocacy is part of the job, and communities need people who can tell the story clearly and confidently.

The point is that advocacy works better when it is grounded in evaluation.

Before a community sells, it should diagnose. Before it promotes, it should understand. Before it pushes every asset forward, it should identify which assets matter to the project in front of it.

That shift changes the internal conversation. The team stops asking only, “How do we make this sound impressive?” and starts asking, “What is the company really solving for?” It stops asking, “What can we include in the pitch?” and starts asking, “What information would reduce uncertainty?” It stops asking, “How do we show all our strengths?” and starts asking, “Which strengths are actually relevant to this project’s criteria?”

That kind of thinking produces a better response because the community is no longer trying to impress in general. It is trying to answer the project in particular.

A project response is not a brochure. It is an argument that the community can solve a specific business problem.

Building Prospect-Side Thinking Into the Organization

Most economic developers will never spend ten years in site selection, and they do not need to. But every economic development organization can build more prospect-side thinking into its operating model.

That starts with reading every opportunity through decision criteria rather than local pride. Each prospect should trigger a basic diagnostic process. What does this project appear to need? What are the likely elimination factors? What information will matter first? What will matter later? Where is the community strong? Where is it exposed? What should not be overstated?

The same discipline should apply to incentives, sites, workforce claims, infrastructure, and timelines. Communities should know which claims are supported, which require more evidence, and which sound good locally but may not survive outside evaluation.

This is partly a technical shift. It requires better data, better project intake, better site readiness, and better internal questions. But it is also a cultural shift. Some communities are too quick to celebrate interest. Some treat every prospect as equally serious. Some lead with pride before they understand relevance. Some start selling before they have diagnosed the decision.

Prospect-side thinking corrects those habits. It does not make the organization less ambitious. It makes the ambition sharper.

Andrew Sloss’s path from attorney to negotiated incentives work to Ernst & Young, then into site selection and economic development, is valuable because it shows what happens when someone has seen both sides of the table. The prospect side teaches a discipline the community side needs.

Economic developers should absolutely sell their communities.

But the better ones first learn how the prospect is buying.