In the "live-streaming era," it’s no longer news for a product to sell out in just a few minutes.

Attracting investment is much like selling a product, except that what you’re “hailing” is the investment environment.

The title of an investment promoter has evolved from “sales specialist” to the higher role of “business consultant.”

This means learning to think about investment just as an entrepreneur would.

True “consultative” investment promotion has never relied on brute force, but rather on sound judgment.

01 Deep Thinking: Focus on the Enterprise

After working in investment promotion for a while, you realize that even after signing an agreement, companies may still wait and see—or even make other choices.

In investment promotion, the more precise your assessment of a project, the greater the likelihood of successful implementation later on.

In essence, this means cutting through complexity to reach the core. It involves scientifically allocating resources and efficiently implementing projects.

When engaging with companies, one often needs insight—that is, deep thinking.

Deep thinking seems to be a way of thinking that is more profound, closer to the essence, more advanced, and beyond the reach of ordinary people.

This is too abstract, so let’s consider what “superficial” thinking is.

For example, playing chess might involve considering only one or two pieces at a time, or solving a math problem by reasoning through just one or two steps.

When attracting businesses, one might only think of providing production space, analyzing only the superficial aspects of site selection.

However, when dealing with companies in emerging sectors, or when parent and subsidiary companies are involved in location decisions, they often feel helpless when faced with complex issues involving large volumes of information.

"Consultative" investment promotion relies more on a professional perspective, in-depth thinking, and a forward-looking vision—flexibly shifting perspectives to help companies identify their "blind spots."

This might reveal that a particular location is unsuitable for the company’s growth, or it might highlight essential factors required for the industry’s development, thereby guiding the company to make decisions that better align with its own growth trajectory.

Standing at the “forefront” of investment promotion and serving as a senior advisor to enterprises requires, above all, the ability to see things from their perspective.

First, a company’s investment needs cannot be determined through simple Q&A; they are identified only after “breaking the ice” with the company.

Note that this involves “breaking the ice,” not merely superficial communication. Breaking the ice requires a foundation of trust.

Every enterprise can be defined by various labels, but there are only two core labels: industry and scale.

You can think of it this way: industry represents sector-specific attributes, while scale represents the stage of development.

However, for most companies, site selection needs are quite similar. If you run through them in your mind, they generally revolve around location and transportation, industrial support, basic infrastructure, facility space, and recruitment conditions.

Yet, each of these underlying needs is inevitably closely tied to the company’s future development. Explicit needs can be clearly communicated by anyone, while implicit considerations must be uncovered, refined, and researched.

Second, position yourself as an information hub. Familiarize yourself with the characteristics of companies in industries related to the target sector—and even become an industry expert.

Before engaging with companies, the deeper your research into the industry’s current cycle, trends in industrial relocation, and internal and external drivers of development, the more professional you will appear.

When you have a thorough grasp of industry cycles and the characteristics of specific sub-sectors, companies will naturally view you as a “senior consultant-style” expert.

For example, when you see news headlines like “The New Richest Individuals in Six Provinces All Come from the New Energy Sector,” you realize that the global energy transition is ushering in a new wave of wealth creation.

Of course, many investment promotion professionals have noticed this and are closely monitoring the investment fervor in the new energy sector.

However, if you simultaneously analyze the growth momentum of SMEs within the industry chain and identify which sub-sectors are still facing bottlenecks, you’ll uncover investment opportunities that put you one step ahead.

02 Master the Essentials: Engaging with Companies

Let’s take the example of live-streaming sales again: how can you sell more products?

Some say that good value for money and high-quality products are what truly matter; others argue that excellent service is what drives word-of-mouth for the products.

Still others believe that the products you sell must be exactly what your target customers need. This is product selection—once the right products are chosen, selling them becomes a natural process.

However, those who offer these answers are not the most outstanding business operators. The best ones always approach the matter from the perspective of optimizing the entire process.

The same applies to attracting investment, which often involves multiple processes and steps.

If every process and step is optimized to be as close to perfect as possible—or even perfect—that is what we call end-to-end optimization.

However, if the first step is not done well, correctly, or thoroughly, subsequent stages will inevitably be affected.

Therefore, screening target companies and determining which ones to pursue is the foundation for project implementation.

Just as a salesperson must select potential customers who have both the ability and the intention to buy.

Target enterprises for investment promotion must meet two requirements: they must have the capacity to invest and the willingness to do so.

But that is not enough; it is also crucial to determine whether the enterprise possesses the conditions for subsequent implementation, whether it aligns with the local target industries, and whether local development can resonate with the enterprise.

Take the Yangtze River Delta as an example: Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang each have approximately 600,000 enterprises, totaling nearly 20 million enterprises.

The challenge lies in determining whether enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta are necessarily high-quality projects, whether they align with the region’s industrial positioning, and whether they possess investment potential.

When a company invests tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan in your region, whether the project can turn a profit and sustain long-term growth is the top priority during the screening process.

Enterprises focus on low-cost, high-return operations, while “consultative” investment promotion highlights the region’s comprehensive comparative advantages.

From the enterprise’s perspective, the short-term investment is capital. In the long term, however, it impacts the development and planning of their own industry.

For investment promotion, when screening enterprises, priority is given to the host region’s conditions; some enterprises may not take root and develop long-term even if they do establish operations.

For companies engaged in industrial relocation or overseas investment, the focus should be on future investment returns. Factors such as industrial planning, supply chains, and the business environment are crucial for long-term corporate development, rather than minor incentives like local subsidies or funding.

In particular, some investment promotion professionals tend to exhaustively list local advantages in one go. When engaging with enterprises, they should present the investment environment from a comparative perspective relative to other regions.

Therefore, when engaging with companies, it is essential to think from their perspective and help them recognize the local investment advantages and development conditions—this is the true essence of “consultative” investment promotion.