Investment targets are issued every year.

Meanwhile, state-owned investment promotion companies have long since been consolidated and listed.

But there is one thing that has consistently failed to keep pace.

The people are still the same group. The team remains unchanged.

With unchanged thinking and the same old approach, the pace of investment promotion struggles to keep up with the new landscape.

01 Building an Investment Promotion Team Goes Far Beyond Just Establishing a Legal Entity

Over the past two years, state-owned investment promotion companies have been established across the country.

The organizational structure is in place, functions have been streamlined, and responsibilities are clearly defined.

From the outside, the setup appears largely complete. But what is the reality on the ground?

Some staff members have been transferred from government agencies; they are familiar with policy documents but have never “battled” in the market.

Others have been transferred from subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises; while they have some business experience, they have not yet mastered the specific methods of investment promotion.

Then there is a newly selected group of people who are certainly eager to work, but don’t know where to start.

Under the same banner, a diverse group of people has come together, with varying levels of capability. This isn’t a matter of attitude, but of foundational skills.

When a state-owned investment promotion company was established, there was no ready-made “elite investment promotion team” to draw upon. Targets have been set, yet the team is still in its early stages of collaboration.

Investment promotion is all about expertise.

If you don’t know how to analyze an industrial chain, you won’t know where to find companies. When you meet with companies, if you can’t articulate their genuine needs and concerns, the project negotiations will naturally fall through. Let alone taking the initiative to target and acquire clients effectively.

At investment promotion progress meetings, some local leaders have explicitly stated the goal: to forge a highly effective investment promotion team that “understands policies, understands industries, and understands enterprises.”

These three “understandings” sound simple, but when it comes to putting them into practice for every investment promotion professional, there is still a significant gap.

Local governments are organizing investment promotion training sessions through their respective agencies. Scan the QR code for more information.

02 Project Implementation Depends on Experts

Many state-owned investment promotion companies are focused on one thing:

That is, whether this year’s investment targets will be met.

However, the professional capabilities of this team are often overlooked.

Some rely on just one or two “veterans”—project development, progress monitoring, and partnership negotiations all fall on their shoulders.

Newcomers tag along, unable to find a foothold or contribute at critical junctures.

What’s even more challenging is that, as they shift from “passively taking on government projects” to “actively expanding market opportunities,” these companies face not just an update in methods, but a complete overhaul of their mindset.

In the past, they waited for projects to come to them; now they must take the initiative. In the past, they relied on government endorsement; now they must win over enterprises through professional expertise. In the past, they emphasized policy incentives; now they must focus on industrial logic, address corporate pain points, and present concrete implementation plans.

This transformation, if left to a few veterans to shoulder, cannot be sustained for long.

Many local governments have emphasized in major meetings the need to cultivate cadres through practical experience, strengthen capabilities through tackling tough challenges, and train and hone cadres on the front lines of investment promotion.

What does this mean? It means not waiting for talent to “grow,” but actively “forging” it.

For some state-owned investment promotion companies, the professional capabilities of their staff fall short of the requirements for high-quality development.

When dealing with leading enterprises in the industrial chain, they cannot clearly articulate the industry’s competitive landscape; when facing high-quality external projects, they fail to grasp the investment logic; and when addressing enterprises’ concerns about setting up operations, they cannot offer systematic solutions.

With enthusiasm but lacking methods, experience, and resources, they ultimately waste time in ineffective interactions and miss opportunities.

In particular, the “Management Committee + Company” model is fundamentally about using market-oriented thinking for investment promotion and leveraging professional capabilities to facilitate project implementation.

The establishment of state-owned investment promotion companies across various regions is not merely a matter of personnel transfers or organizational rebranding, but rather a process of capability reshaping and mindset upgrading.

To truly shoulder the heavy responsibility of investment promotion, we must break free from the misconception of “prioritizing the establishment of entities over building capabilities” and focus our efforts on team development.

03 What Are the Main Obstacles to Implementing Investment Promotion Training?

When it comes to investment promotion training, managers often express strong support.

However, when it comes to actually implementing these programs, they consistently “get stuck” on two issues.

First, they don’t know where to start with training.

The team consists of three distinct groups with varying backgrounds and skill gaps.

Those transferred from government agencies need to learn market-oriented approaches; those from state-owned enterprises need to gain industry knowledge; and new hires need to master end-to-end methodologies. There is no clear roadmap for what to address first, how to address it, or who should lead the training.

Second, they struggle to find suitable trainers.

There are plenty of people out there who talk about investment promotion. Some discuss policies, some focus on macroeconomics, and others preach general principles. But those who have actually worked on the front lines—managing projects, negotiating with companies, and navigating the entire investment promotion process—are extremely rare.

Let alone those who can tailor courses to local industrial characteristics and translate methodologies into practical applications.

Choosing the wrong trainer leads to ineffective training; the team remains unchanged, and managers end up concluding that “training is useless.”

This is a shame—the problem isn’t with the training itself, but with choosing the wrong people.

This is exactly what GuChuan Training School does.

As the first professional institution in China to obtain accreditation for investment promotion training, we have spent eight years visiting over 50 cities, providing practical investment promotion training to more than 300 organizations, and have developed nearly a thousand practical courses.

Our instructors aren’t just teachers standing at the podium reading from slides; they are business elites who have truly “battled” on the front lines of investment promotion. The 17 years of practical investment promotion experience accumulated by the GuChuan Alliance are directly translated into the methods and insights shared in the classroom.

For state-owned investment promotion companies, GuChuan Training School offers a unique program.

Newcomers to the industry most lack a methodological framework. How to identify companies, how to make initial contact, and how to follow up on projects—we build these skills step by step.

For experienced investment promotion professionals facing plateaus, the gaps lie in industry understanding and negotiation skills. We teach how to analyze an industry and how to avoid being led by the nose during negotiations.

Different levels and stages require distinct growth paths—this is the true essence of building a talent pipeline for investment promotion.

Moreover, since each region has different leading industries and key investment promotion priorities, a one-size-fits-all curriculum simply won’t work.

At GuChuan Training School, our approach is to first identify the local industrial direction and the actual bottlenecks within the investment promotion team, and then tailor courses to address these specific needs.

At its core, investment promotion is a competition of “people.”

It’s easy to hang a sign proclaiming “market-oriented investment promotion,” but developing the right talent is the real challenge. With the new year upon us, now is the perfect time to start by building the capabilities of your team.

Local governments and organizations are encouraged to conduct investment promotion training. Please scan the QR code for more information.