There’s a well-known saying in the investment industry: good projects never wait.

When a project lead comes along, you only have a few days to act.

Whether a deal is sealed or not often depends on how professional the investment promotion specialist sitting across the table is.

But professionalism is something that must be cultivated, and local investment promotion cannot be rushed.

Projects can come knocking at any moment, but it takes a year or more to build a professional investment promotion team. This time lag has become a weak point for many counties’ investment promotion efforts.

Qingyang County’s response has been to stay one step ahead of potential projects by first recruiting and training the right people.

The “Running Ahead” Industrial Pioneer Training Camp, which recently concluded, was precisely this strategic first move.

One hundred young officials, a 10-day intensive training program, four rounds of selection—with county leaders evaluating the candidates and entrepreneurs putting them through their paces.

01 Why There’s No Time to Wait

By bringing forward the training of investment promotion talent, Qingyang has clearly defined the sequence of these two tasks.

On one hand is the pace of projects. Every region is competing for high-quality projects; companies ask direct questions and make decisions quickly. The moment they bring up energy consumption quotas, service radius, or whether upstream and downstream industries are locally available, if the investment promotion specialist can’t keep up, the conversation stalls—and pulling staff from other positions at the last minute simply won’t cut it.

On the other hand, there is the pace of talent development. An investment promotion specialist capable of independently negotiating projects must undergo repeated training in industry knowledge, policy analysis, and negotiation and implementation—a process that takes time and cannot be rushed.

When these two paces don’t align, it’s easy to end up in a situation where “the project has arrived, but the people aren’t ready yet.” By the time you realize you’ve lost a few good projects and try to catch up, the damage has already been done. The competitiveness of investment promotion professionals is particularly crucial; if you’re even a step behind, a promising project might end up going to a neighboring region.

Qingyang’s approach is to lay the groundwork early. The 100 young officials participating in this training come from various fields, and most are new to investment promotion.

County leaders did not treat this as just another routine professional training session; in their view, this is a talent development initiative for Qingyang that must be taken seriously as an “investment in people.”

To build up this reserve force, Qingyang County partnered with Guchuan Training School to organize this training camp.

After all, investment promotion is a protracted battle; the team must train year after year alongside the industry. Hoping to cram at the last minute won’t yield genuine expertise. The focus is on whether, three or five years from now, Qingyang will have a capable investment promotion team at its disposal.

02 How to Build the Right Team

Recruiting people isn’t difficult; the challenge lies in ensuring they are “professional.”

Qingyang set very specific standards for this training camp: graduates must understand Qingyang’s industries, be able to analyze corporate needs, and provide answers to entrepreneurs’ questions.

Centered on these standards, the curriculum avoided generic theories from the very beginning. Senior investment promotion experts from GuChuan United, working alongside the county’s industry leaders, designed seven specialized sessions closely aligned with Qingyang’s five key industries—covering everything from industrial planning and policy interpretation to project evaluation and implementation support.

More importantly, the program was tailored by industry.

The five industry groups each delved deeply into a specific local industrial chain: the magnesium-based materials group leveraged Baomei’s advantages as a single-site production base to identify downstream opportunities in new energy vehicles and lightweighting; the pet economy group focused on growth sectors such as pet food, supplies, and leisure tourism;and the Jiuhua Polygonatum sector mapped out the entire chain from cultivation to deep processing, and on to medicinal, dietary, and wellness applications. Investment promotion targets the missing links in the local economy; without a thorough understanding of the industrial chain, it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly who to approach.

The core curriculum of the Gu Chuan Training School has also been integrated—the entire project follow-up process is broken down into six major phases and 24 key milestones; project evaluation uses the “Observe, Listen, Ask, and Examine” method to distinguish between authenticity, quality, and potential; and the investment attraction roadmap relies on “Five Charts and Two Lists” to map out the industrial chain.As the first institution in the country to hold accreditation for investment promotion training, the Guchuan Training School has trained nearly 100 hands-on investment promotion instructors and developed over 1,000 practical courses. This curriculum has been refined through repeated iterations and consists entirely of practical tools ready for immediate use.

Listening alone isn’t enough. Trainees spend four days on-site at enterprises within the industrial park and key project locations, accompanied throughout by frontline investment promotion officials.For prospective projects of value to Qingyang’s industries, participants must learn to break down the key concerns of enterprises—such as land use, energy consumption, supporting infrastructure, policies, and labor—to anticipate potential bottlenecks. They then devise solutions tailored to local conditions to formulate a practical, actionable implementation plan.

The toughest challenge was saved for the finals. After four rounds of screening, 20 of the original 100 participants took the stage, with five industry groups each presenting their research findings and investment promotion proposals.

In the audience, county leaders evaluated the presentations, while five entrepreneurs with deep roots in the local community took turns asking questions—where raw materials would come from, whether upstream and downstream support systems were in place, and how employees’ living arrangements would be addressed. Using a market-oriented perspective and genuine business needs, they scrutinized the results question by question.

Having market professionals set the challenges is a far more effective way to gauge the quality of a proposal than conducting a self-assessment behind closed doors. Only those who can withstand this round of rigorous questioning have truly crossed the threshold of “professionalism”—and they are exactly the kind of investment promoters Qingyang is looking for.

03 Recruiting Talent Is Only Half the Battle—You Must Also Put Them to Work

Though the training camp has concluded, Qingyang’s talent development efforts continue.

The 20 finalists were not the end goal; all 100 participants were added to Qingyang’s investment promotion talent pool. Next comes categorized training, with the best candidates selected to be sent to the front lines of investment promotion and project development for real-world experience. Only when the training ground shifts from the classroom to the negotiating table can talent truly come into its own.

Qingyang plans to assign participants to specific projects based on industry sectors—whoever becomes familiar with a particular supply chain will be deployed to that chain, ensuring that everyone’s expertise is put to the best possible use.

The trainees’ takeaways were clear: only by walking through the entire process—from the investment promotion roadmap to project implementation—can one truly understand investment promotion and gain a grasp of Qingyang’s five major industries. Some refined their thinking, others learned to analyze, and still others addressed their weaknesses.

By transforming a single training camp into a long-term mechanism, Qingyang has established “Industry Pioneer Development” as its signature program. Investment promotion is about attracting projects, and industries are what sustain those projects; whether an industry can thrive ultimately depends on whether there is a group of “know-how experts” leading the way.

Only when the right people are in place can industries be discussed, attracted, and nurtured.

With a team of industry experts now in place, Qingyang can attract investment along the industrial chain with a clear understanding of which local links are missing and which companies are needed to fill those gaps. This investment in people is an investment in the long-term momentum of Qingyang’s industries.

In Closing

While many places focus their investment promotion efforts on projects and policies, Qingyang prioritizes people first.

This may be another layer of meaning behind “staying ahead of the curve”: it’s not just about moving fast, but also about thinking ahead.