Your greatest opportunities for growth might be hiding in plain sight. While you’re focused on finding the next big client or breaking into a new market, you could be overlooking the immense potential within your existing business. This is the central idea of business retention and expansion—a strategy dedicated to unlocking the value you’ve already created. It’s about looking at your current customers, loyal employees, and established processes not just as assets to maintain, but as platforms for growth. By shifting your focus inward, you can discover more efficient, profitable, and sustainable ways to scale your company without starting from scratch every time.
Key Takeaways
- Build Real Relationships, Not Just Data Points: The most valuable insights come from genuine, on-the-ground engagement. Prioritize on-site visits and direct conversations to understand the real challenges business owners face, allowing you to offer solutions that actually work.
- Be a Connector, Not Just a Collector: Information is useless without action. A successful BRE program actively connects businesses to the right resources—whether it’s funding, workforce training, or technical support—to solve their specific problems and clear the path for growth.
- Commit to a Continuous Cycle of Improvement: A BRE strategy isn’t a one-time project; it’s a long-term commitment. Consistently measure your impact, adapt your approach based on results, and prove to your business community that you are a reliable partner invested in their success.
What is Business Retention and Expansion (BRE)?
At its core, Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) is a strategy focused on nurturing the businesses that are already part of your community. Instead of pouring all your resources into attracting new companies, BRE shifts the focus to supporting your existing ones so they can thrive and grow right where they are. Think of it as tending to your own garden before trying to plant a new one. According to Business Retention and Expansion International, the goal is to strengthen the connection between companies and their community while encouraging each business to keep growing locally.
This isn’t just about checking in and hoping for the best. A solid BRE program is proactive. It involves understanding the challenges local businesses face—whether it’s navigating regulations, finding skilled workers, or accessing capital—and then actively helping them find solutions. It’s a partnership between business owners and community leaders, all working toward the shared goal of a stable and prosperous local economy. By creating an environment where businesses feel supported and valued, you build a foundation for long-term, sustainable growth that benefits everyone.
The Building Blocks of a BRE Strategy
A successful BRE strategy isn’t complicated, but it does require a clear, structured approach. It generally follows four key steps. First, you create a dedicated BRE team—a group of community leaders, business owners, and economic development professionals who can drive the effort. Second, you learn to spot “warning flags” that might signal a business is struggling or considering leaving. Next, you offer direct, tangible help to individual businesses based on their specific needs. Finally, you use what you’ve learned to create community-wide plans that address common challenges and improve the overall business climate. This four-step framework helps ensure your efforts are organized, effective, and responsive to what your business community actually needs.
Why Focus on Your Existing Businesses?
Focusing on the businesses already in your backyard is one of the smartest moves you can make. For one, it’s far more efficient. Keeping and growing an existing business almost always costs less and takes less time than the long, expensive process of attracting a new one. Beyond the economics, your local businesses are your best advertisement. When they succeed, they send a powerful message that your community is a great place to do business. This creates a positive reputation that can naturally attract new talent, investment, and customers. It’s a practical approach that builds on the strengths you already have, creating a stable foundation for future growth.
How BRE Strengthens the Local Economy
The impact of a strong BRE program goes far beyond individual companies. When existing businesses expand, they create a powerful ripple effect across the entire local economy. In fact, studies show that up to 80% of all new jobs come from existing businesses, not new ones moving into town. As these companies grow, they hire more local residents, purchase more goods and services from other local suppliers, and contribute more to the local tax base. This creates a virtuous cycle of growth, making the entire community more resilient and economically vibrant. By investing in the businesses that have already invested in you, you’re building a stronger, more self-sufficient local economy from the inside out.
How to Build an Effective BRE Strategy
Building a successful Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) strategy isn’t about a single grand gesture; it’s about creating a consistent, supportive framework that helps your existing businesses thrive. Think of it as tending a garden you’ve already planted. With the right care, you can ensure a healthy, long-lasting harvest. A strong BRE plan requires a clear vision, the right people, and a genuine commitment to listening and responding to the needs of your business community. It’s a proactive approach that moves beyond just attracting new companies and focuses on nurturing the ones that are already part of your local economic fabric. By putting in the work upfront to build this foundation, you create a resilient environment where businesses feel valued and have the tools they need to grow.
Assemble Your Team
You can’t build a strong BRE strategy alone. Start by assembling a dedicated team to champion the effort. According to research from the University of Wisconsin, a successful team should have “4-5 people who are good at things like marketing, money, or understanding local rules.” Look for individuals who bring diverse skills to the table—someone with a strong financial background, another with marketing savvy, and someone who understands local operations and regulations. This group will be the driving force behind your BRE program, helping businesses solve problems and improving the overall business environment. Your goal is to create a small, agile team that can act as a strategic resource for your local companies.
Plan Your Resources
Once your team is in place, the next step is to take stock of your resources. What tools, funding, and support can you realistically offer? This isn’t just about a budget; it’s about identifying all available assets. This process helps you “identify individual business needs you can act to fill, such as providing more space, addressing financing issues, or providing information resources.” Do you have access to local grants? Can you partner with a nearby university for training programs? By mapping out your resources, you can match them directly to the needs you uncover in the business community, ensuring your efforts are both practical and impactful. This creates a clear roadmap for growth that is grounded in what you can actually deliver.
Engage Key Stakeholders
A BRE strategy that’s built in a vacuum is destined to fail. To get real buy-in, you need to involve the very people you’re trying to help. This means actively engaging business owners, community leaders, and other key stakeholders from the very beginning. When you “involve businesses and other interested people in the process,” you build a sense of shared ownership that encourages collaboration and support. Host town halls, create advisory boards, or simply schedule one-on-one conversations. Asking for input not only gives you valuable insights but also shows the business community that their voices matter, making them far more likely to participate in and champion the program down the line.
Create a Support System
At its heart, a BRE program is a support system. Its primary goal is to “provide assistance with issues that could force a company to fail or close, and to prevent companies from relocating to a new community.” This system should be proactive, not just reactive. Don’t wait for a business to be in crisis before you offer help. Instead, create an environment of ongoing support through regular check-ins, educational workshops, and networking events. By building a reliable support structure, you give businesses the confidence and the tools they need to handle challenges and seize growth opportunities. This transforms your role from a simple service provider to a trusted long-term partner invested in their success.
How to Understand and Address Business Needs
A successful BRE strategy is built on one thing: a genuine understanding of what your local businesses are going through. You can’t create effective solutions from a distance. Instead of guessing what companies need, the best approach is to get on the ground, listen carefully, and gather real-world information. This process isn’t just about collecting data; it’s about building trust and showing businesses that you’re invested in their success. By systematically visiting, surveying, and analyzing feedback, you can move from simply having information to taking meaningful, targeted action that makes a real difference.
Conduct On-Site Business Visits
There’s no substitute for seeing a business in its own environment. On-site visits allow you to move beyond the surface and understand the day-to-day realities business owners face. Walking through a facility, meeting the team, and having a face-to-face conversation provides context that a phone call or email simply can’t capture. These visits are your chance to build strong relationships and gather firsthand information about their challenges and opportunities. The goal isn’t to sell them anything; it’s to listen. When you show up with genuine curiosity, you demonstrate a commitment that forms the foundation of a true partnership and a strong BRE program.
Best Practices for Surveys and Interviews
While visits build relationships, surveys and interviews provide the structured data you need to see the bigger picture. A well-designed questionnaire helps you gather consistent information across multiple businesses, making it easier to spot trends. When creating your survey, be clear about your purpose and keep it focused—no one has time for a 50-question form. For interviews, train your team to ask open-ended questions that encourage owners to share their stories. Using a mix of methods gives you both quantitative data and qualitative insights, which are essential for developing a strong strategy. Remember, the goal is to make it easy for businesses to give you the honest feedback you need.
Collect and Analyze Feedback
Gathering information is only the first step. The real value comes from what you do with it. Once you’ve collected survey responses and interview notes, it’s time to dig in and look for patterns. Are multiple businesses struggling with the same supply chain issues? Is finding skilled talent a recurring theme? Organizing the feedback helps you identify the most pressing, widespread challenges facing your business community. Creating this kind of structured feedback loop is what turns raw data into actionable intelligence. This analysis is the bridge between understanding the problems and building the right solutions to address them.
Act on What You Learn
Information without action is just noise. Once you’ve identified the key needs of your business community, the final and most important step is to do something about it. This is where your BRE strategy comes to life. Your team can now coordinate targeted responses, whether that means connecting a specific business with a financial resource or developing a broader strategy to improve the local business climate. The data you’ve gathered can also be shared to help businesses make more informed decisions in their own operations. By responding to concerns and proactively developing solutions, you close the loop and prove that you’re not just listening—you’re a partner in their growth.
What Every BRE Program Needs
A successful Business Retention and Expansion program is built on more than just good intentions—it requires a solid, supportive framework. Think of it as the essential toolkit your community uses to help local businesses not only stay but also thrive. When you have the right components in place, you can move from simply reacting to problems to proactively creating an environment where growth is the natural outcome. This means looking at the entire business ecosystem, from the physical space a company occupies to the policies that shape its daily operations.
A comprehensive BRE program addresses the real-world challenges that business owners face every day. It’s about ensuring they have access to the right space, the right people, and the right resources at the right time. By focusing on a few key areas, you can build a program that delivers tangible results and fosters a true partnership between the community and its businesses. The most effective strategies are built on five core pillars: strong infrastructure, a skilled workforce, accessible financial resources, practical technical assistance, and supportive local policies. Let’s break down what each of these looks like in action.
Infrastructure and Site Support
Every business needs a physical place to operate, and the right location can make all the difference. Infrastructure and site support is about ensuring your local companies have the physical foundation they need to run efficiently and plan for growth. This goes beyond just well-maintained roads and utilities; it’s about actively understanding and addressing specific needs. For a manufacturer, this might mean helping them find a larger facility with the right zoning. For a tech company, it could be ensuring access to reliable, high-speed internet. By listening to what businesses need during site visits and surveys, you can identify gaps and provide information resources to help them find the perfect space to expand.
Workforce Development Initiatives
One of the most common hurdles to growth is finding and keeping great employees. A strong BRE program tackles this head-on by focusing on workforce development. This means creating a direct pipeline of skilled talent for your local businesses. You can do this by partnering with community colleges, vocational schools, and local training centers to develop programs that teach the specific skills your industries need. Instead of leaving business owners to search for talent on their own, you become a proactive partner in building a qualified local workforce. This not only helps existing companies expand their teams but also makes your community more attractive to new businesses.
Financial Resources and Incentives
Growth requires capital, whether it’s for purchasing new equipment, renovating a building, or hiring more staff. Many business owners struggle to secure the financing they need to take the next step. Your BRE program can act as a vital connector, guiding businesses to the financial resources that can turn their expansion plans into reality. This involves staying informed about local, state, and federal loan programs, grants, and tax incentives that can help offset the costs of growth. By making it easier for businesses to access capital, you remove one of the biggest barriers to expansion and empower them to invest in their future—and in your community.
Technical Assistance and Training
Business owners are experts in their field, but they can’t be experts in everything. That’s where technical assistance and training come in. A great BRE program provides access to practical knowledge and guidance that helps owners solve specific problems and run their companies more effectively. This could take the form of workshops on digital marketing, one-on-one coaching on financial management, or connecting them with mentors who have faced similar challenges. By offering targeted support, you equip businesses with the tools and skills they need to adapt, innovate, and grow sustainably. It’s about providing real-world help that makes a direct impact on their bottom line.
Supportive Local Policies
Sometimes, the biggest obstacle to business growth is unnecessary red tape. Supportive local policies are about creating a business-friendly environment where companies feel encouraged to invest and expand. This means taking a hard look at your community’s regulations, permitting processes, and zoning laws to ensure they are clear, fair, and efficient. When local government acts as a partner rather than a roadblock, it builds trust and shows businesses they are valued. A streamlined, predictable process allows entrepreneurs to focus their energy on innovation and customer service instead of getting bogged down in bureaucracy, making your community a place where businesses can truly put down roots.
Common BRE Challenges to Prepare For
Launching a Business Retention and Expansion program is a powerful move, but it’s not without its hurdles. Like any strategic initiative, success comes from anticipating potential roadblocks and having a plan to address them. Foreseeing these common challenges will help you build a more resilient and effective program from the start, ensuring your efforts lead to meaningful, long-term growth for your business community.
Overcoming Resource Limitations
It’s a familiar story: big goals, but a tight budget and a small team. Resource constraints are one of the most common challenges in any BRE effort. Instead of letting this stop you, get strategic. Focus your energy on high-impact activities that don’t require a massive investment. Your market analysis and business surveys are your best tools here. They help you identify individual business needs you can actually fill, whether it’s connecting a company to a new financing resource or helping them find available commercial space. Don’t go it alone, either. Partner with your local chamber of commerce, industry associations, or other economic development groups to pool resources and share the workload.
Breaking Down Communication Barriers
Effective communication is the foundation of any successful BRE program, but it’s easy to get wrong. Business owners are busy and may be skeptical of another survey or meeting request. Building trust is essential. Start by creating a clear and consistent message about your program’s goals and how it benefits them directly. One powerful strategy is to recruit and train volunteers from the community to conduct interviews. A familiar face from a local organization can often open doors more effectively than a formal representative. Developing a solid plan for community engagement ensures your outreach is thoughtful, respectful of business owners’ time, and focused on building genuine relationships.
Managing Your Data Effectively
Once you start talking to businesses, you’ll collect a lot of valuable information. The challenge is turning that data into action. It’s easy for feedback and survey results to end up in a spreadsheet that no one ever looks at again. To avoid this, you need a simple system from day one. A dedicated BRE team should be responsible for coordinating responses to business concerns and using the data to spot trends. You don’t need complex software; a well-organized database or CRM can help you track feedback, assign follow-up tasks, and ensure no business feels ignored. The goal is to use your market analysis data to make informed decisions that improve the local business climate for everyone.
Maintaining Long-Term Engagement
A BRE program isn’t a one-and-done project; it’s an ongoing commitment. The initial excitement can fade, and without a plan to maintain momentum, your efforts can stall. The key is to treat BRE as a continuous cycle of relationship-building. Schedule regular business visits and check-ins throughout the year, not just when you’re in “data collection mode.” Use the insights you’ve gathered to proactively connect businesses with opportunities and resources. Collaboration with local partners is also crucial for keeping the program active and relevant. By consistently showing up and providing value, you prove that you’re invested in the long-term success of your local businesses.
Best Practices for a Successful BRE Program
Putting a Business Retention and Expansion program into motion is one thing, but making it truly effective requires a thoughtful, consistent approach. It’s not about a one-time survey or a single meeting; it’s about building a sustainable system of support that helps your local businesses thrive for the long haul. Think of it as tending a garden—it needs regular attention, the right resources, and a strategic plan to flourish. These best practices are the core principles that will help you create a program that delivers real, measurable results and strengthens your entire business community.
Build Strategic Partnerships
You can’t do this alone, and you don’t have to. A successful BRE program is a team sport. Your most powerful asset is the network you build around your local businesses. This means actively seeking out and fostering relationships with key community players—think local government, chambers of commerce, educational institutions, and utility providers. Key strategies include “collaboration with local partners, and using data to identify opportunities and address concerns.” By working together, you can pool resources, share knowledge, and present a united front, making it easier for businesses to get the help they need. A strong partnership network ensures that when a business has a problem, you have a direct line to someone who can help solve it.
Commit to Regular Engagement
The foundation of any strong relationship is communication, and the same is true for your BRE program. Sporadic check-ins won’t give you the insights you need. Instead, commit to a schedule of regular, meaningful engagement. This is where on-site visits and intentional conversations become so important. Through consistent outreach, you have the opportunity to “identify individual business needs you can act to fill, such as providing more space, addressing financing issues, or providing information resources.” This proactive approach helps you spot small issues before they become big problems and builds trust with business owners. They’ll see you as a reliable partner who is genuinely invested in their success, making them more likely to share their challenges and goals openly.
Optimize Your Resources
Listening to businesses is crucial, but it’s only half the battle. The other half is taking action. An effective BRE program needs a clear system for responding to business needs. This often involves creating a dedicated BRE team or point person who can “coordinate responses to individual business concerns, or warning flags, and develops strategies to improve the local business climate.” This person or team acts as a connector, guiding businesses to the right resources, whether it’s a local lender, a workforce training program, or a municipal department. By streamlining your response system, you ensure that feedback doesn’t just sit in a spreadsheet—it turns into tangible solutions that help businesses grow.
Monitor Your Progress
How do you know if your BRE program is actually working? You have to measure it. Establishing clear metrics for success is essential for understanding your impact and making smart decisions. This starts with the information you collect. “Gathering insights through interviews and surveys is a crucial step in understanding local businesses’ needs and shaping effective BRE programs.” But don’t stop there. Track key indicators like jobs created or retained, capital investment, and business expansions. Regularly reviewing this data will show you what’s working and where you need to adjust your strategy. This data-driven approach ensures your efforts remain focused and effective, allowing you to demonstrate the value of your program to stakeholders.
Ensure Program Sustainability
A successful BRE program isn’t a short-term project; it’s a long-term commitment. To ensure its sustainability, you need to think beyond immediate needs and plan for the future. This involves addressing the foundational elements that businesses require for growth, such as “finding land or buildings for future operations, securing financing for new equipment or operations, and finding or training new workers.” Building a sustainable program means creating repeatable processes, securing ongoing funding, and continuously adapting to the changing economic landscape. By focusing on these essential long-term strategies, you create a BRE initiative that not only supports businesses today but also builds a resilient and prosperous business environment for years to come.
How to Measure and Improve Your Success
A Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) strategy isn’t something you can set and forget. To know if your efforts are truly making a difference, you need a clear way to measure your progress and a commitment to making improvements along the way. Tracking your success helps you justify the resources you’re investing, shows local businesses that you’re serious about their growth, and allows you to adapt your approach based on what’s actually working.
Think of it as a continuous cycle: you set goals, measure your performance against them, learn from the results, and refine your strategy. This approach ensures your BRE program remains relevant, effective, and capable of creating a real, lasting impact on your business community. It’s how you move from simply being busy to being productive and strategic in your support for local companies.
Define Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Before you can measure success, you have to define what it looks like. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the specific, measurable metrics you’ll use to track the progress of your BRE program. Your KPIs should align directly with your goals. For example, if your goal is to improve communication, a good KPI would be the number of on-site business visits completed each quarter.
Your BRE team can use these metrics to coordinate responses to business concerns and develop strategies to improve the local business climate. Other meaningful KPIs could include the number of jobs retained or created, the amount of new capital invested by existing businesses, or an increase in business satisfaction scores from your surveys. Choose a handful of clear, impactful KPIs to focus on so you can get a straightforward picture of your program’s performance without getting lost in the data.
Make Data-Driven Decisions
Once you start tracking your KPIs, you’ll have a steady stream of data. The next step is to use that information to make smarter, more strategic decisions. Instead of guessing what your local businesses need, you can let the data guide you. For instance, if your surveys consistently show that multiple businesses are struggling with finding skilled labor, you can focus your resources on workforce development initiatives.
As experts in community economic development note, market analysis data can help existing businesses make more informed day-to-day operating decisions. By analyzing trends, you can identify common pain points and opportunities. This allows you to allocate your time, budget, and energy where they will have the greatest effect, ensuring your BRE program delivers targeted, relevant support that businesses actually value.
Continuously Enhance Your Program
An effective BRE program is a living thing—it should evolve based on feedback and results. The insights you gather from business visits, interviews, and surveys are crucial for shaping and refining your efforts. When you hear the same suggestion or concern from multiple business owners, that’s a clear signal to take action. This creates a powerful feedback loop where businesses see that their input leads to tangible changes.
This process of continuous improvement builds trust and encourages long-term engagement. Don’t be afraid to tweak your approach, try new initiatives, or even discontinue activities that aren’t delivering results. Regularly asking, “How can we do this better?” is the key to keeping your program dynamic and responsive to the ever-changing needs of your business community.
Assess Your Long-Term Impact
While short-term metrics are important for day-to-day management, the true measure of a BRE program is its long-term impact on the local economy. Are businesses not just surviving, but thriving? Are they expanding, hiring more people, and investing back into the community? These are the outcomes that signal sustainable success.
Remember, studies have shown that as much as 80% of new job creation comes from existing businesses. Over time, you should be able to point to concrete evidence of your program’s influence, such as growth in the local tax base, a lower commercial vacancy rate, and stories of local companies that have scaled their operations with your support. This long-term view confirms that your efforts are building a stronger, more resilient economic future.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is a BRE program only for businesses that are struggling or thinking of leaving? Not at all. While a strong program can certainly help identify and support at-risk companies, its main purpose is to foster an environment where all local businesses can grow. Think of it as proactive support for your entire business community. A healthy, expanding company might need help finding a larger facility or accessing capital for new equipment, and a BRE program is designed to help them seize those opportunities just as much as it helps a struggling business find its footing.
We have a very small team and budget. How can we possibly start a BRE program? You don’t need a huge budget to make a meaningful impact. The key is to be strategic and resourceful. Start by building partnerships with your local chamber of commerce, industry groups, or even the community college. By pooling your resources and sharing the workload, you can accomplish far more. Focus on high-impact, low-cost activities like facilitating introductions, sharing information about existing grant programs, and simply being a reliable point of contact for business owners.
How do we get busy business owners to trust us and give us their time? Building trust doesn’t happen overnight; it comes from consistency and showing you’re genuinely there to help, not just to collect data. Start by being clear about your purpose and respectful of their time. Instead of sending a mass email, try building relationships with a few well-respected business leaders first. When others see you are actively listening and providing real value, they will be much more willing to engage.
What’s the difference between collecting feedback and actually helping? Collecting feedback is the easy part; the real work is in the follow-through. An effective BRE program has a clear system for turning information into action. This means having a dedicated person or team responsible for connecting businesses with the right resources and ensuring their concerns are addressed. It’s about closing the loop, so business owners know that when they share a challenge, someone is actively working to help them find a solution.
How long does it take to see results from a BRE program? You can often see small, immediate wins, like helping a single business solve a permitting issue or connecting them with a new supplier. These early successes are important for building momentum. However, the larger, more significant impacts—like measurable job growth or a noticeable increase in local investment—are the result of a long-term commitment. A successful BRE program is a marathon, not a sprint, and its greatest benefits unfold over time through consistent effort.