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Slow start doesn’t discourage Great Falls development group

When John Kramer takes the podium at the annual meeting of the Great Falls Development Authority on Monday, he will have good news and bad news.

By James E. Larcombe Great Falls Tribune

The bad news: The development authority has not made much progress towards its goal of bringing at least 1,000 primary industry jobs to Great Falls.

The good news? The development authority is undertaking a carefully planned approach to developing prospects and is seeing signs that the climate for luring new employers is improving.

"When the economy turns, we will be there," Kramer, the development authority’s president, said this past week.

Kramer was hired in October 2001, as the U.S. economy was beginning to reel from the September 11 terrorist attacks. While the development authority spent the next 18 months or so reorganizing, retooling, and completing a fund-raising drive that saw it quickly raise $2.4 million from local investors, the U.S. economy stagnated, stalling the expansion plans of many of the companies GFDA hoped to target.

The process of marketing Great Falls via trade shows, one-on-one sales calls and systematic prospecting began in earnest in May. While admittedly a slower start than he and many others would have liked, the timing may prove beneficial, Kramer says.

"We didn’t waste two years trying to market to people who weren’t doing anything," he said. "If nobody’s buying, you can’t sell."

Make no mistake, Kramer, Jerry Chavez, the authority’s vice president of marketing and a volunteer "marketing team" have been road warriors in recent months. They’ve been calling on site-selection consultants, attending trade shows and making cold calls on prospective companies.

The process is being driven by a short list of target industries developed in the 12 to 15 months after Kramer’s arrival. Those targets are companies in business and information services, those that repair time-sensitive products and those that make time-sensitive medical and veterinary products. The time-sensitive focus is aimed at tapping the Great Falls International Airport and the Federal Express facility on Gore Hill.

Along with available infrastructure, the chief selling point in these road trips often boils down to one commodity: labor.

"We are really trying to market the quality of our labor," Kramer said. "Our labor force is not highly trained but it is well-educated."

Geography is a key element in the strategy as well. The development authority is focusing on companies with decent air connections to Great Falls. That means places such as Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, Portland, Denver or Phoenix. Plus, Kramer says, "we are looking at California a little bit more."

The GFDA road show has been on six trips since May and has another 15 or so on the schedule in the next 12 months. In early October, Kramer and Chavez will travel to CoreNet Global Summit in Atlanta, a gathering of corporate real estate folks from across the U.S. and some foreign nations.

"These guys are the ones always heavily involved in site selection," Kramer said. "This is one you don’t want to miss."

The Great Falls agency will share a trade-show booth with folks from Billings, Missoula and Butte. The combined effort will reduce costs and help boost the state’s image as a place to do business, Kramer hopes.

"Montana has been an unknown commodity in corporate America for too long," he said.

This life on the road isn’t cheap. The tab for Kramer and Brenda Peterson, a local advertising agency executive, to attend the American Teleservices Association trade show in Phoenix last month came to more than $7,800. A trip to the International Call Center Management Show in Chicago in August cost $10,800. Of that, nearly $6,000 went to cover trade show costs, while the remainder covered airline tickets, hotels, meals and other expenses.

"You have to pay to play," Kramer said, noting the development authority has invested in a nice-looking booth for trade shows. Great Falls may be competing for jobs with Boise, Denver or Albuquerque and has to present a similar image, he added.

The trips are being paid for with the pool of money raised from investors, many of whom made multi-year pledges.

"That’s what we raised it for — to be aggressive out there," Kramer says.

Several of the "marketing team" volunteers say the trade shows and prospecting trips have been worthwhile. Linda Poore, the manager of Chicago Title Insurance Co. in Great Falls, went on prospecting trip to San Francisco with Chavez.

"I was cold calling, actually recruiting," she said, noting the duo had a number of prearranged appointments as well. "We let them know who were, where we are at and left some information. It’s no different than any other kind of marketing. You get out there and visit with people. You never know where it will go."

Peterson, with Wendt Kochman, said she and Kramer visited with call-center executives while in Phoenix.

"The feeling I got is that we were meeting with the right folks," Peterson said. "We came away with several good leads."

Peterson also joined Kramer and Diane Jovick-Kuntz, a city commissioner, to attend a medical equipment show in New York City in June. Having community members along, she says, leaves a solid impression about the importance of new jobs in a community.

"I do think it’s a good strategy and it’s certainly more directed that we’ve ever been," Peterson said.

Kramer said the team strategy is necessary at bigger shows and allows some GFDA staff members to remain in Great Falls to follow up on leads and handle other chores.

"It’s working out real well," he said. "We’ve got some great salesmen here."

GFDA executives and volunteers have focused considerable energy in working shows aimed at call centers or customer contact centers. National Electronics Warranty Corp. employs more than 600 workers in such operations in downtown Great Falls. The continued recruiting has prompted questions, including a query from Cari Yturri, a development authority board member and owner of Bennett Motors in Great Falls. In a recent meeting, she wondered if Great Falls had enough call-center jobs.

Kramer says there are a total of about 800 call-center jobs in Great Falls now, with most of them at NEW and First Nationwide Mortgage. Labor studies show that Great Falls could accommodate as many as 1,800 to 2,400 such jobs, he says. The development authority is focusing on call-center jobs that will raise the local pay scale.

"It’s heavily dependent on the pay range and the types of companies they are," he said of the recruiting efforts.

Yturri, in an interview later, said she has no quarrel with the call-center recruiting or Kramer.

"He knows what he’s doing and I trust his judgment," she said. "I just think it’s important to make sure we don’t appeal to just one type of market."

Call-center jobs often fit within the business and information services segment that GFDA has identified as a growth opportunity.

Kramer says the development authority has come close to landing two substantial employers, both in the business and information services segment.

One, the First Tennessee Corp., was looking for a home for a financial services center employing 200 to 600 workers, with full-time pay starting at $9 per hour. The company eventually landed in Colorado Springs, Colo.

In addition, "we got real close" with a Chicago-based financial services firm that later decided to expand an existing center He declined to name the firm, saying it is still on the agency’s prospect list.

The list of prospects maintained by the development authority is growing.

"We started with about 10 names in our client base and we’ve got about 150 now — companies that we have talked to," Kramer said. "People are talking like they are going to do something. We are building a good lead base."

After two years on the job, Kramer says he is no less optimistic about the prospects for Great Falls than when he started.

"The thing that really impresses me is the community’s willingness and understanding that the economy needs to change," he said. "The disappointing thing is that the economy isn’t turning around as fast as I hoped it would."

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