One of my favorite movies is an award-winning movie from 1994, Forrest Gump.
In my favorite scene, Forrest steps off his porch and decides to “go for a little run.” He gets to the end of the road and decides he will run to the end of town. After he makes it to the end of town, he runs across Greenbow County. Then, he runs across the state of Alabama and mentions that for no particular reason, he just kept on going. Forrest continues running—gaining fame, fans and followers—until he lands at the coastline and decides to turn around and make the trek again.
Then the scene changes. We see Forrest retelling the story to a woman while sitting on a bench. The woman says, “So…you just ran?” Forrest shrugs nonchalantly and responds, “Yeah.”
Inevitably, at some point each year, I feel like Forrest Gump.
The Business Development team builds robust strategies and organizes a packed travel calendar each year. We align our activity with the results we are benchmarked against. Then, we’re off running around the world, selling and promoting Northeast Indiana.
Our plan and strategy for this past year, combined with the activity of years prior, worked together to pave the way for a record-breaking 2022 for our organization. Some highlights include:
- Spent nearly 100 nights in hotel rooms, spanning roughly 30 cities on 47 sales missions
- Conducted 130 individual sales meetings and proactively prospected over 2,800 companies
- Hosted two Familiarization (FAM) Tours providing 7 Site Consultants with a personalized tour of NEI
- Issued and/or worked on 48 projects, shattering the previous record of 24 and exceeding our goal of 40
- Built our sales pipeline with a projected potential of approximately 8,400 jobs and $5.6 billion in capital investment
Our intention is to continue the successful momentum from previous years into 2023. Our travel calendar for this year boasts over 50 sales missions, including targeted Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) sales and travel tactics. We have a focused and comprehensive digital marketing approach to our target industries in distressed markets and will host another FAM tour, among other sales activities.
