{"id":796,"date":"2011-08-17T13:09:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T17:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=796"},"modified":"2012-02-13T15:45:10","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T20:45:10","slug":"seven-essential-questions%e2%80%94and-answers%e2%80%94-for-the-man-known-as-new-hampshire%e2%80%99s-business-thief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/08\/17\/seven-essential-questions%e2%80%94and-answers%e2%80%94-for-the-man-known-as-new-hampshire%e2%80%99s-business-thief\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Essential Questions\u2014And Answers\u2014 For The Man Known As New Hampshire\u2019s Business Thief"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development<\/p>

New Hampshire's Business Development Manager Michael Bergeron was recently characterized as a business thief by The Boston Globe.<\/p><\/div>\n

With the imminent closure of the Balsams Grand Resort <\/a>in Dixville Notch, the issue of economic development in the North Country <\/a>is once again on the state\u2019s radar screen. \u00a0The pulp mill industry <\/a>is all but dead, along with a proposed large-scale biofuel plant. \u00a0These complications mean that when the Balsams shutters next month, the loss of 300 jobs will hurt a depressed area even more. \u00a0I recently talked with New Hampshire\u2019s Business Development Manager, Michael Bergeron. Last month, Bergeron was profiled in The Boston Globe as a business thief<\/a>, sneaking across the southern border to steal Massachusetts-based firms. \u00a0Now, he tells State Impact the challenges he faces bringing outside businesses to the state in general, and the North Country in particular.<\/p>\n

The first thing that brought you to my attention was that Boston Globe piece. \u00a0I\u2019ve got to know, what was your reaction to that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it was great. \u00a0Great press. \u00a0You know, because our budget\u2019s very tight for advertising, and we could never have paid for such great advertising\u2026We\u2019ve had\u2026I think we\u2019ve had 11 leads from that, and they range from 800 employee companies to two employee companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now\u2026getting an idea of\u2026the payoff of this kind of recruitment work, what does, say, an average \u2026year look like for you in terms of how many businesses you are able to bring in?<\/h5>\n

\u201cOn average, we have about 200 prospects that we\u2019re dealing with, and it takes about two or three years for a company to make a decision to relocate or expand. \u00a0Say, for example, if we make ten cold calls, of that ten, we might speak to one company that might be interested. \u00a0And then we\u2019d have to have, probably, up to five or six companies interested, and of those five to six companies, you know, one might actually make the decision to come to New Hampshire. \u00a0So we have a very large pool of companies\u2026\u2018pipelined\u2019, so to speak, and it takes a long time and a lot of effort to locate companies that might be interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does the process of recruiting a company look like, start to finish?<\/h5>\n

\u201cWell, it depends. \u00a0We get leads from everything from referrals from friends to referrals from other state agencies, [and] other people who might be in the market. \u00a0We try to establish relationships with decision-makers in companies. \u00a0So we will try to contact companies that have presidents, treasurers, large ones that might have real estate directors. \u00a0And we then also try to develop relationships with people who represent companies, so that would be CPA\u2019s, attorneys, psych consultants, real estate brokers\u2026we have various tactics to do that, depending on who the audience is. \u00a0But it ranges from cold calls to having private dinner presentations in various cities with potential decision-makers…We\u2019ve done dinners up in Quebec, where we invite a small group of companies to talk about the benefits of northern New Hampshire. \u00a0We do the same thing for other parts of the state, in other states. \u00a0So there\u2019s no one way to do it. \u00a0It just depends on the situation and what opportunities may present\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

You mentioned northern NH\u2026 So what is…on the agenda for you guys, in terms of bringing more business into the North Country?<\/h5>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve spent a lot of man hours in trying to attract companies to northern New Hampshire. \u00a0So, as I\u2019ve said, we\u2019ve done everything from these private dinners in\u2026Drummondville, Victoriaville, Quebec City, we\u2019ve been to Montreal, and we\u2019ve had pretty good luck at meeting companies that are interested in expanding to the state. \u00a0But again, it takes a long time for them to make a decision, particularly if they\u2019re from another country. \u00a0They\u2019re somewhat concerned about what it\u2019s like to do business in the United States, and where is there property available. \u00a0So we have several prospects that are interested now, in Colebrook, and one for Groveton, but it takes three, four, five years, believe it or not, to get this process from the beginning call to actually making the step to occupying space in northern New Hampshire.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the biggest challenge in drawing these people to the North Country, specifically, as opposed to, say, the Seacoast<\/a> or the Merrimack Valley<\/a>?<\/h5>\n

\u201cWell, in terms of Canada, it\u2019s more the issue, I think, of their hesitancy of what\u2019s it like to do business in the United States. \u00a0Because we tend to attract smaller companies that [have] been in Quebec for a long time, and now they\u2019re ready to take that step into the US market. \u00a0And so they need extra help. \u00a0They need to understand what it\u2019s like to do business in the United States, you know, what\u2019s the litigation process like in the United States, where will they find people to hire? \u00a0Just all those things that a family-run company has to look at. \u00a0And a lot of them, the first generation of the company doesn\u2019t speak a lot of English, and so they like the fact that Northern New Hampshire has a lot of French-speaking people that really can communicate effectively, and they can be close. \u00a0So it depends. \u00a0Sometimes, it can just be the issue of they don\u2019t have that US contract, and that\u2019s what they need, in order to start. \u00a0For example, [I\u2019m] working with a company now that may be interested in coming to Colebrook and working in a new industry, and [it\u2019s] a matter of time to understand where their customers are going to come from, and then making that step.\u201d<\/p>\n

And domestically, what\u2019s the biggest challenge in bringing companies to the North Country\u2026?<\/h5>\n

\u201cDomestically, these are companies that are coming from northern New York, northern Maine, and to some degree, occasionally, they\u2019ll be in southern New England. \u00a0But the companies that are looking at northern New Hampshire want to know how close they are to an Interstate highway, what\u2019s available for industrial space, telecommunications, those are the things that come up all the time, and one of the things that northern New Hampshire needs more of is existing space. \u00a0There\u2019s not a lot of available industrial space, free-standing buildings, in the ten-to-thirty-thousand square foot range, that\u2019s close to an interstate highway.\u201d<\/p>\n

[On the flip side,] when you\u2019re looking at recruiting businesses into that densely-populated southern New Hampshire area, what\u2019s the big challenge?<\/h5>\n

\u201cWell, one of the challenges is finding the right piece of real estate. \u00a0And that means, can they find the industrial building that has the right clear-height, that has the number of loading docks, that has the right image?…There\u2019s a tighter vacancy in southern New Hampshire\u2026for certain industrial buildings than there are in northern Massachusetts, because it\u2019s been a fairly high demand in southern New Hampshire\u2026Other things that come up, sometimes, is that the decision-maker in Massachusetts lives in Massachusetts, and so has a sort of inherent bias toward being, you know, where he or she lives.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the imminent closure of the Balsams Grand Resort in Dixville Notch, the issue of economic development in the North Country is once again on the state\u2019s radar screen. \u00a0The pulp mill industry is all but dead, along with a proposed large-scale biofuel plant. \u00a0These complications mean that when the Balsams shutters next month, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51,14],"tags":[531,35,530,522,39,511,87,506,244,140,516,508],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6140,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/6140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}